THE TEACHINGS OF ROZBIHAN BAQLI

Bunlarada Bakarsınız

 

 

Beauty in Sufism

The Teachings of Rūzbihān Baqlī

Kazuyo Murata

 

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2017 State University of New York All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Murata, Kazuyo (Lecturer in Islamic studies), author.

Title: Beauty in Sufism : the teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli / Kazuyo Murata.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

 

Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics--Religious aspects--Islam. | Sufism. |Baqlī, Rūzbihān ibn Abī al-Naṣr, -1209 or 1210.

 

 

اى آﻓﺘﺎب ﺣﺴﻦ ﺑﺮون آ دﻣﻰ ز اﺑﺮ ﻛﺎن ﭼﻬﺮĖ ﻣﺸﻌﺸﻊ ﺗﺎﺑﺎﱎ آرزوﺳﺖ

O Sun of Beauty! Come out for a moment from the clouds, For that beaming, resplendent countenance is my wish.

—Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī Rūmī

CONTENTS

Illustrations                                                                            ix

Acknowledgments                                                                xi

Note on Transliteration                                                     xiii

Introduction                                                                             1

1.         Discourse on Beauty                                                   11

2.         The Language of Beauty                                             27

3.         The Theology of Beauty                                               49

4.         The Anthropology and Cosmology of Beauty         75

5.         The Prophetology of Beauty                                    101

Notes                                                                                   129

Selected Bibliography                                                          153

General Index                                                                     171

Index of Qurʾānic Verses                                                   193

Index of Ḥadīths and Sayings                                          197

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

 

Figure 2.1	An ontological scheme of beauty and
	ugliness	44
Figure 3.1	A Venn diagram showing the
	interrelationship among jamāl, jalāl,
	and ḥusnā/aḥsan	72
Figure 4.1	A diagram showing human constitution
	with corresponding Qurʾānic verses	86
Figure 4.2	A chart showing the two inner eyes
	and the corresponding objects of their
	perception	97

 

 

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M

y deep gratitude goes to Professor Gerhard Böwering of Yale University for his generous support and insightful advice that sustained the doctoral research that became the basis of this book. He has been my Doktorvater in the truest sense, and I cannot thank him enough for all he has done over the years. My sincere thanks also go to Professor Denys Turner and Professor William Chittick for sharing the scholarly acumen that helped improve my work. Part of the research for this book was conducted in Tehran during my yearlong aca- demic residence at the Institute of Philosophy (Anjuman-i Ḥikmat wa Falsafa-yi Īrān) thanks to Yale’s McMillan Center International Dissertation Fellowship. I am truly thankful to all the individuals who helped make my research year in Tehran so fruitful, in particular Dr. Gholamreza Aavani, Dr. Pari Riyahi, Ms. Mahin Riyahi, Dr. Fereshteh Kazempour, Dr.               Shahram                     Pazouki,        Dr.      Saeed Anvari,             Dr.            Mehdi Mohaghegh, and Dr. Noushafarin Ansari. I am grateful to Prof. Ghasem Kakaei of Shiraz University for giving me a pre- cious opportunity to present my work in Rūzbihān’s home- town, Shiraz, and to see Mount Bamū, where Rūzbihān had spent some years. I would also like to express my thanks to Mojtaba Shahsavari for generously sharing his unpublished critical edition of Rūzbihān’s Manṭiq al-asrār. I am thankful to Dr. Leonard Lewisohn for sharing his vast knowledge of exist- ing literature both modern and premodern. I am also indebted to Matthew Melvin-Koushki for his comments on an earlier version of this book. My deep gratitude goes to Prof. Sachiko Murata for all her academic and moral support over the years.

xi

xii                                 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I remain forever grateful to my family, Seiya Murata, Junko Murata, and Rie Murata, without whose trust and support I could not have completed this work. I am also grateful to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London, in particular Prof. Paul Joyce and Dr. Carool Kersten, for their support while I completed this book. Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the late Nancy Ellegate of SUNY Press, who gave me indispensable support and advice throughout the pre-production process but left us before this book saw the light of day.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

F

or transliterating Arabic and Persian words, the International Journal of Middle East Studies system has been employed with the following exception—no distinction is made in transcribing the

identical letters appearing in Arabic and Persian texts, i.e.:

ث is transliterated as th throughout, not as s in Persian texts

ذ is transliterated as dh, not z

ض is transliterated as ḍ, not ż

و is transliterated as w, not v or u

ة is transliterated as a or at (in the iḍāfa construction), not ih

 

xiii

Introduction

A

s Rūzbihān entered the ʿAtīq mosque through the bazaar, he overheard the following conversation between a

woman and her daughter:

“My dear! I am giving you some advice. Cover your face and don’t show it to everyone from the window of beauty—lest someone should fall into temptation because of your beauty! You hear my words—won’t you take my advice?”

When Rūzbihān heard this conversation, he wanted to tell that woman: “Even if you advise her and try to prevent her from showing herself, she won’t listen to you or take your advice, because she has beauty, and she won’t be at rest with [her] beauty until it is joined by passionate love.”¹

Muhammad famously proclaimed, “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” In a world, however, where politicized, militant Islam dominates the news, it has become almost counterintui- tive to associate beauty with Islam. Some may even wonder if there is any room for it in the religion. Edward Farley, a scholar of Christian theology, argues that this is in fact a common postmodern situation:

Beauty (the aesthetic) is not among the primary values or deep symbols of postmodern societies…. Certain features of postmodern society…tend to diminish beauty both as an important value and

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as an interpretive concept. Contributing to the postmodern effacement of beauty is a hermeneutic legacy, a tradition of interpretation, governed by dichotomies between the ethical and the aesthetic, religion (faith) and the aesthetic, and religion (faith) and pleasure. Accordingly, a contemporary aesthetic (or theological aesthetic) that seeks to restore beauty as important to human experience of religious faith faces the deconstructive task of exposing and break- ing down these dichotomies. The displacement of the aesthetic by aesthetics (philosophy of the arts) in recent times has contributed to the suppression of beauty in hermeneutics, philosophy and criticism. A contemporary theological aesthetic also works in the setting of a centuries-long marginalization—in some cases suppression—of the aesthetic by Hebraic and Christian iconoclasm, asceticism and legalism.²

It is not only theologians who bemoan the banishing of beauty from modern human life. For instance, the British poet and writer Kathleen Raine expresses this sentiment by way of quoting the poignant words of the Irish poet George William Russell (d. 1935): “One of the very first symptoms of the loss of the soul is the loss of the sense of beauty.”³ A contemporary scholar of aesthetics, Elaine Scarry, published On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) as a manifesto for protecting beauty from various postmodern attacks and reviving it in contemporary discourse. A more recent attempt at “recovering beauty” can be found in Corinne Saunders et al., The Recovery of Beauty: Arts, Culture, and Medicine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).⁴

It is not the purpose of the present study to reinstate “beauty” at the forefront of Islam, as Farley tries to do for Christianity. It aims, rather, to draw people’s attention to a neglected dimen- sion of Islamic thought, a dimension that was current espe- cially among premodern Muslim intellectuals and literary figures. In their way of seeing things, beauty had a central place in the universe and human life. They saw God as beauti- ful in Himself and as creator of an inherently beautiful world, and they regarded the pursuit of beauty at all levels (e.g.,

material, ethical, spiritual, and divine) as part and parcel of the life of a good Muslim. My aim is to investigate the significance of beauty in Muslim conception of God, the world, and the human being taking as a case study the works of one promi- nent and prolific Sufi thinker, Rūzbihān Baqlī (1128–1209), who presented some of the most fully developed discussions on the idea of beauty to be found in Muslim literature.

The questions to be addressed in this study include the fol- lowing: Why did Rūzbihān talk so much about beauty? What is the significance of beauty for his understanding of God, the world, and the human being? How can God’s beauty be con- trasted with beauty in His creation—including that of humans, angels, and animals? What role does beauty have in the pro- cess of God’s creation of the world and human beings? Does beauty have any soteriological significance? What determines the degree of beauty found in a thing or perceived by an indi- vidual? Does beauty have any role in the ideal way of life? Does the pursuit of beauty have any practical implications for the daily lives of Muslims? What exactly is the connection between love and beauty? Is there any Qurʾānic foundation for Rūzbihān’s discussions of beauty (jamāl, ḥusn, iḥsān, etc.)? What key symbols and imagery does he employ in speaking about beauty? Overall, what is the place of beauty in the intel- ligible structure of Rūzbihān’s thought specifically and in the underlying worldview of traditional Muslim thinking generally?

Despite the refined nature of Rūzbihān’s theory of beauty, his view on beauty—or for that matter, his thought in general— remains largely unexplored and unknown mostly because of his famously convoluted style. Moreover, even among schol- arly publications on love and beauty in Sufism, there is nothing that focuses on the concept of beauty, as most discuss love and treat beauty in passing. This is the first book that is devoted to a systematic analysis of the concept of beauty as such in Sufism and that attempts a reconstruction of the worldview in which Rūzbihān and many other Sufis situate the idea of beauty.⁵

In order to analyze the exact role and significance of beauty in Rūzbihān’s thought, the following two steps must be taken: first to decipher his technical terminology and often cryptic and flowery language, and second to undertake a systematic

analysis of his numerous works so as to reconstruct his overall worldview, which is nowhere explicitly stated in his works nor presented in the secondary literature.

I should say at the outset that the focus of the present study is not aesthetics, a term coined by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762), who wrote a two-volume treatise in Latin called Aesthetica (1750–58)⁶ and derived the term from the Greek, aisthētika, meaning “percep- tible things.”⁷ The proper subject of aesthetics is perceptible things, such as artifacts and nature. A modern dictionary defines it as the “study of the feelings, concepts, and judg- ments arising from our appreciation of the arts or of the wider class of objects considered moving, or beautiful, or sublime.”⁸ Although aesthetics can be a theoretical investigation into the nature of beauty and the engagement with objects in the world that are pleasing to the senses, Rūzbihān’s concern (and that of most premodern Muslim intellectuals) was to understand beauty for the sake of coming to know God. Knowing the cre- ated world itself was a secondary concern, even if the nature of the world has close connections with theological principles. For Rūzbihān, inquiry into beauty is inquiry into the origin, end, and purpose of human existence. The story of beauty is the story of the unfolding of divine beauty through its two mirrors, the universe (the macrocosm) and the human being (the microcosm).

A number of scholars have noticed the significance of beauty in Rūzbihān’s writings. Nazif Hoca writes, for example, “At the center of his thought is divine self-manifestation (tajallī) and the worship of God through human beauty.”⁹ Some schol- ars have even categorized Rūzbihān’s thought as jamāl-parastī or zībāʾī-parastī (“beauty-adoration”), a term used to charac- terize a number of Sufis and philosophers,¹⁰ including Aḥmad Ghazālī (d. 1126; the younger brother of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī), ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (d. 1131; a disciple of Aḥmad Ghazālī), ʿAṭṭār (d. 1221; a Persian Sufi poet), Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī (d. 1238; a Persian poet and friend of Ibn al-ʿArabī), Rūmī (d. 1273), Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 1289; a fol- lower of Ibn al-ʿArabī), and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 1492; a Persian litterateur and major scholar in the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī).¹¹ As can be seen from the list, “beauty-adoration”

does not refer to a unified historical movement, but functions rather as an ahistorical label for characterizing various authors from different times and places who happen to share a common tendency in thinking, though many of them may well have had historical connections.

Among the authors who frequently spoke about their love for beauty, Rūzbihān is especially worthy of attention. His works contain a substantial amount of discussion of beauty of all sorts, divine, human, and cosmic. Although key passages on the subject are scattered throughout his works, they are held together by an overall worldview and common themes. His discussions of beauty are multidimensional, encompass- ing the fields of theology, cosmology, cosmogony, anthropol- ogy, psychology, and prophetology. His firm training in the religious sciences—such as the Qurʾān, Ḥadīth, Arabic gram- mar, jurisprudence, and dogmatic theology (particularly Ashʿarism)—adds depth to his discussions while allowing him to approach the notion of beauty from multiple angles.

Rūzbihān’s Life

Rūzbihān’s life has been the subject of extensive discussion by several scholars, so I will only present the essentials here. The standard story is that he was born in 1128 in the town of Pasā (also transcribed as Fasā or Basā in Arabic) in the Fārs prov- ince in southwestern Persia, near the ancient capitals of Pasargadae and Persepolis. He lived during the Seljuk period under the local Salghurid dynasty, whose capital was Shiraz, where Rūzbihān spent most of his adult life.¹² Hence, he is called “Shīrāzī,” though originally he was “Fasāʾī,” that is, from Pasā.

Rūzbihān started having visions as early as at age three, and a vision at age fifteen left him in an ecstatic state for a year and a half, leading him to join up with Sufis.¹³ Paul Ballanfat argues that Rūzbihān was twenty-three years old when he first moved to Shiraz, where he commenced his formal studies in a Sufi convent established by Sirāj al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Khalīfa b. ʿAbd al-Salām b. Aḥmad b. Sālba (d. 1165), from whom he is said to have received a khirqa, or a tattered cloak of initiation.¹⁴

Thereafter, Rūzbihān led an ascetic life at Mount Bamū in the outskirts of Shiraz, where he remained for seven years.¹⁵ Not all the details of his life are clear, but at some point he under- took travels to various regions, such as Iraq, Ḥijāz (including Mecca), Syria, and possibly Alexandria.¹⁶ When he settled again in Shiraz, he established his own convent at the age of thirty-eight, in 1165.¹⁷ After spending some time in Pasā around 1174,¹⁸ he went back to Shiraz and became established as a scholar-preacher in the grand mosque, known as Masjid-i ʿAtīq.¹⁹ He continued to instruct the public and his disciples until his passing in 1209.

Rūzbihān’s Works

Rūzbihān is known to have composed at least forty-five works in Arabic and Persian in diverse fields, such as Arabic gram- mar, Qurʾānic exegesis, Ḥadīth commentaries, jurisprudence, principles of jurisprudence, dogmatic theology (kalām), and Sufism. The last category has the greatest number of works, thirty-one, some of which are extant in print or in manuscript form, and some of which are lost.²⁰ The present study draws on works from four of these categories, though the perspective in all of these works is Sufi: Qurʾānic exegesis (ʿArāʾis al-bayān fī ḥaqāʾiq al-qurʾān), Ḥadīth commentary (al-Maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya), dogmatic theology (Masālik al-tawḥīd), and Sufism (ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, Mashrab al-arwāḥ, Ghalaṭāt al-sālikīn, Kitāb al-ighāna, Kashf al-asrār, Lawāmiʿ al-tawḥīd, Manṭiq al-asrār, Risālat al-quds, Sayr al-arwāḥ, Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt). I pay particular attention to works that have not received much scholarly attention, either because they are relatively new publications, were written in Persian rather than Arabic, or were simply too obscure to read. These include ʿArāʾis al-bayān, which had been available in an Indian lithograph edi- tion but was newly printed by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya in Beirut in 2008; al-Maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya (pub- lished in Iran in 2002); Masālik al-tawḥīd (edited by Ballanfat in 1998; unstudied except for a brief discussion by the editor), ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn (two editions by Muʿīn and Corbin and by Nūrbakhsh have been available for decades but have received

little scholarly attention in the West, perhaps because of the high-flown Persian style), and Mashrab al-arwāḥ (published in 1973 but little studied until now).²¹

Among these works, perhaps the most systematic in presen- tation is Mashrab al-arwāḥ, in which Rūzbihān explains the journey of human spirits from God to the world and back to God through a series of 1,001 stations. Systematic in a different way is his Masālik al-tawḥīd, which is his sole extant work in dogmatic theology. He presents key theological terms in a rigid structure following the standard language in kalām. This is in good contrast to the language he uses in his other works, which is rather cryptic, allusive, ambiguous, and literary. His Qurʾān commentary follows a standard structure of tafsīr works, which is to say that he cites clusters of verses and com- ments on them from the first chapter to the last, though it is a thoroughly Sufi work.

Previous Scholarship on Rūzbihān

Much of the modern scholarship on Rūzbihān in the early twentieth century reflects the secondary interest of scholars working on figures preceding Rūzbihān. The most prominent example is the work of Louis Massignon, the first Western scholar to pay attention to Rūzbihān’s writings. He tried to reconstruct the lost corpus of the famous Sufi martyr al-Ḥallāj (d. 920) by salvaging snippets of his sayings quoted by Rūzbihān.²² A few scholars then took an interest in reconstruct- ing Rūzihān’s life—Vladimir Ivanow (1928),²³ followed by Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh (1969)²⁴ and Paul Nwyia (1970).²⁵

The first scholar to focus on the content of Rūzbihān’s thought was Henry Corbin, who edited two of Rūzbihān’s Persian works, ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn (1958)²⁶ and Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt (1966).²⁷ He also devoted half of his major work, En Islam ira- nien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, vol. III, Les fidèles d’amour: Shîʿisme et soufisme (1972), to a textual analysis of three of Rūzbihān’s works, namely Kitāb al-ighāna, Kashf al-asrār, and ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn. As suggested by the title of this volume, Les fidèles d’amour, which is Corbin’s translation of ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn

(literally, “The Jasmine of Passionate Lovers”), Corbin devoted most of his study to this treatise by Rūzbihān. Forty years after the publication of his book, it remains the most in-depth analy- sis of Rūzbihān’s overall thought.

Also active around the same time as Corbin was the Turkish scholar Nazif Hoca, who edited two of Rūzbihān’s Arabic works, Kashf al-asrār (1971)²⁸ and Mashrab al-arwāḥ (1974).²⁹ In Iran, Jawād Nūrbakhsh published an improved edition of ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn based on a newly discovered manuscript.³⁰ He also published two short Persian treatises by Rūzbihān³¹ and the hagiography written by his great-grandson, Sharaf al-Dīn Rūzbihān Thānī, which had also been published by Dānishpazhūh.³²

Annemarie Schimmel was perhaps the first to draw English readers’ attention to Rūzbihān’s writings through her works on Persian poetry, even though she never wrote a separate article or book on Rūzbihān himself.³³ Her interest in Rūzbihān was carried on by her former student, Carl Ernst, who became the first major scholar to publish on Rūzbihān in English. His Rūzbihān Baqlī: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (Richmond: Curzon, 1996) is still the only monograph on him. In it, Ernst focuses on the history of the Rūzbihāniyya order from its formation to its gradual institutionalization, the history of Rūzbihān’s family, and an analysis of the “inner structure of sainthood,” in which he mainly treats Rūzbihān’s visionary experiences. Ernst’s earlier work, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), devoted a section to the ecstatic aspect of Rūzbihān’s writings. He also translated Kashf al-asrār in 1997. Firoozeh Papan-Matin recently published a critical edition of Kashf al-asrār (Leiden: Brill 2006).

The scholar who has been most prolific in writing about Rūzbihān in recent years is Paul Ballanfat, who has edited a number of Rūzbihān’s Arabic works³⁴ and translated his visionary diary, Kashf al-asrār, into French.³⁵ In his long French introduction to the Quatre traités inédits de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî, Ballanfat pays close attention to two things: the histori- cal reconstruction of Rūzbihān’s biography and an analysis of what he considers to be the key features of Rūzbihān’s thought. Ballanfat’s attempt at reconstructing Rūzbihān’s life is proba- bly the most extensive among all existing biographical work

on him. Ballanfat’s analysis of Rūzbihān’s thought seems to feature aspects that might be unexpected, such as the “prob- lem of evil” and Iblīs, which have more to do with Rūzbihān’s influential predecessor, al-Ḥallāj. Ballanfat also pays signifi- cant attention to Rūzbihān’s “equivocal” language.³⁶ One of his contentions is that love, contra Corbin, is not central to Rūzbihān’s thought, so he focuses on other sides to it that he finds more central or important.

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Discourse on Beauty

T

he concept of beauty has inspired generations of Muslim intellectuals—philosophers, Sufis, dogmatic theologians, jurists, and litterateurs—to engage in discourse from various angles, ranging from poetry to metaphysics. Some took a prac- tical interest in the subject, discussing how to create beautiful and persuasive writings (as in poetics) or whether it is permis- sible to display external beauty (as in jurisprudence); others took a more theoretical approach, analyzing the concept of beauty as such. Among all these Muslim intellectuals, two groups have made notable contributions on both the practical and the theoretical levels: Sufis and philosophers. Sufis saw God as their beautiful beloved and sought intimacy with Him by beautifying their inner qualities. Philosophers, not least because of the influence of the Theology of Aristotle, a compila- tion of paraphrases from Plotinus’s Enneads, equated beauty

with being, their fundamental subject of analysis.

Close examination of key discussions in three major schools of thought—philosophy (falsafa), Sufism (taṣawwuf, ʿirfān), and dogmatic theology (kalām)—reveals Muslim thinkers’ wide-ranging yet interconnected reflections on the notion of beauty (jamāl, ḥusn). It is these reflections that provide the intellectual milieu in which Rūzbihān’s theory of beauty may be situated. It must be noted that the lines separating these three schools of thought are not clear-cut, because many schol- ars, like al-Ghazālī, combine the various perspectives.

11

The foundation of much Muslim discourse on beauty (jamāl) is the saying of Muhammad, “Indeed, God is beautiful and He loves beauty” (Inna Allāh jamīl yuḥibb al-jamāl).¹ This ḥadīth has had practical and theoretical implications for generations of Muslims, who took it as an encouragement to pursue beauty on various levels—from personal grooming to the improve- ment of one’s moral qualities to the quest for an encounter with God. There are many other ḥadīths and Qurʾānic verses of import for the Muslim understanding of beauty, most often using the other Arabic word root denoting beauty: ḥ-s-n. These include such Qurʾānic verses as Blessed is God, the most beauti- ful (aḥsan) of creators (Q 23:14) and We have created the human being in the most beautiful stature (Q 95:4).

Among ḥadīths, one that plays an especially important role is the so-called ḥadīth of Gabriel, according to which the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in front of a number of com- panions to ask him about the religion that he was teaching them. Muhammad explained that it has three basic dimen- sions—islām (submission), īmān (faith), and iḥsān (doing what is beautiful; a fourth-form derivation from ḥasuna, i.e., to be beautiful). Doing what is beautiful means to “worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you.”¹⁴ On the basis of this statement, Muslims have understood the complementarity of the acts of submission, faith, and beautiful intention, with the last holding the key to the perfection or “beautification” of Muslim faith and worship.

If we turn to Muslim cultural production, we find poets, litterateurs, Qurʾān reciters, and calligraphers searching for the best sensory means of expressing beauty—whether liter- ary, auditory, or visual. In contrast, philosophers, dogmatic theologians, and Sufis tended to ponder the nature of beauty primarily on the intelligible level, so as to understand the prin- ciples behind beautiful phenomena in the world, while striv- ing for an experience of beauty beyond the sensible world.

In terms of the sheer diversity of the angles through which beauty was analyzed as a concept and as a sensible phenome- non, no group surpasses the philosophers (falāsifa). Their investigation ranges over fields such as rhetoric, poetics, optics, and music.² Along with the Sufis and, to a lesser degree, the dogmatic theologians, the philosophers also paid close

attention to beauty in the areas of metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, and ethics. In fact, it is these last four fields of inquiry that lie at the center of the shared discourse on beauty among Muslim intellectuals.

Recent Western scholarship has pointed out that despite the abundance of philosophical discussion of the idea and phe- nomena of beauty, aesthetics—i.e., investigation of the princi- ples of beauty and human taste on the sensible level—was never a major topic of discussion in Muslim philosophy. As Deborah Black writes,

On the whole, Islamic philosophers did not view artistic and literary creativity as ends in themselves. Rather, their interest was in explaining the relations of these activities to purely intellectual ends. In the case of poetics and rhetoric in particular, the emphasis in Islamic philosophy was pragmatic and political: poetics and rhetoric were viewed as instru- ments for communicating the demonstrated truths of philosophy to the populace, whose intellectual abilities were presumed to be limited.³

For the philosophers, the pursuit of the principles of beauty in the sensible order of things (art, literature, speech, etc.) was a means to an end—i.e., to maximize the effect of their words on the masses in their effort to convey philosophical truths to them for educational purposes. This is in contrast to the udabāʾ (“litterateurs”), whose goals did not usually go beyond the very act of producing beautiful literature that appeals to human sensibility. Aaron Hughes argues that the philosophers focused primarily on the process of intellection in the human aesthetic experience, that is, the soul’s encounter with a beautiful object:

Although Muslim and Jewish philosophers approached aesthetics from what we would today call a number of different disciplinary perspec- tives, common to all is the role and function of beauty in the noetic development of the individual. This involves…a process whereby an individual

encounters a beautiful object, resulting in a sub- sequent correspondence between the soul of the knower and the object known. This correspondence in turn allows the individual to recognize the beauty of the intelligible world.⁴

Common to the philosophers, dogmatic theologians, and Sufis is the notion that the highest degree of beauty belongs to the most perfect being, which the philosophers call the “Necessary Being” or “First Cause,” and which the dogmatic theologians and Sufis call “God.” Although the language and approach used by each group differs, the general content of their discussion can be categorized into the following main themes: ontology (i.e., beauty as perfection of being), theol- ogy (beauty as an attribute of God), cosmogony and cosmology (the role of beauty in the origination and structure of the world), ethics (how to beautify one’s soul by acquiring virtues), and psychology (the effect of beauty on the human soul).

Ontology

The most fundamental aspect of the philosophical discourse on beauty is ontology. Al-Fārābī (d. 950), for instance, argues that beauty (jamāl) is found in that which “is in its most excellent state of existence and…has attained its ultimate per- fection.”⁵ Al-Fārābī maintains that the intensity of beauty is proportionate to the degree of a thing’s ontological perfection. Hence, he concludes, “[S]ince the First is in the most excellent state of existence, its beauty surpasses the beauty of every other beautiful existent.”⁶

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna; d. 1037) writes: “There cannot exist beauty (jamāl) or splendor beyond that [being whose] quid- dity is purely intelligible, purely good, free from any deficiency, and unique in all respects. The Necessary Being has pure beauty and splendor.”⁷ Here Ibn Sīnā is speaking about the same being that al-Fārābī has referred to as “the First,” but he adds another point: since ultimate beauty can be found only in the perfect being that is purely intelligible and good, it cannot

be found in the sensible world, which is a realm of deficiency and imperfect being.

Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), who inherited elements from various intellectual schools including philosophy (while publicly pre- senting himself as a critic of philosophy), offers a similar onto- logical analysis of beauty though with a subtle difference. He argues that every single thing has a unique perfection proper to itself, and its particular beauty depends on the degree to which it has actualized the perfection that is meant for it.

Each thing’s beauty (jamāl and ḥusn) is for the per- fection that is fitting and possible for it to be present with it. When all its possible perfections are present, it will be in the utmost limit of beauty. If only some of them are present, it will have beauty in the mea- sure of what is present. Thus a beautiful horse is that which combines all that is fitting for a horse, such as appearance, shape, color, beautiful running, and ease in attack and retreat. A beautiful script is that which combines all that is fitting for a script, such as the proportion of the letters, their alignment, their being in the right sequence, and the beauty of their order.

Each thing has a perfection that is fitting for it, and its opposite may be fitting for something else. So the beauty of each thing lies in its fitting perfection. Thus the human being is not beautiful through what makes a horse beautiful, nor is a script beau- tiful through what makes a voice beautiful, nor are vessels beautiful through what makes clothing beautiful, and so on with other things.⁸

What is noteworthy here is that instead of regarding sensible things as imperfect beings in contrast to its ultimate source— God—al-Ghazālī recognizes a relative perfection of each thing, that is to say, a perfection that is specific and uniquely proper to each object. The degree of each thing’s relative perfection accounts for its beauty. By acknowledging that each thing has a relative perfection, al-Ghazālī is able to analyze the beauty of

sensible objects on their own terms without constant recourse to God as the highest principle of beauty—thus venturing into the area of aesthetics proper. Underlying all these discussions by al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and al-Ghazālī is the fundamental notion of beauty as the perfection of being.

Theology

The dogmatic theologians addressed the issue of beauty on the basis of the Qurʾān’s ascription of the most beautiful names (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā) to God (7:180; 17:110; 20:8; 59:24). Many concluded that the names should be numbered ninety-nine and extracted from the language of the Qurʾān itself. They were able to establish a more or less standard list of God’s most beautiful names, with a good deal of variation.⁹ On the basis of the lists of the divine names, they divided a major cluster into two types: the names of gentleness (luṭf) and the names of severity (qahr), corresponding to the two oppos- ing aspects of God seen in relation to His creation.¹⁰ They also called these two types the names of bounty (faḍl) and justice (ʿadl), or mercy (raḥma) and wrath (ghaḍab). For example, the name “life-giver” (muḥyī) indicates God’s gentle or merciful side, and “death-giver” (mumīt) shows His severe or wrathful side. According to this schematization of the divine names, the names of gentleness are seen to attract human beings to God and create intimacy between them, whereas the names of severity inspire fear in human beings and put them at distance from God. These two opposing categories of divine names came to be also referred to as the names of beauty (jamāl) and names of majesty (jalāl).¹¹

That God has these two dimensions—the beautiful and the

majestic, the gentle and the severe—is a widespread theme in Sufi texts, be they commentaries on the divine names, such as those of al-Qushayrī, al-Ghazālī, Samʿānī, and Ibn al-ʿArabī, or other works that deal with theological issues. The general question of the divine attributes interested philosophers as well. Their main concern was the exact ontological relation- ship between the divine attributes (ṣifāt) and the divine essence (dhāt)—in other words, whether the attributes were identical

with the essence, and if not how it would then be possible to maintain God’s oneness. For instance, in Book Eight of al-Shifā, “On Knowing the First Principle of All Existence and On Knowing His Attributes,” Ibn Sīnā has a chapter entitled, “On the relation of the intelligibles to Him; on making it clear that His positive and negative attributes do not necessitate multiplicity in His essence; that to Him belong the most tre- mendous splendor, the loftiest majesty, and infinite glory; on explaining in detail the state of intellective pleasure.”¹²

If the dogmatic theologians sought to systematize their understanding of God’s beauty by setting up schemes to cat- egorize the Qurʾānic names of God, the philosophers engaged mainly in the analysis of God’s beauty in terms of ontology, leading them to the conviction that beauty and being are iden- tical. As for the Sufis, for the most part they agreed with the views of both philosophers and theologians, but they also stressed the implications of God’s beautiful names for human life, as people should study and know the divine names with the aim of beautifying the soul by embodying God’s most beautiful qualities. They took a variety of approaches to this task, as we will see with Rūzbihān.

Cosmology

In addressing the cosmological significance of beauty, we might begin by recalling the original sense of the Greek word cosmos—“order.” It is this that constituted beauty for the ancient Greeks. The Muslim philosophers show a strong Greek influence in their analysis of beauty; especially prominent are elements of Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism, both of which had been transmitted to the Muslim world through Syriac and Arabic translations before the tenth century. A perfect example of the combination of the Pythagorean and Plotinian under- standing of beauty is found in the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (“the Brethren of Purity”), a group of anonymous tenth-century phi- losophers who composed an encyclopedic work, al-Rasāʾil (“The Epistles”), covering a vast range of philosophical topics. In their discussion of music, for example, the Ikhwān speak of the music of the spheres, which appears in accordance with

the Pythagorean principle of proportion, as well as the moral benefit of music in taming the animal soul.¹³

As for the Neoplatonic side of the discussion, the Ikhwān explain that a human aesthetic experience depends on the mutual relationship between the universal and the particular souls. Perceiving beauty in a sensible object is an occasion for the particular soul to be reminded of its higher origin, the uni- versal soul that lies in the intelligible realm, which is the realm of true beauty. Such an experience calls the soul to return to its origin by making it turn away from corporeal existence. The Ikhwān write,

When the traces of beautiful (ḥisān) sensory things take form in particular souls, these [souls] come to resemble and correspond to the universal soul, yearn for it, and wish to join with it. When they become separate from the bodily frame, they will ascend to the kingdom of heaven and join with the highest plenum.¹⁴

By “the highest plenum” (al-malaʾ al-aʿlā), the Ikhwān explain, they mean “the residents of the heavens and the celestial spheres.”¹⁵

The above passage echoes Plotinus’s discussion in the Ennead I.6.2: “the soul, since it is by nature what it is and is related to the higher kind of reality in the realm of being, when it sees something akin to it or a trace of its kindred reality, is delighted and thrilled and returns to itself and remembers itself and its own possessions.”¹⁶ For both Plotinus and the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, the true experience of beauty pertains to the intelligible world, not to the sensible. At the same time they also recognize that sensible beauty prompts the individual soul to conform or attune¹⁷ itself to its original state of beauty through the process of recollection.

The notion that the individual soul mirrors the beauty of higher order resonates with much of Sufi thinking as well. Though it is almost impossible to pinpoint where Muslim writings come under direct Greek influence outside the philo- sophical tradition, especially in the later centuries, the general Muslim  discourse  on  beauty—especially  among  the

Sufis—has certain striking similarities to the Plotinian under- standing whether there be direct or indirect influence or not.

Cosmogony

As for the function of beauty in cosmogony, beauty plays a significant role especially in the general Sufi understanding of creation (khalq). There is a crucial “creation myth” found in many Sufi texts. This is the so-called ḥadīth of the Hidden Treasure, in which God says, “I was a Hidden Treasure, and I loved to be recognized. So I created the creatures so that I may be recognized.”¹⁸ In general, Sufis interpret this saying in the following manner. The clause “I was a Hidden Treasure” cor- responds to the state of God in His solitude without the pres- ence of anything else. While God knew and loved Himself in His solitude, He wanted something else to appreciate and come to know His Treasure. Hence, God created the world so that His Hidden Treasure would no longer be hidden. Thus, God’s love for Himself and His desire to be known are the driving force for the creation of the world.

In conjunction with another key ḥadīth, “God is beautiful and He loves beauty,” the ḥadīth of the Hidden Treasure has contributed to the idea that creation was driven by God’s desire to manifest His beauty so that it might be witnessed and known by others. Creation is then the self-disclosure (tajallī) of God’s beauty as a result of His overflowing love for His own beauty. This process also brings about the duality of subject and object, knower and known, lover and beloved. Without creation, God’s beauty could not have been known or loved by anything else.

Ethics and Chivalry

Ethics (ʿilm al-akhlāq) and etiquette (ādāb) are subjects dis- cussed by practically all groups of Muslim intellectuals, though it was the philosophers who established ethics as a dis- cipline. They often regarded it as “medicine for the soul,” just as there is medicine for the body. The philosopher-physician

Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Rhazes), for example, wrote an ethical treatise entitled Spiritual Medicine (al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī), full of advice on how to control one’s lower self or soul (nafs) and to treat its various illnesses, such as envy, anger, and lust, all of which are generally considered ugly qualities of the human soul. The goal of philosophical ethics can be taken as the beau- tification of the soul, which involves the removal of the vices of the lower soul that hinder the higher functions of the ratio- nal soul.

The emphasis on disciplining and beautifying the soul is even more evident in Sufism, where the soul is described as being in need of ascending a stairway back to God in the foot- steps of the Prophet in his miʿrāj. Each step in the path is understood as an increase in proximity to the divine beauty, and the steps are typically understood as refinements and beautifications of the soul. Rūzbihān’s Mashrab al-arwāḥ is an example of the genre.

Sufi literature addresses ethics in a variety of ways. One of the most distinctive instances is a current of thought and prac- tice known as futuwwa, or “chivalry,” which is characterized by the training of the soul in ethics, that is, the beautiful traits of the soul, such as generosity, self-sacrifice, humbleness, camaraderie, and mutual respect. Futuwwa literally means “young- manliness,” representing the “young man” ( fatā) ideal charac- terized by the above-listed virtues. Sufis often discuss Abraham and Joseph as representatives of the young man ideal as the Qurʾān calls each a fatā, along with the Companions of the Cave, who in Maybudī’s view encapsulate the young man ideal.¹⁹

Among prominent Sufi authors who wrote on futuwwa were al-Sulamī (d. 1021), Shihāb al-Din ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 1234), and Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240). Though essentially a practical discipline, underlying the ideals of futuwwa is a radi- cal commitment to tawḥīd, or the assertion of God’s oneness, in everyday human conduct by giving no significance to any- thing other than God, above all one’s own ego. By sacrificing self-concern in interhuman transactions, Sufi “chevaliers” strive to live up to the beautiful young man ideal modeled on Abraham, who was ready to sacrifice his own beloved son for the sake of God.

On a more general level, Sufi ethics also revolves around the idea of “becoming characterized by the character traits of God” (takhalluq bi-akhlāq Allāh)—which comes from a state- ment ascribed to Muhammad and which Sufis took to mean the cultivation or internalization of the most beautiful names of God. In support of this ideal, al-Ghazālī quotes another ḥadīth connected with God’s most beautiful names: “God has ninety-nine character traits: whosoever becomes characterized by one of them will surely enter the Garden.”²⁰

Psychology of Beauty and Love

Psychology, or the study of the soul (ʿilm al-nafs) is a well- established subfield of philosophy, so it is no surprise to find philosophers analyzing beauty in psychological terms. Ibn Sīnā explores the psychology of beauty in a treatise called Risāla fī al-ʿishq (“Treatise on Love”), which contains a detailed analysis of various kinds of love. In keeping with the Aristotelian psychology adopted by most Muslim thinkers, Ibn Sīnā divides the “soul” into several kinds, each of which embraces the qualities of the lower kind—the vegetative, animal, human, and angelic—and argues that each kind pos- sesses a kind of “love” according to its own nature.²¹

When Ibn Sīnā analyzes the animal and rational souls, he points out that sensible beauty causes love in the animal soul, while intelligible beauty causes love in the rational soul. He explains that loving sensible beauty brings human beings down to the level of beasts, and loving intelligible beauty raises the soul to its most noble level. Such a view comes from his basic understanding that intelligible beauty serves as a ladder for the human being to come closer to the Absolute Good (which he calls elsewhere the Necessary Being or God). This Good is the rational soul’s ultimate object of contemplation. It is the cause and origin of all sensible and intelligible beauty, the possessor of the highest beauty, and the ultimate object of love.²² Ibn Sīnā thus discovers a necessary connection between beauty and love on all levels of existence and considers the Absolute Good as the most proper object of love for the

rational soul. In explaining such hierarchical scheme of love and beauty, Ibn Sīnā places a definite emphasis on the signifi- cance of intelligibility even in the human experience of love.

Love also plays an extremely important role in Sufi psychol- ogy. Generations of Sufis have written works explaining the distinctions to be drawn among the soul (nafs), the spirit (rūḥ), the heart (qalb), and the secret core (sirr). They investigated various states (aḥwāl) of the human soul, such as hope, fear, joy, sorrow, bewilderment, and love. They also wrote many works revolving around the theme of love and beauty. The Persian poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273) is one of the most famous Sufis who spoke about the necessity of love in human life and the path to God. Other Sufis known for their talk of love and beauty include Aḥmad Ghazālī (d. ca. 1126), Aḥmad Samʿānī (d. 1140), ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī (d. 1131), Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī al-Maqtūl (d. 1191), Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 1209), and Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240).

Most Sufis were aware that love and beauty are inseparable,

for the source of all love in the universe is the fact that God loves beauty. As a result, human love necessarily takes beauty as its object. Aḥmad Ghazālī points out that beauty always needs a lover: “The eye of beauty is shut to its own beauty, for it cannot perceive the perfection of its own beauty except in the mirror of the lover’s love. Hence, in this respect, beauty must have a lover so that the beloved may feed on its own beauty in the mirror of the lover’s love and seeking.”²³ Here emerges a basic Sufi picture of beauty as the perennial beloved (maḥbūb, maʿshūq). Just as the philosophers regard the First Cause or the Necessary Being as the ultimate object of contem- plation and love for the rational soul, the Sufis also see God as their eternal beloved, with whom they strive forever, in this world and the next, to achieve union.

Psychology of Beauty and Pleasure

In psychological analyses of beauty, philosophers often asso- ciate beauty with the pleasure (ladhdha) that accompanies the perception of beauty. They point out that the more beautiful a thing is, the greater the pleasure is in perceiving it. Hence,

given that the First is the most perfect and the most beautiful being, the pleasure It causes is also the greatest—to the point that it is beyond human comprehension. Al-Fārābī writes, “Pleasure and delight and enjoyment result and increase only when the most accurate apprehension concerns itself with the most beautiful…objects.”²⁴ Moreover, “since the First is absolutely the most beautiful…the pleasure which the First enjoys is a pleasure whose character we do not understand and whose intensity we fail to apprehend, except by analogy.”²⁵

In contrast to al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā focuses on the intense plea-

sure that people experience in the cognition of intelligible beauty. He argues that since intelligible beauty is superior to sensible beauty and causes more intense pleasure, human beings must separate themselves from their bodily dimension in order to experience it. He writes, “If we become isolated from our body by examining our essence—when it has become an intellective world corresponding to the true existents, the true beauties, and the true pleasures and become conjoined with them as the intelligible is conjoined with the intelligible— then we will find infinite pleasure and splendor.”²⁶ Ibn Sīnā’s emphasis on the necessity of separating the intellect from the body to experience the true pleasure of perceiving beauty may echo the Plotinian disdain for the body and the search for beauty in the intelligible realm, but the emphasis on the intel- ligible over the sensible is common across all currents of philo- sophical (and Sufi) thinking in Islam.

Psychology of Beauty and Sorrow

If the perception of beauty causes love and pleasure, the fail- ure to perceive beauty, that is, the object of one’s love, will result in sorrow (ḥuzn), as some Muslim thinkers point out. The connection between beauty and sorrow is a theme that appears in the Qurʾān itself and is a well-developed literary theme in post-Qurʾānic literature. The Qurʾān’s twelfth chap- ter consists mainly of a narrative on the life of Joseph, and the Qurʾān calls it the most beautiful of tales (Q 12:3). Joseph’s beauty was the reason that Jacob had a particular attachment to him

among all his sons, and due to the loss of Joseph Jacob fell into despair and sorrow.

This Qurʾānic narrative inspired the Illuminationist (ishrāqī) philosopher Suhrawardī to compose the allegorical tale, “On the Reality of Love” (Risāla fī ḥaqīqat al-ʿishq), to depict the interrelationship among beauty, love, and sorrow, by present- ing them as three brothers with distinct personalities.²⁷ In this allegory, Beauty is the eldest brother to whom the second brother Love clings, but when Love is separated from Beauty, Sorrow becomes Love’s constant companion. Sorrow also befriends both Jacob upon the loss of his son and Zulaykhā, the unnamed wife of the vizier of Egypt (biblical Potiphar) in the Qurʾān, who suffers unfulfilled love for Joseph.

If we combine our earlier discussion of the divine names with the present analysis of human psychology, the following picture emerges: when human beings encounter God’s mercy, gentleness, and beauty (jamāl), their natural reaction to it will be attraction and love. When faced with God’s wrath, severity, and majesty (jalāl), they will likely experience alienation and sorrow. This theological fact is reflected in the art of Qurʾānic recitation, according to Michael Sells: in the recitation of verses that highlight human beings’ encounter with God’s majesty or their alienation from Him, the dominating tone is that of sorrow.²⁸

Summary

The general picture that emerges from this analysis of the Muslim discourse on beauty is as follows. It begins with the understanding that the first principle, the perfect being, is beautiful. God is the possessor of the most beautiful names, but in relation to the world, He can be beautiful or majestic, merciful or wrathful. He knew His own beauty for eternity, and He created the world because of His desire to make His beauty known in the temporal realm.

God’s beauty is reflected in the cosmic order. Higher levels of beauty correspond with higher levels of intelligibility, and lower levels appear in the sensible realm. The harmony pro- duced by this cosmic order reminds the human soul, which is

engrossed in corporeality, of its higher origin and invites it to turn away from the sensible world toward the intelligible world. The human aesthetic experience—that is, finding beauty through the senses—has the proper function of direct- ing attention to that which is beyond the sensible world. Beauty is a powerful force that attracts human beings and redirects them toward the intelligible realm because all beauty derives from the ultimate principle of beauty, perfection, and intelligibility.

Human beings are naturally drawn to beauty and find it lovable by nature. In their search for beauty, they may find pleasure in attaining the object of their love, but they will experience sorrow if they lose access to their beloved—be it divine, human, animal, vegetative, or even mineral—because it is the very nature of human beings to love beauty. Sorrow is then the longing for a lost or unattainable beauty, and pleasure and joy result from attaining beauty.

When human beings realize that the ultimate source of all beauty is God, they become lovers of God and strive to see more of His beauty. They realize that this requires the refine- ment of their inner qualities, for the beautiful God cannot be seen by someone whose heart is rusty and full of ugly charac- ter traits. In this process, they try to turn away from the lower animal soul and its egoistic desires so as to seek ultimate beauty alone. As a result of perseverance in this quest, they become purified of the lower realm. It is in such state of purity that the heart can reflect a beautiful image of the divine in itself, and they themselves become beautiful.

For many of the thinkers examined above, to search for beauty was to seek God. For both the philosophers and Sufis, an aesthetic experience is a reminder or sign of God, because they know that every beautiful object derives from its beauti- ful Creator. Perhaps the role of the dogmatic theologians in shaping this view was less discernible than the philosophers and Sufis, but they still had the important function of provid- ing a terminological framework for speaking about God as “beautiful,” for example, in their discussion of the divine names. However, the dogmatic theologians’ strictly rationalist interpretation of Qurʾānic language and their rejection of the cognitive value of images and symbols seem to have restricted

their discussion on the nature of beauty to a limited and rigid framework.

In contrast, philosophers did not limit themselves to language drawn from the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth. They felt free to use terminology based on Arabic translations of Greek sources or the Persian intellectual tradition. They approached beauty in terms of things’ intelligibility, for they saw the sen- sible world per se as a realm of imperfection, deficiency, and ugliness, unless one saw through its phenomena to their intel- ligible sources, that is, the realities of things in the divine. Ultimate beauty per se is to be found only in the intelligible world, in the most perfect being, which transcends human cognitive capacity. By exercising the intellect fully, they strove to come ever closer to a pure cognition of the most perfect being as far as humanly possible. In contrast to the dogmatic theologians’ focus on the abstractions of reason, the philoso- phers also turned their attention to the sensible world to illustrate how the principles of beauty left their traces in the sensible order of things, and this attention to the world resulted in the development of aesthetic theories in optics, rhetoric, and poetics.

For their part Sufis sought to attain the highest beauty by a

process of inner transformation—i.e., purification and beautification—driven by their love for God. Given that it is God’s love and beauty that brought the world into existence, it is that same love and beauty that bring human beings back to the divine presence. While this is a picture that emerges from those of the Muslim thinkers who have specifically written about beauty, we can say that most Muslim thinkers have traditionally understood that the search for beauty in various areas of human life is part of their religious path—the path to human perfection—for all beauty is a pointer to its origin, God.

2

The Language of Beauty

O

ver the centuries, various intellectuals—from medieval Sufis to modern Western scholars—have remarked that Rūzbihān’s language is dense and recondite, particularly dif- ficult to understand, let alone translate. A well-known scholar of Sufism and Persian literature, the late Annemarie Schimmel

noted,

What so profoundly impresses the reader in Rūzbihān’s writing, both in his commentary on the Shaṭḥiyāt and his ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn…is his style, which is at times as hard to translate as that of Aḥmad Ghazzālī and possesses a stronger and deeper instrumentation. It is no longer the scholas- tic language of the early exponents of Sufism, who tried to classify stages and stations, though Baqlī surely knew these theories and the technical terms. It is the language refined by the poets of Iran during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, filled with roses and nightingales, pliable and colorful.¹

Carl Ernst—a scholar on Rūzbihān and former student of Schimmel—calls his style “at times…admittedly convoluted and obscure” and even lists the names of highly educated pre- modern Muslims—including Jāmī (d. 1492), a prolific writer in later theoretical Sufism and Persian literature, and Dārā

27

Shukūh (d. 1659), a Mughal scholarly prince—who regarded Rūzbihān as a difficult writer to understand centuries ago.² Ernst quotes Jāmī as saying, “He has sayings that have poured forth from him in the state of overpowering ecstasy that not everyone can understand.”³

Though these statements point to the difficulty of Rūzbihān’s language, the reason suggested for it in each case is different— from his flowery style in Persian (Schimmel) to the ecstatic nature of his utterances (Jāmī). In fact there are numerous pos- sible reasons for the difficulty of his language, including his multidimensional learning, the shifting target audiences, his sensitive theologico-political concerns, the varying tones of his voice from the personal to expository, ecstatic to reserved— all the while being as poetic as the context permits—and last but not least, his highly developed technical terminology.

It is the purpose of the present chapter to decipher this last aspect—Rūzbihān’s technical terminology—with a focus on several terms that are essential to his discussions of beauty— namely, ḥusn, jamāl, mustaḥsan, mustaqbaḥ, and qubḥ. While these are all Arabic terms—as most of his technical terms are (even in his Persian works)—Persian equivalents will be intro- duced whenever applicable. The first section introduces the two most important terms—ḥusn and jamāl—and traces their usage in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, the two key sources for Rūzbihān’s technical terminology. The second and main sec- tion of this chapter investigates his usage of these terms in his works, while examining how the specific senses in which he employs these terms relate to precedents in the Qurʾān, Ḥadīth, and other Muslim literature that was available to him. As ḥusn and jamāl are two concepts central to Rūzbihān’s discussion of beauty, which is the topic of this book, I will limit the treatment of these terms in this chapter to the basic termi- nological distinction between them, while also paying atten- tion to two other terms that are characteristic of his discussions of beauty: mustaḥsan and mustaqbaḥ. In addition to exposing the basic linguistic framework of Rūzbihān’s discourse on beauty, the present chapter aims at bringing out a provisional picture of his ontology of beauty. In the subsequent chapters, we shall see how the bare skeleton of his ontological scheme (as shown in a chart at the end of this chapter) grows into a

complex theology of beauty (chapter 3), a cosmology and anthropology of beauty (chapter 4), and a prophetology of beauty (chapter 5).

“Beauty” in the Language of the Qurʾān and H. adīth

Two key Arabic terms are normally translated as “beauty” in English: ḥusn and jamāl. Any Muslim discourse touching upon the subject of beauty utilizes either or both of these terms. The present section examines their contextual basis in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth in order to prepare the ground for Rūzbihān’s usage.

H. usn

We will begin with ḥusn and its derivatives, as they have a more prominent role to play in the Qurʾān than jamāl. Medieval lexicographers—such as Ibn Fāris (d. 1004), al-Jawharī (d. ca. 1006), and Ibn Manẓūr (d. 1311), who lived relatively close to Rūzbihān’s time—present ḥusn first of all as an ant- onym of qubḥ (“ugliness”), implying the meaning of “beauty” for ḥusn.⁴ The sense of beauty inherent in the Arabic root ḥ-s-n is further confirmed by the fact that al-Jawharī compares tazyīn (“to ornament/decorate”) to taḥsīn (a transitive verbal noun from the same root ḥ-s-n), which he apparently understands in the sense of “to make something beautiful.”⁵ However, “ugliness” (qubḥ) is not the only antonym that Arabic lexicog- raphers list for ḥusn. Another antonym that they commonly mention is sūʾ,⁶ which is usually translated as “evil” or “badness.”⁷ This second antonym suggests ḥusn’s additional connotation of “goodness.” Hence, ḥusn denotes both beauty and goodness at the same time.

As ḥusn encompasses both goodness and beauty without an internal distinction, the term may remind some readers of the Greek kallos, which also signifies goodness and beauty with- out an internal distinction. This word is present as a prefix in English, for example, calligraphy, meaning “beautiful writing.” Due to the double sense of ḥusn, scholars have often wavered between translating it as “goodness” or “beauty.” For instance,

the lexicographer Edward William Lane lists the following words as possible English equivalents of ḥusn: “goodness, or goodliness, [generally the latter,] beauty, comeliness, or pleas- ingness”; “symmetry; or just proportion of the several parts of the person, one to another”; “anything, moving the mind, that is desired, or wished for.”⁸

To complicate the matter further, when scholars wanted to translate ḥusn in the sense of “beauty” in a text where the term jamāl also appears, they often resorted to translating jamāl as “beauty” while choosing one of its synonyms in English to translate ḥusn, such as “loveliness,” “prettiness,” and “comeli- ness.” Thereby they attempted to maintain a distinction between the two terms in the English translation, even though the original author is likely to have employed them in the same meaning, using both together for emphasis or harmony of language, a literary technique especially common in Persian writings.

It must be noted, however, that the challenge of translating ḥusn into English has more to do with the linguistic frame- work of the English language than anything else. This is also clear from the fact that Persian speakers, when they want to translate ḥusn, have an apt Persian equivalent: nīkūʾī, which denotes both goodness and beauty.⁹ For instance, both Aḥmad Ghazālī and the Illuminationist thinker Yaḥyā Suhrawardī (d. 1191) use nīkūʾī as a Persian equivalent of ḥusn.¹⁰ Moreover, Aḥmad’s elder and famous brother, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) employs nīkūʾī in his discussion of beauty in Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (“The Alchemy of Happiness”).¹¹ In the present book, both jamāl and ḥusn will be translated as “beauty” rather than using the cumbersome double translation of “goodness- and-beauty” for ḥusn. However, the Arabic will be noted in parentheses in many cases where the distinction between the two terms is important.

In the Qurʾān, words derived from the root ḥ-s-n appear 193 times in various forms, including (but not limited to): verbs (ḥasuna, aḥsana); nouns (ḥusn, ḥasana); an adjective (ḥasan); an active participle (muḥsin); and a verbal noun (iḥsān). Seventy-seven of these are related to the forth-form verb, aḥsana (“to do what is good and beautiful”), occupying a prominent place in the Qurʾān. Toshihiko Izutsu explains,

“The verb aḥsana (inf. iḥsān) is one of the key ethical terms in the Qurʾan. Most generally it means ‘to do good,’ but in the actual Qurʾanic usage this word is applied mainly to two par- ticular classes of ‘goodness’: profound piety towards God and all human deeds that originate in it, and acts motivated by the spirit of ḥilm [‘forbearance’].”¹² In fact, it was the moral over- tone of being “good” inherent in the root ḥ-s-n that prompted the late Izutsu, an eminent scholar of Islamic thought, to undertake a detailed analysis of this word root in his Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān,¹³ though it must be noted that his analysis of ḥusn is limited by the very nature of his book: “ethico-religious.” What falls outside the scope of his book is an ontological analysis of ḥusn, which is essential for a full grasp of the term.

Key Qurʾānic verses that contain ḥ-s-n derivatives include: Blessed is God, the most beautiful (aḥsan) of creators (Q 23:14), To God belong the most beautiful (ḥusnā) names (Q 7:180), To Him belong the most beautiful (ḥusnā) names (Q 17:110, 20:8, 59:24), Surely you have a beautiful (ḥasana) example in God’s messenger— for those who hope for God and the Last Day, and who remember God much (Q 33:21), Indeed We created the human being in the most beautiful (aḥsan) stature (Q 95:4), He formed you then made your forms beautiful (aḥsana) (Q 40:64, 64:3), Verily God loves those who do what is beautiful (muḥsinīn) (Q 2:195), and who made beautiful (aḥsana) everything He has created (Q 32:7). Though the above is only a small sample of the verses containing ḥ-s-n derivatives, it is already clear that in the Qurʾān ḥ-s-n is used to designate beauty in a whole range of beings—from God Himself (Q 23:14, 37:125, 7:180, 17:110, 20:8, 59:24) to the prophet Muhammad

(Q 33:21), human beings (Q 40:64, 64:3, 95:4, 2:195), and all of

God’s creation (Q 32:7).

As for the Ḥadīth literature, whose corpus is much vaster than the Qurʾān, there are countless instances where ḥ-s-n derivatives appear. One of the most famous ḥadīths that fea- ture these is known as the aforementioned ḥadīth of Gabriel, in which the archangel Gabriel appears to Muhammad in front of a few of his companions to ask him the meaning of islām (“submission”), īmān (“faith”), and iḥsān (“doing what is beau- tiful”). With regard to the third, the Prophet replies, “Iḥsān is that you worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not

see Him, He sees you.” While this is one of the most famous ḥadīths among Sunnis, it does not have a key role in Rūzbihān’s discussion of ḥusn (though he does refer to it in his writings).

Much more prominent in Rūzbihān’s discussion of beauty is the ḥadīth, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form” (Raʾaytu rabbī fī aḥsan ṣūra).¹⁵ Here, the word aḥsan—the super- lative of ḥasan, “beautiful”—describes the “form” in which God appeared to the Prophet. This ḥadīth plays an important role in Rūzbihān’s discussion of the vision (ruʾya) of God, which took place for him often in indescribably beautiful forms. In fact the vision of the beautiful God is a major theme in Rūzbihān’s writings, particularly in his diary of visions, Kashf al-asrār (“The Unveiling of Secrets”),¹⁶ which will be examined in subsequent chapters.

In short, ḥ-s-n derivatives abound in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, which gives them an official status as scriptural terms to describe the beauty of both God and creatures. The above and other passages in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth containing ḥ-s-n derivatives form the fundamental textual basis for later Muslim discourse—including Rūzbihān’s own—on the beauty (ḥusn) of God and His creation.

Jamāl

The other key term that denotes “beauty,” jamāl, is a noun derived from the root j-m-l, which has the basic root meanings of “to be beautiful,” “to gather,” and “that which pertains to the camel” (jamal).¹⁷ Even though it is not impossible to see relationships among these three senses, they appear quite dis- tinct from one another, and here we are concerned only with the first. Jamāl is almost without exception translated into English as “beauty.” In modern Arabic, it is the standard word for beauty, much more commonly used than ḥusn,¹⁸ whereas in the Qurʾān, it has only a marginal presence.

In fact, the word jamāl appears in the Qurʾān only once: And the cattle—He created them for you; in them is warmth, and uses various, and of them you eat. There is beauty in them for you when you bring them home to rest and when you drive them forth abroad to pasture (Q 16:5–6). In this single Qurʾānic usage, jamāl is a quality of beauty ascribed to an animal—in this case, the cattle.

The adjectival form, jamīl (“beautiful”), appears in the Qurʾān seven times. In three of these it is used in conjunction with the word patience as in “Beautiful patience!” (ṣabr^un jamīl^un). This phrase appears twice as the words of Jacob in his despair over the loss of his beloved son, Joseph (Q 12:18, 12:83), and it is understood more generally to encourage patience in times of affliction. The third instance is found as part of God’s admonishment: So be thou patient with a beautiful patience (Q 70:5).

In the Qurʾān, jamīl occurs twice as a description of the manner in which women should be set free if divorce is agreed upon: Set them free in a beautiful manner (sarāḥ^an jamīl^an) (Q 33:49); I will set you free in a beautiful manner (Q 33:28). It also appears once to describe the act of “pardoning” (ṣafḥ): So pardon thou, with a beautiful pardoning (Q 15:85). It also appears once to des- ignate the proper manner of “leaving” or “abandoning” some people: And bear thou patiently what they say and leave them beau- tifully (hajr^an jamīl^an) (Q 73:10). Thus, in only eight verses does the Qurʾān talk about beauty using the Arabic root j-m-l, in contrast to ḥ-s-n, which it mentions nearly two hundred times. In these eight verses the term jamāl/jamīl is always applied to creatures—first to animals and then to the ideal manner of human conduct—from how to set women free to manners of pardoning or abandoning people. What this implies is that the Qurʾān itself does not ascribe the quality of jamāl to God. One of the visible consequences of this fact is the absence of al-jamīl (the Beautiful) in many early lists of the ninety-nine

names of God.

Daniel Gimaret in Les noms divins en Islam points out that while jamīl does not appear as a divine name in the Qurʾān, it has come to be considered as such by some Muslims on the basis of the aforementioned ḥadīth, “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” He further explains that the notion of divine beauty became a popular subject among certain groups of Muslims, such as naive anthropomorphists and Sufis, but cautiously treated by most dogmatic theologians, including both Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites. Among the Muslim thinkers who have compiled lists of divine names and included al-jamīl (“the Beautiful”) as a divine name, Gimaret mentions al-Qushayrī (d. ca. 1072) and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111).¹⁹

The origin of attributing jamāl to God is without doubt the well-known saying of Muhammad, “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty” (Inna Allāh jamīl yuḥibb al-jamāl). It is found in both the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim and the Musnad of Ibn Ḥanbal. In both cases, it is situated in a dialogue between Muhammad and a certain man. Muhammad first says, “No one who has a dust mote’s weight of arrogance in his heart will enter paradise.” In Ibn Ḥanbal’s versions, the man notes that he loves to adorn himself with beautiful (ḥasan) outer garments and asks the Prophet directly: “Is that arrogance?” The Prophet replies by saying in one version “No, that is not arrogance,” and in another, “No, that is beauty (jamāl).” Then he proceeds to remark, “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty.”²⁰ In Muslim’s version, after the same initial statement by the Prophet it reads: “Then a man said, ‘A man likes his garment and sandals to be beautiful (ḥasan).’ He replied, ‘Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty. Arrogance is to be insolent toward God and to despise people.’”²¹

The most apparent meaning of this ḥadīth is that adorning oneself properly is not an act of arrogance, but rather one done out of love for beauty. Hence, it means that there is no blame in loving beauty and adorning oneself with it, because this is to follow the divine custom of loving beauty. Another point to be noticed here is that the Prophet takes jamāl to be a synonym of ḥusn, which is clear from the fact that he responds to the man who likes his clothes to be ḥasan by confirming that it is fine because God loves jamāl, using the other Arabic word for beauty.

A more striking point made in this ḥadīth is this: not only does God love beauty but He Himself is jamīl. Hence, the first half of this ḥadīth—“God is beautiful”—introduces a signifi- cant leap from the seemingly mundane discussion of the qual- ity of one’s clothing to that of the beauty of God. This establishes a prophetic precedence for ascribing jamāl to God, not just to creatures, as was done in the Qurʾān. Being a sound ḥadīth, it has hence given jamāl/jamīl an official status as an appropriate term to describe God, sowing the seed for the flowering of the medieval theological, philosophical, and mystical discourse on jamāl as an attribute of God.

Another noteworthy point about this ḥadīth is that the seeming “leap” from the mundane beauty of an outer garment to the divine beauty is not presented as a leap in the statement, but rather as the result of an evident interconnection between the beauty of God and that of creatures. In other words, in keeping with much of Muslim discourse, God and His cre- ation are not cut off from each other as if they constitute the two separate domains of the sacred and the profane. Rather, the world always reflects God’s characteristics or attributes— including beauty—as if it is God’s mirror. This is a standard interpretation of the word āya, “sign,” frequently used in the Qurʾān to designate natural phenomena, prophetic miracles, and the Qurʾān’s own verses.

Thus, we can see that even if the Qurʾān never ascribed jamāl to God, the word gains a wide significance in Muslim theological discourse because of its prophetic endorsement. It is no overstatement to say that this ḥadīth, “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty,” is the foundation of all Muslim discourse on God as jamīl.

Rūzbihān’s Definitions

Among Rūzbihān’s works, the Arabic treatise, Mashrab al-arwāḥ (“The Drinking Place of Spirits”)²²—also called by the Persian title Hazār wa yak maqām (“One Thousand and One Stations”)—is arguably the best source for studying his termi- nology. As the Persian title indicates, this work consists of an exposition of 1,001 stations (maqāmāt, sing. maqām) through which human spirits travel—from their creation by God and their pre-earthly life in the presence of God to their embodied existence on earth and their eventual return to God. In each section of this book, Rūzbihān provides an exposition of a single station. Each of these designates a state of human beings as they progress on the Sufi path—e.g., repentance, hope, fear, joy, love, bewilderment, certitude, and annihilation. Such a structure allows the work to be used almost as an annotated lexicon of Rūzbihān’s terminology. What interests us here is the fact that both ḥusn and jamāl appear among the “1,001” stations.

It must be noted that while there is a general sense of a hier- archical order in the progression of the twenty chapters in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, the ordering of individual stations inside a chapter does not always appear strictly hierarchical. In other words, just because the station of ḥusn appears before that of jamāl, it does not necessarily mean that ḥusn is a lower station than that of jamāl. Another point to be made about the Mashrab is that while 1,001 is the “official” total number of the stations that it presents, in reality there are 1,004 stations presented in the work, as there are three chapters that contain one extra station each (i.e., chapters 1, 5, and 8). However, since in each of these chapters, the additional station holds a special, high place in relation to all the previous stations, perhaps they are not meant to be counted like the rest.

H. usn and Jamāl

In the section on the station of ḥusn, Rūzbihān writes: “Understand that ḥusn is one of the attributes of God and is eternal because His essence is eternal.…God’s ḥusn is one of His most specific descriptions. God said, Blessed is God, the most beautiful (aḥsan) of creators [Q 23:14].”²³ Rūzbihān cites this Qurʾānic usage of the word aḥsan—“the most beautiful”—to corroborate his view that ḥusn is an attribute of God. The idea that God possesses ḥusn is confirmed among others by Muhammad’s saying, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form,” which Rūzbihān takes to be a testimony to the Prophet’s “vision of God the Exalted in the clothing of ḥusn.”²⁴ Thus, the Prophet saw the most beautiful creator in “the most beautiful form.”

We saw that the Prophet had used ḥusn and jamāl as syn- onyms in the conversation leading to his famous saying, “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” In al-Maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya (“The Hidden in the Realities of the Prophetic Speech”), also known as Arāʾis al-ḥadīth (“The Brides of Ḥadīth”), Rūzbihān explains the ḥadīth in this manner: “He loves inner beauty (jamāl al-bāṭin), such as love, recognition, and certitude, and external beauty, such as humil- ity and submissiveness.”²⁵ He thus explains that the jamāl that God loves consists of certain states invisible to outside

observers (i.e., “inner beauty”) and attitudes that are perceiv- able through one’s conduct (i.e., “outer beauty”) befitting the God-human relationship.

It is worth asking if Rūzbihān discerns any difference between ḥusn and jamāl. In one place he rejects any differentia- tion between the two concepts: “The difference between ḥusn and jamāl is [only] in words, and there is no difference in the realities of the meanings of the[se] attributes.”²⁶ However, after saying this he admits two distinct perspectives in com- paring the two: one that treats them as synonyms and the other that distinguishes them as having slightly different con- notations. From the first perspective, both ḥusn and jamāl would generically indicate “beauty.” Rūzbihān does not pro- vide any further explanation of this view, treating it as self-explanatory. From the second perspective, however, he points out a subtle difference: ḥusn is a more gentle and invit- ing kind of beauty than jamāl. Ḥusn inspires hope and joy in its perceiver, while jamāl is more intimidating due to its associa- tion with “fear and recognizing majesty.”²⁷ Furthermore, he argues that because of the awe-inspiring connotations of jamāl, it can only cause maḥabba, a love less intense than ʿishq (“passionate love”), which is caused by ḥusn.²⁸

This subtle distinction between ḥusn and jamāl made by Rūzbihān, as we shall see, lies at the heart of his highly sophis- ticated theory of beauty. For the purposes of the present chap- ter, let us simply note that in this little passage on the contrast between jamāl and ḥusn, we can already glimpse how Rūzbihān gives ḥusn a higher status than jamāl in his grand metaphysical scheme, which is perfectly in keeping with the Qurʾānic pri- macy of the term ḥusn over jamāl.

Mustah. san: “What Is Deemed Beautiful”

Mustaḥsan is a term that has a notable presence in Rūzbihān’s writings on beauty, playing an important role in his discussion of the relationship between divine beauty and beautiful things in the world. The word is a passive participle from the verb istaḥsana, a tenth-form derivative of ḥ-s-n. As a tenth-form verb it has the sense of “to consider” or “to deem” something to be something. In modern Arabic usage, istaḥsana is commonly

taken to mean “to deem something right or good” or “to approve.”²⁹ The verbal noun istiḥsān has a specific usage in the technical terminology of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), often translated as juristic “preference.”³⁰ In Rūzbihān’s usage of the word istiḥsān, he preserves its root meaning and Qurʾānic con- nection to ḥusn. In other words, he takes it to mean “to deem something ḥasan,” that is, (good and) beautiful. Hence, he uses the verb’s passive participle, mustaḥsan, “what is deemed beautiful,” applying it to objects that people perceive as beautiful.

Rūzbihān’s use of mustaḥsan/istiḥsān finds little parallel in other Muslim texts. The term does not appear in the Qurʾān nor does it seem to originate in the Ḥadīth. The most probable source for Rūzbihān’s usage of the term is a work by Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Daylamī (fl. ca. 950), Kitāb ʿaṭf al-alif al-maʾlūf ʿalā al-lām al-maʿṭūf (“The Book of the Inclination of the Familiar Alif toward the Inclined Lām”), one of the earli- est Arabic compendia on passionate love or “eros” (ʿishq), a book with which Rūzbihān was thoroughly familiar.³¹

There is no doubt that al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf al-alif has strong presence in Rūzbihān’s discussions of love and beauty, most notably in his celebrated Persian treatise, ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn (“The Jasmine of Passionate Lovers”). Al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf revolves around the question of the permissibility of ascribing passionate love to the God-human relationship—a question also posed by a female interlocutor at the beginning of Rūzbihān’s ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn. The latter book contains a chap- ter entitled “On the excellence of ḥusn, ḥasan, and mustaḥsan,”³² and this finds a clear parallel in chapter 3 of al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf, which is called “Mention of some of the features belonging to love and passionate love.” It has four subsections: (1) On the excellence of beauty (ḥusn); (2) On the excellence of the beauti- ful (ḥasan); (3) On the excellence of what is deemed beautiful (mustaḥsan); and (4) On the excellence of love and passionate love. In the third subsection al-Daylamī writes,

Know that things deemed beautiful derive [their] beauty (ḥusn)³³ from the universal beauty that is in the proximity of the Real. Then the strength of beauty partly remains upon them in proportion to

their proximity to the universal [beauty] after being issued forth, while it becomes weak and dimin- ished in proportion to their distance from it, even to the extent that almost no beauty may be noticed in them due to its hiddenness in them. And no one will become aware of it except the folk of recognition.³⁴

Though “the folk of recognition” (ahl al-maʿrifa) is most likely a reference to the Sufis, the explanation of beauty (ḥusn) that al-Daylamī provides here is strikingly Neoplatonic—from the idea of being “issued forth” (inṣidār), which is evocative of “emanation” (ṣudūr or fayḍ) to the idea of the universal beauty (al-ḥusn al-kullī). These terms are part of the language that was imported from the Greek philosophical tradition and natural- ized in the Arabic language through the writings of philoso- phers such as al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, and Ibn Sīnā,³⁵ though this is not to say that the content of such Muslim philosophical dis- cussions is also foreign.

One passage in Rūzbihān’s work is reminiscent of the above quotation from al-Daylamī: “Every one and every thing is given a ray of that light [of God]. In this world, passionate lovers have sweet basil from the garden of the beauty (jamāl) and majesty (jalāl) of the One. In proximity to that light, the shade of beauty (ḥusn) increases. In distance from the quarry, beauty (ḥusn) decreases.”³⁶ Here Rūzbihān presents God, the One, as the source of beauty. The closer one comes to the source, the more beauty one is able to perceive; the farther one is from God, the less beauty one is able to perceive.

In a similar way, Rūzbihān says, “That which is deemed beautiful is deemed beautiful because of the manifestation of God’s beauty (ḥusn) within it.”³⁷ Thus, things deemed beauti- ful derive their beauty from God’s ḥusn. God as the Beautiful is the source of all beauty found in the world, or more specifi- cally, in things deemed beautiful. Rūzbihān’s language is not as noticeably philosophical as that of al-Daylamī, but his understanding of the relationship between mustaḥsan and ḥusn fits squarely in al-Daylamī’s metaphysics. For both scholars, mustaḥsan represents individual or partial beauty, that is, each object in the world having a share of that universal beauty by way of what may be called the process of derivation,

participation, emanation, or creation (depending on one’s perspective).

Concerning the Qurʾānic verse, Blessed is God, the most beau- tiful of creators (Q 23:14), Rūzbihān says, “He described Himself as bringing into being what is deemed beautiful in His king- dom [i.e., this world] by manifesting His beauty (ḥusn) within it.”³⁸ Hence, the most beautiful creator is He who creates things deemed beautiful to manifest His own beauty. Rūzbihān then gives as an example of divine manifestation through some- thing deemed beautiful Moses’s encounter with God through the intermediary of the mountain (Q 7:143). In this verse, Moses says to God, “My Lord, show me so that I may look upon Thee.” The verse goes on: He said, “Thou shalt not see Me but look at the mountain. If it stays firmly in its place, then thou shalt see Me.” When his Lord disclosed Himself (tajallā) to the mountain, He made it crumble to dust, and Moses fell down in a swoon. Rūzbihān writes, “That which is deemed beautiful is deemed beautiful because of the manifestation of God’s beauty within it, and this is the beauty (ḥusn) of His self-disclosure (tajallīhi) within it, just as He disclosed Himself in the mountain to Moses.”³⁹ Hence, the idea of God as the most beautiful creator has two significations: not only is God beautiful in Himself, but also what He creates is beautiful and should be deemed beautiful by humans.

Mustaqbah. : “What Is Deemed Ugly”

If everything God creates is beautiful in reality and we should deem it beautiful, why do we still perceive some things to be ugly? Mustaqbaḥ, the antonym of mustaḥsan, is Rūzbihān’s answer to this question. The word is a tenth-form passive par- ticiple from qubḥ (“ugliness”) denoting “what is deemed ugly.” It is important to remember the strong connotation of “deem- ing” or “regarding” inherent in tenth-form words, for there is a difference between things in themselves and human percep- tion of them, a point Rūzbihān explains in the context of things’ beauty.

We have seen that according to Rūzbihān God possesses beauty and is the source of all beauty found in the world. Where then does ugliness (qubḥ) stand in his ontological

scheme? Does it exist to begin with, and is that why we per- ceive it in the world? On this question, Rūzbihān explicitly states that “God is the creator of things deemed beautiful and things deemed ugly.”⁴⁰ This is to say that while God is beauti- ful Himself, His creation is either deemed beautiful or deemed ugly by humans. It is also important to note that “what is deemed beautiful” and “what is deemed ugly” refer to the realm of creation only, not to the Creator, who is beautiful by definition, not merely deemed beautiful, and never ugly nor deemed ugly because ugliness implies imperfection, while God is perfect being.

Rūzbihān argues that it is a grave mistake to identify things that are deemed either beautiful or ugly with God Himself. This would constitute unbelief (kufr), because it blurs the fun- damental distinction between the Creator and the created.⁴¹ However beautiful a thing in the world may be, it cannot be God because its beauty derives from God. It is ontologically dependent on Him and its beauty is inferior to His in every respect. The same principle applies to identifying an ugly thing with God. It also constitutes unbelief because it involves mixing up the created and the Creator. Moreover, it would entail the additional theological error of equating a deficient/ ugly being with God, who is a perfect/beautiful being. Even though Rūzbihān does not provide such a full explanation, such an understanding seems to underlie his argument that neither things deemed beautiful nor things deemed ugly can be identified with God without the charge of unbelief.

To come back to the initial question, why do some created things appear beautiful and some ugly? Put differently, where is the line that divides things that appear beautiful from those that appear ugly? On this matter Rūzbihān writes,

If God disclosed Himself through a thing to a thing, that thing would be beautiful (ḥasuna) through His self-disclosure in the eyes of all the recognizers and the witnessers. If He curtained Himself from a thing, that thing would be ugly in the eyes of the view- ers, and that would be in the station of intimacy. Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ said concerning the meaning of recognition: “Things deemed ugly are ugly through

being curtained, while things deemed beauti- ful are beautiful through His self-disclosure.” The recognizer said—may God be pleased with him— “Deeming things beautiful does not occur to any- one except the one who sees the Existence-giver of things in things.”⁴²

In short, Rūzbihān argues that a thing appears ugly when it hides God and beautiful when it reveals God. At the end of the passage, he encapsulates this station in the voice of his alter ego, “the recognizer”: perception of beauty in things depends on one’s ability to see God in things. Thus, he introduces an element of individual human perception into his discussion of beauty.

Rūzbihān calls this ability to find God’s ḥusn in created objects “the eye of contentment” (ʿayn al-riḍā), which is a well-established Sufi technical term that he uses in the new context of beauty. The basic sense of riḍā as most Sufis under- stand it is contentment, satisfaction, or approval in the face of both ease and adversity, or divine mercy and wrath.⁴³ While contentment appears as one of the 1,001 stations in the Mashrab, Rūzbihān does not provide a concentrated discussion of the eye of contentment as such in this work. However, we find a useful discussion in ʿArāʾis al-bayān, in which he writes, “The eye of contentment sees the ugly as beautiful (ḥasan) among all, just as it was said: The eye of contentment is dim toward every shortcoming / but the eye of evil makes appear evil traits. It was said: The eye of enmity is responsible for evil traits / while the eye of contentment is dim toward shortcom- ings.”⁴⁴ This is Rūzbihān’s basic explanation of the term.

However, when he employs the term in his discussion of beauty, a new horizon opens: “When the eye of contentment is opened…one will see the quiddity of being and the beauty (ḥusn) of God’s artisanry (iṣṭināʿ) that becomes manifest from [that quiddity] in every atom.”⁴⁵ Then one will “deem all things decreed by the Unseen as beautiful.”⁴⁶ “Then,” he says,

the vision of beauty (ḥusn) and ugliness will become equal, because in the vision of [divine] tremendous- ness, no trace of temporally originated things⁴⁷

remains and the acts of [divine] severity and gen- tleness will be equal. All things will come out from the source of all with a single description. That is why God praised Himself for giving existence to the realm of being and what is within it and explained that nothing emerges from Him except the perfec- tion of beauty with His words, Who made beautiful everything He has created. (Q 32:7)⁴⁸

Thus, Rūzbihān argues that in reality everything in the world is beautiful (ḥasan) because it is God’s handiwork, endowed with a perfection of beauty. It is important to note that here only ḥasan would be appropriate in this discussion, not jamīl; put another way, it would be right to say that everything is ḥasan but wrong to say everything is jamīl—for reasons that will become clear in the next chapter. With the eye of content- ment a person will be able to see everything in creation as mustaḥsan rather than mustaqbaḥ, because however far removed a thing is from God, or however defective a thing may be, insofar as it exists, it is God’s creation and therefore beautiful and to be appreciated.

The question of mustaqbaḥ versus mustaḥsan thus turns out to be an issue of human perception in accordance with one’s level of knowledge. Rūzbihān’s choice of the tenth-form words aptly captures the human judgmental factor of “deem- ing” in this process of perceiving beauty and ugliness in cre- ated things. To put it in a philosophical language, in the realm of creation there are only things deemed beautiful or deemed ugly, not beauty or ugliness itself. Depending on people’s per- spectives, the same things may appear beautiful or ugly. What then is beautiful or ugly in itself, not relative to human per- ception? One may say that “beauty” (ḥusn) itself belongs to God alone (as a divine attribute), whereas “ugliness” (qubḥ) itself is nonexistence, that is, sheer deficiency (of beauty), which by definition does not exist, therefore, is a mere theo- retical construct. Rūzbihān does not speak in this exact manner, but such a philosophical explanation does not contra- dict with his understanding of beauty either. However, he maintains that with the eye of contentment it is possible to see everything as beautiful (ḥasan).

If we construct a scheme representing the interrelationship among ḥusn, mustaḥsan, mustaqbaḥ, and qubḥ, we may get the following picture:

Figure 2.1 An ontological scheme of beauty and ugliness

God stands alone as the sole possessor of ḥusn as such, while His creation, or the world, is the domain in which ḥusn is either manifest or veiled—depending on individual human perception. Hence, creation is the domain of mustaḥsan and mustaqbaḥ rather than of ḥusn or qubḥ itself.

Alternatively, to use a philosophical language once again, at the top of this ontological hierarchy lies universal or absolute (kullī or muṭlaq) beauty, which is the realm of the necessary being (wājib al-wujūd). Here no ugliness can be found, for ugli- ness is by definition a lack of beauty or being. At the bottom of this ontological hierarchy is the conceptual opposite of abso- lute beauty, that is, absolute ugliness, which equals absolute nonexistence or impossible being (mumtaniʿ al-wujūd). In between absolute beauty and absolute ugliness lies partial or relative (juzʾī or nisbī) beauty, which is the realm of possible being (mumkin al-wujūd) or the domain of creation (or “genera- tion and corruption”), consisting of things that come to be and cease to be. While both beauty and ugliness may be perceived

in this middle domain, they are relative, not absolute, which is to say that things in this domain can only be mustaḥsan or mustaqbaḥ, that is, deemed beautiful or ugly, but never beauty or ugliness itself. Since Rūzbihān mostly avoids philosophical language and prefers a more literary style, he does not draw such direct parallels between his own language and the more commonly used language of Muslim intellectuals. However, once one gets past the linguistic barrier of his peculiar phrase- ology and terminology, it is possible to discern such a structured ontology of beauty in his writings.

Summary

Upon analysis, Rūzbihān’s essential terms of beauty reveal a worldview that revolves around the notion of beauty, which can be understood ontologically as the fullness or perfection of being. God is called jamīl (“beautiful”) and is the possessor of ḥusn (“beauty”). He is “the most beautiful (aḥsan) creator” of a world through which He manifests His own beauty (both jamāl and ḥusn). In Rūzbihān’s ontology, there is nothing that truly exists but God’s ḥusn; everything else (i.e., creation) is a reflection or shadow of His ḥusn. If human beings focus on the manner in which something reveals God’s beauty, it will appear beautiful (mustaḥsan) to them. If they fix their eyes on the manner in which it veils God’s beauty, it will appear ugly (mustaqbaḥ) to them.

Put another way, perception of beauty and ugliness is per- ception of God’s presence and absence, respectively. God’s presence in the world is mind-independent reality; God exists whether or not human beings sense His presence. The same goes for beauty. Those who sense God’s presence more strongly than His absence will find the object of their perception beauti- ful; those who sense God’s absence more than His presence will find it ugly. That is the reason why the same objects can appear beautiful to some people and ugly to others. In Rūzbihān’s view, it is up to individual human beings to attain the right perception of reality, which is possible by cultivating “the eye of contentment.”

In this light, one may say that according to Rūzbihān it is ugliness that lies in the eye of the beholder. This is to say, beauty is reality and all there is to be perceived; its reality neither depends on nor is relative to individual human perception. Perception of ugliness in the world simply indicates defective individual perception or ignorance on the part of its perceiver, for what exists is ḥusn and what we call ugliness is nonexistence.

By extension, one can draw an analogy between the above view and a contemporary discussion in psychology: Rūzbihān’s contrast between mustaḥsan and mustaqbaḥ is like the difference between perceiving a glass of water to be “half full” and regarding it as “half empty,” respectively. In the first perspective—that is, deeming something beautiful or the glass to be half full—one’s attention is fixed on the presence of some- thing. In contrast, the second perspective—finding something ugly or the glass to be half empty—highlights what is absent, indicating the perceiver’s incapacity to recognize what is pres- ent. In an everyday situation, people who always see things from the second perspective are likely to be constant com- plainers, who fail to be grateful for what they have. This cer- tainly would be considered a vice in Islam, constituting kufr, for the term means not only “unbelief” but also “ingratitude,” being the antonym of both “faith” (īmān) and “gratitude” (shukr).⁴⁹

Moreover, the first perspective in the above instance goes well with the notion of “contentment” (as in “the eye of con- tentment”), because whoever takes this perspective appreci- ates and is content with what is present, as this person’s attention is not drawn to any lack. This is a mode of perceiving each thing in the world as equal in beauty to everything else insofar as it exists. For example, one would perceive a tree in full bloom as beautiful as when it is withered, for both are God’s creation and how He intends them to be. A person with the eye of contentment is able to see God and His beauty in the tree in both situations.

Implicit in Rūzbihān’s presentation of the eye of content- ment is his understanding of creation. The eye of contentment emphasizes the sameness of things because of the presence of

being in each and every one of them—as he had said, “When the eye of contentment is opened…one will see the quiddity of being and the beauty (ḥusn) of God’s artisanry that becomes manifest from [that quiddity] in every atom.”⁵⁰ In other words, beauty (ḥusn) lies in being; ugliness lies in nonbeing (ʿadam).

Thus, Rūzbihān’s analysis of beauty (ḥusn) in contrast to ugliness (qubḥ) is quite ontological in nature. Having under- stood his basic terminology and ontology of beauty, we are now ready to explore his understanding of beauty in God, the world, and the human being, which are the subjects of the sub- sequent chapters. The next chapter will examine God’s beauty, more specifically the notion of God as jamīl as well as the pos- sessor of ḥusn and of the most beautiful names (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā) with a view to uncovering the difference between ḥusn and jamāl in Rūzbihān’s theology.

3

The Theology of Beauty

There is nothing like Him.

—Qurʾān 42:11

To God belong the most beautiful names.

—Qurʾān 7:180

Were there no unveiling of His beauty

how could there be love in people’s spirits? He made Himself recognized in the signs

Then He gave out the descriptions of the attributes.

—Rūzbihān Baqlī

T

he story of beauty¹ for Rūzbihān—and for that matter, all Muslims who talk of it—begins with God Himself, God in His aloneness. In mythic language, the story goes like this: Once upon a time—or, “before” there was time or any tempo- ral existence—God was, and nothing was with Him. To this state alludes a famous monologue attributed to God and fre- quently mentioned in Sufi literature: “I was a Hidden Treasure, so I loved to be recognized. So I created the creatures so that I may be recognized.”² Like many others, Rūzbihān under- stands the unfolding of the Hidden Treasure as the process of God’s self-disclosure, first within Himself, then in creation. In the  course  of  this  process  the  divine  beauty  becomes

manifest.

49

In order to understand the place of beauty in Rūzbihān’s theology, several key questions need to be addressed at the outset. First, what is the difference between God’s jamāl and ḥusn? Where are the two situated in Rūzbihān’s theological framework? And, what exactly is his theological framework? One of the biggest challenges in answering these questions is Rūzbihān’s abstruse language. Rūzbihān, like Sufis in gen- eral, likes to use figurative and imagistic language often drawn from the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth, the same sort of lan- guage that is preferred by Persian poets in particular. He likes to employ concrete imagery where dogmatic theolo- gians and philosophers would use abstract, technical lan- guage. Upon close intertextual analysis of his works, it becomes clear that many of his figurative expressions form part of his systematic terminology, some of which consis- tently correspond to well-known technical terms in dogmatic theology. Hence, one of the objectives here is to decode and recast Rūzbihān’s allusive language into the clearer, more common vocabulary of general Muslim theological dis- course. A key text in this endeavor is Rūzbihān’s sole extant work in dogmatic theology, Masālik al-tawḥīd (“The Paths to Asserting Oneness”), a little-studied work whose content will be examined in conjunction with related discussions in his other works.

The Technical Languages of Dogmatic Theology, Philosophy, and Sufism

To begin discussing the question, “What is God’s beauty?” we must first address a more fundamental question, “How can we speak about God?” “Speaking about God”—which is the most basic sense of the word theology—was never a simple matter for Muslims. Throughout Muslim intellectual history, the dogmatic theologians (mutakallimūn) have tried to co-opt for themselves the function of setting the basic linguistic- conceptual framework for appropriate manners of speaking about God. Although Rūzbihān is primarily known as a Sufi, he was also well versed in the discipline of dogmatic theology

(kalām) as well as other Muslim religious sciences, like any well-trained scholar.

In order to understand the precise nature of Rūzbihān’s lan- guage, it might be useful to begin with a brief characterization of “Sufi,” “theological,” and “philosophical” writings. There are at least two fundamental differences between these three categories of writings: the first is lexical, that is, they utilize dif- ferent sets of technical terms; the second is epistemological, that is, their immediate sources of knowledge are different.

First of all, Muslim philosophers (falāsifa) redefined stan- dard Arabic words (including those used in the Qurʾān) in the light of concepts drawn from Greek philosophy. Moreover, many of them preferred using a language that is devoid of Qurʾānic expressions. Thus, instead of “God” (Allāh), they liked to use terms like “the necessary being” (wājib al-wujūd), “the first cause” (al-ʿilla al-ūlā), “the sheer good” (al-khayr al-maḥḍ), and so on. With the use of an unambiguous, strictly definition-bound language, Muslim philosophers aimed at gaining indubitable knowledge of the principles behind all things through demonstration (burhān), which avoids contradiction.

Dogmatic theologians are similar to the philosophers in their rational argumentative method and their use of a strictly definition-bound language. Thus, each term ideally has a fixed meaning in all contexts, thereby avoiding ambiguity and con- tradiction in arguments—in contrast to Sufi literature, where intentional ambiguity and contradiction are common features. Dogmatic theologians differ from the philosophers in their preferred technical terms, and they make a point of anchoring their terminology in Qurʾānic expressions. Thus, the Qurʾān not only provides linguistic tools for them to speak about God but also serves as the fundamental source of their knowledge about God. For dogmatic theologians, the truth of the Qurʾān is a given; their task is to interpret its verses with the assis- tance of rational speculation (naẓar) so as to construct a non- contradictory, systematic understanding of God and His creation. For this reason, some translate mutakallimūn as “spec- ulative theologians,” and kalām as “speculative theology.” Other common translations are “dogmatic,” “dialectic,” and

“rational” theologians/theology. However, in contrast to the philosophers, who consider observing the world and using the intellect sufficient for obtaining all knowledge, dogmatic theologians take the words of the Qurʾān as the very basis and starting point for all their inquiry. Thus, while both dogmatic theologians and philosophers engage in rational speculation, the former’s reliance on the power of the intellect is much more limited than the latter’s.

While competing schools of dogmatic theology existed for many centuries, by the time of Rūzbihān in the twelfth cen- tury, the dominant school was that of the Ashʿarites, whom he apparently follows and defends in the Masālik—often against the claims of the Muʿtazilites. One key difference between these two schools of dogmatic theology lies in their degrees of rationalism: while the Muʿtazilites were outright rationalist theologians, the Ashʿarites—who appeared out of the Muʿtazilite circle to establish the middle ground between rationalist theology and literalist Ḥadīth scholarship—took a more nuanced approach to interpreting the Qurʾān. The gen- eral Ashʿarite stance on speaking about God was to employ the words of the Qurʾān as far as possible, as they believed that each Qurʾānic word corresponds to a reality either in a way that humans can understand or beyond human compre- hension. Where their rational interpretation of the Qurʾān failed, the Ashʿarites embraced Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s herme- neutic principle of accepting the apparent meaning of verses “without [asking] how” (bi-lā kayfa).

All this suggests that the Ashʿarites were acutely aware of the limits of human rational speculation for understanding God as well as of the inadequacy of human language in describing God as He really is. In other words, they knew that there is a limit to positive (cataphatic) manners of speaking about God. Hence, Ashʿarites also made use of negative (apophatic) descriptions of God.

However, it was the Sufis who took apophatic theological discourse to another level. This is largely because of the very nature of their immediate source of knowledge, namely direct encounters with God, expressed in various ways—vision (ruʾya), witnessing (mushāhada), audition (samāʿ), and so on. Through such direct encounters with God, Sufis attain maʿrifa,

that is, “recognition” or “experiential knowledge” of God, which is contrasted with ʿilm, a bookish type of knowledge that results from memorization of the views of others and rational speculation rather than direct experience. For this reason, Sufis often associate maʿrifa with what they call “tasting” (dhawq), indicating its personal, direct, and experien- tial nature. It must be noted, however, that the superiority of maʿrifa over ʿilm in Sufi understanding holds true only on the human level, for the distinction between these two types of knowledge does not apply to God’s knowledge, which is always expressed as ʿilm on the basis of the Qurʾānic terminol- ogy. The process of attaining maʿrifa—which includes Sufis’ visionary or auditory encounters with God—is ineffable by nature, as it does not take place on the ordinary plane of con- sciousness, which is dependent on the five external senses.

Knowing full well that finite human language cannot prop- erly capture such encounters with the infinite God, Sufis tried to cope with—or even play with—the inadequacy of human language in their effort to describe what they “saw” (or “heard,” which might be easier to express in words). In their effort to describe the infinite with finite human language, Sufis devised at least three linguistic strategies: the use of (1) poetry, which involves metaphors, symbols, and images to point out how something is like something else by analogy; (2) para- doxes and contradictions, in which Sufis simultaneously affirm and deny a quality to God (coincidentia oppositorum); and (3) negation (apophasis), that is, to describe God by point- ing out what He is not, highlighting God’s transcendence or incomparability (tanzīh). These three methods go beyond the limits of human language by intentionally exposing its col- lapse, be it through ultimately inadequate metaphors, contra- dictions, or negations. This is what Michael Sells calls “the language of unsaying.”³ The Sufi “play” with language—by laying open its vulnerability cum richness through contradic- tions, negations, and ambiguity—is exactly what distinguishes their language from those of the philosophers and theologians, who try to avoid precisely this: ambiguity and contradiction in their use of language. At the same time, this is precisely what makes Sufi language particularly difficult to understand for those used to philosophical and theological languages.

As for the lexical characteristics of general Sufi language, it can contain any mixture of terms from the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, poetic expressions, and technical terminology of kalām and fal- safa. The Sufis pay special attention to Qurʾānic language, in many cases transforming the words into technical terms of their discipline, for example, “divine self-disclosure” (tajallī), “annihilation” (fanāʾ), “witnessing” (mushāhada), and “unveil- ing” (kashf, mukāshafa). While these terms often characterize Sufi writings, it is important to note that there is no single “Sufi language.” Some Sufis are poetic in their expressions, avoiding theological and philosophical terms; others incorpo- rate philosophical and/or theological terms to the exclusion of poetic language. What is actually found in the texts depends on the learning and preference of each Sufi writer. Hence, “Sufi language” is the most multifarious and complicated among the three groups.⁴

Rūzbihān’s Language

Rūzbihān’s language is no exception. He makes heavy use of metaphors, paradoxes, and negations, and he also utilizes the languages of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, Sufism, and dogmatic theology. He shows less interest in adopting the technical terms of philosophy. This is especially evident in the manner in which he makes use of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Daylamī’s compen- dium on the topic of passionate love (ʿishq), ʿAṭf al-alif al-maʾlūf ʿalā al-lām al-maʿṭūf, which includes many philosophical dis- cussions. As Takeshita has shown in his comparison of al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf and Rūzbihān’s ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, there is no doubt that Rūzbihān had a thorough familiarity with al-Daylamī’s work.⁵ Indeed, paraphrases of the ʿAṭf can be found in Rūzbihān’s various works, not limited to the ʿAbhar; however, he rarely mentions any of the philosophical discus- sions that are plentiful in the ʿAṭf.

In contrast to his reticence on philosophy, he does not hide the theological side of his learning, more specifically, his sub- scription to Ashʿarism. In fact, he even seems to show off his allegiance to Ashʿarism by attacking Muʿtazilism in Masālik al-tawḥīd. This is noteworthy given the critical tone of voice in

this work, a tone rarely encountered in his other writings, where his Ashʿarite inclination is detectable but rarely empha- sized. On reading the Masālik, Toby Mayer notes, “The great visionary and mystical exegete, Rūzbehān Baqlī (d. 1209), was strongly Ashʿarite in his theology….In other texts, it is fasci- nating to see Ashʿarite terms and ideas transposed by Baqlī into a purely mystical context. For instance, the difficult kalām issue of the visio beata is explored anew, no longer as an epi- sode of the eschaton, or of the Prophet’s ascension, but insofar as Baqlī himself claims to have encountered God ‘in the most beautiful of forms’ in the privacy of his own home.”⁶ Also, Rūzbihān occasionally uses the Ashʿarite expression “without (asking) how” (bi-lā kayfa) in describing his visions of God in his diary of daily visions, Kashf al-asrār (“The Unveiling of Secrets”). On this Ernst comments, “Rūzbihān occasionally resorts to conventional theological language, particular [sic] the formula ‘without (asking) how’ (bi-lā kayf); pietist groups such as the Ḥanbalīs and Ashʿarīs used this phrase to insist on the literal truth of seemingly anthropomorphic scriptural pas- sages without engaging in intellectual speculation about their modality.”⁷

In short, Rūzbihān’s language is a mix of (1) terms from the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, (2) technical terms of Sufism, (3) technical terms of dogmatic theology, (4) a limited number of technical terms from other disciplines such as philosophy, and (5) terms of his own invention, which will be discussed shortly.

Rūzbihān on Ashʿarite Theology:

Kitāb masālik al-tawh. īd

Among the forty-five works attributed to Rūzbihān, at least three are known to have been written in the field of dog- matic theology: al-Intiqād fī al-iʿtiqād (“The Critique in Belief”), al-Ḥaqāʾiq fī al-ʿaqāʾid (“The Realities in the Dogmas”), and Masālik al-tawḥīd. However, the last one is the sole surviving work in full; the first is lost and the second is preserved only as excerpts.⁸ Since Paul Ballanfat published the text of Masālik al-tawḥīd in 1998,⁹ the work has not attracted much scholarly attention, most likely due to its

unoriginal theological content as a précis of the basic Ashʿarite creed. However, for the purpose of the present study, a close textual analysis of the Masālik yields a unique benefit: being virtually the only place where Rūzbihān pres- ents the theological system in which his mind operates and defines key terms in dogmatic theology as he understands them, it helps us decipher his Sufi works by revealing the underlying terminological and conceptual framework of his thought that turns out to be deeply rooted in Ashʿarism. Moreover, a comparison of his use of terms in the Masālik and in his Sufi works reveals that some of his seemingly poetic expressions found in the latter are in fact his own translations of otherwise well-known technical terms in dogmatic theology.

In Masālik al-tawḥīd, which is an Arabic treatise of twenty-two pages in a modern edition, Rūzbihān deals with several well-known points of contention between Ashʿarites and Muʿtazilites, such as the questions of the existence of divine attributes and the possibility of the vision of God. His reasons for choosing to discuss these particular issues in the Masālik are not self-evident in the work. The editor of the text, Paul Ballanfat, thinks that the virulent opposition that Rūzbihān expresses toward Muʿtazilism in this treatise indicates the extent to which it still held sway in Fārs, and particularly in Shiraz during his time.¹⁰

Masālik al-tawḥīd consists of four short chapters, respectively entitled: “The First Pole: On the Recognition of the Essence of God”; “The Second Pole: On the Recognition of the Attributes of God”; “The Third Pole: On the Recognition of the Acts of God”; and “The Fourth Pole: On the Recognition of What Is Heard (samʿiyyāt).” Thus, in the first three chapters, he engages in the standard theological discussion of examining the notion of God in terms of essence, attributes, and acts. The final chap- ter presents various sayings from the Ḥadīth literature, that is, the reports that have been transmitted and heard concerning God. Among the main points Rūzbihān makes in the Masālik are: (1) the unknowability of God’s essence; (2) affirmation of the seven eternal attributes of God (i.e., knowledge, power, hearing, seeing, speech, desire, and life); and (3) affirmation of everything in this world as divine acts.¹¹ “Human acts” are in

fact divine acts that are, as the Ashʿarites say, “acquired” (muk- tasaba) by human beings.¹²

The three basic theological terms—essence, attribute, and act—are important linguistic tools that Rūzbihān uses to ana- lyze the notion of God’s beauty. Dogmatic theologians’ tripar- tite analysis of God implies that when people say “God” (Allāh), they could be implicitly referring to God on any of these three distinct levels: (1) His essence (which is unknow- able); (2) His attributes (which are knowable); or (3) His acts (which are knowable). Thus, there may be ambiguity inherent in any Muslim discussion of “God” that does not make use of these three technical terms.

Essence (dhāt): the Unknowable and Hidden God

One of the first points that Rūzbihān makes in Masālik al-tawḥīd is the utter transcendence and inconceivability of God in Himself, that is, the divine essence. He writes,

The first pole, on the recognition of God’s essence: He is an eternal existent without beginning or end, one who is truly existent, not like the existence of things that abide through other things; rather, He is an exis- tence that abides through itself. He is not a body, nor a substance, nor an accident, for substance is the locus of accidents, and nothing is a substance without being spatially located. Rather, He is incomparable with being interrelated with temporally originated things.¹³

Presented above is a standard discussion of God as an exis- tence (wujūd) whose eternity is contrasted with “temporal origination” (ḥudūth), which applies only to created things. Rūzbihān thus points out that the first thing that can be said about God in His essence is that He exists and is entirely incomparable to creation.

The unknowability of God’s essence is a widely accepted dictum in Muslim theological discourse, in association with which Muslims often quote the following ḥadīth (which exists in slightly different versions): “Reflect upon everything, but

do not reflect upon God’s essence.”¹⁴ Rūzbihān’s commentary on a version of this ḥadīth is as follows:

“Reflect upon God’s creation, but do not reflect upon God.”…When the Prophet saw the recognizer covet- ing the recognition of the depth of the essence, he commanded him to abandon reflecting upon [God’s] essence, for he knew that the temporally originated does not perceive the eternal as it is in reality. Rather, by way of reflecting upon creation he reaches the station of the incapacity to recognize because of his being annihilated in God’s unicity. His “incapacity to perceive is itself perception,” as Abū Bakr said.¹⁵

In short, God’s essence is the utterly transcendent aspect of God to which no creature has access. It is often said to be the referent of the verse, There is nothing like Him (Q 42:11), which Rūzbihān interprets to mean, “Whatever you agree upon from the throne to the earth, I am incomparable with that.’”¹⁶ The phrase, “from the throne to the earth” is a common expression for the whole created realm.

Rūzbihān warns that if someone persists in thinking about God’s essence, he would become utterly “bewildered at the first radiance of the majesty of the unicity. His understanding would be annihilated short of perceiving the assaults of tre- mendousness. So he will return from there to creation bewil- dered, annihilated, and incapable of perceiving the reality of the divinity.”¹⁷ The word reality (ḥaqīqa) designates the thing as it is in itself, so “the reality of the divinity” is the divine essence, God as He is in Himself and for Himself. It is so utterly beyond human comprehension that it is not only bewildering but also annihilating for the thinker. Annihilation (fanāʾ) is an impor- tant technical term in Sufism, indicating the obliteration of separative existence in the face of God’s sheer oneness.

In Mashrab al-arwāḥ too, Rūzbihān discusses the manner in which God’s essence annihilates those who seek Him. He explains that the reason why God’s essence is unknowable to human beings is that anyone who has even a glimpse of it would simply be annihilated, for God’s sheer oneness does not allow the duality of the knower and the known to remain.

In sum, there can be no true knower of God’s essence except God Himself. Rūzbihān writes, “The Real discloses some of the lights of His essence unmixed to the secret core (sirr), so his secret core is drowned in the ocean of His essence. His locus there is the locus of annihilation….The recognizer says: The vision of the self-disclosure of the essence annihilates the sight of those who look.”¹⁸

The idea that God alone knows His essence appears promi- nently in Rūzbihān’s interpretation of certain Qurʾānic verses, such as With Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them but He (Q 6:59). In his interpretation, the word unseen (al-ghayb) refers to God’s essence, because its nature is unseen, that is, hidden and unknowable. His commentary reads: “None knows His attributes and essence in truth except He in Himself.”¹⁹

In his Sufi works, Rūzbihān employs a number of alterna- tive expressions to refer to “the divine essence,” such as “unseenness” (ghayba), “treasure house” (khizāna), and “trea- sure” (kanz), among others.²⁰ Moreover, in a passage quoted earlier, he used the terms “depth” (kunh), “unicity” (waḥdāniyya), and possibly also “tremendousness” (ʿaẓama) in oblique reference to God’s essence. Thus, what he calls God’s “essence” in Masālik al-tawḥīd appears as “depth,” “unseen- ness,” and so on in his Sufi compositions.

There are still other Qurʾānic verses that Rūzbihān consid-

ers as indicating the unknowability of God’s essence. A verse of particular importance in Rūzbihān’s discussion of this idea is Thou shalt not see Me (Q 7:143),²¹ God’s famous reply to Moses’s request on the mountain, “Show me so that I may look upon Thee” (Q 7:143), which was briefly discussed in the previ- ous chapter. Below is another instance of Rūzbihān’s interpre- tation of the verse: “[Moses] asked from [God] for one of His eyes (ʿayn) with which to see Him, that is, to see the source of the source (ʿayn al-ʿayn), the depth of the depth, the eternity of the eternity, the secret of the essence, the reality of the reality.”²²

All these phrases—“the source of the source,” “the depth of the depth,” “the eternity of the eternity,” and “the reality of the reality” are used in apposition to “the secret of the essence,” which means that they all signify the divine

essence. The use of ʿayn to refer to the essence is apt given another sense of the word, “fountainhead” or “source,” for all being emerges from the divine essence. Rūzbihān’s use of the word ʿayn in the sense of “essence” can be found in his other works. For instance, in the Mashrab he writes, “Then He manifests the ʿayn in the ʿayn, I mean, the essence in the essence.”²³ Thus, the above commentary shows Rūzbihān’s view that what Moses requested from God in this Qurʾānic episode was the vision of God’s essence. Rūzbihān explains God’s reply, “Thou shalt not see Me,” as meaning “Thou shalt not perceive Me as I am (kamā anā),”²⁴ that is, “as I am in My essence.”

Since the divine essence is the “God” that cannot be seen, known, or perceived in any way—i.e., the transcendent God— its discussion naturally leads to apophatic theology. However, in addition to engaging in apophatic theology, a strong point of many of the dogmatic theologians, Rūzbihān also engages in cataphatic theology. In other words, as much as he talks of God’s unknowability in Himself, he also explains His know- ability through His acts. This is typical of the Sufi approach, as Sufis maintain that excessive stress on God’s undeniable oth- erness and unknowability cuts Him off from the also undeni- able fact of His presence in all things through His creative acts, concerning which the Qurʾān talks extensively. Since the notion of divine acts must be first understood in order to understand the complex substructure of the divine attributes, the divine acts will be examined next.

Acts (afʿāl): The Beautiful Creations of God

God’s “act” (fiʿl) is a term used in Muslim theological dis- course that refers to every single thing in creation. The idea of every created thing as a divine act is a standard notion in Ashʿarite theology. Rūzbihān makes his allegiance to Ashʿarism clear in the following passage by supporting the view that human actions are God’s creations and that human beings only “acquire” them without ever creating them, a sig- nature doctrine of Ashʿarite theology called “acquisition” (kasb).

Understand that from the throne to the earth is created by God, and everything except His exis- tence is His act. He gave each act its existence from sheer nonexistence, and such is everything that is temporally originated in His kingdom. The acts of the servants are also created by God, even if they are acquired by the servants. God desired them in beginninglessness (azal) as a favor and mercy.²⁵

At this point it is worth revisiting the ḥadīth, “Reflect upon God’s creation, but do not reflect upon God.” When we dis- cussed it in the previous section, we focused on the latter half of this ḥadīth, which points out the unknowability of God’s essence. Now, let us turn our attention to the first half of this ḥadīth: “Reflect upon God’s creation.” It suggests that it is worth thinking about God’s acts, but why? Implicit in this saying is the idea that while God cannot be known as He is in Himself, He can be known indirectly through His act or creation.

Rūzbihān points out that creation indicates—by virtue of its existence—the existence of its Creator: “The creation is a pointer to the existence of the Creator, and the act points to the Actor.”²⁶ To prove the above statement, Rūzbihān produces a standard rationalist argument in which he refutes the idea of infinite regress in the chains of causes, concluding that there must be a first cause that is eternal in order for there to be tem- porally originated things.²⁷ The same argument can be found, for instance, in a work of dogmatic theology by al-Qushayrī, a famous Sufi and defender of Ashʿarism whom Rūzbihān held in high regard. Al-Qushayrī writes, “The bringer-of-existence of the world is beginningless. The proof for this is that if it were [also] brought into existence, it would require another bringer-of-existence as well as the latter’s bringer-of-existence, and it would go back in a chain ad infinitum, and that is impos- sible.”²⁸ Having established the single, eternal existence of the first cause, Rūzbihān states, “Reflecting upon creation increases certitude in God’s unicity.”²⁹

Aside from producing such rational arguments, Rūzbihān also refers to a standard idea that human beings are created with an innate nature (fiṭra) that recognizes God:

God captured within the nature of the souls a lumi- nous, intellective, and holy innate nature that testi- fies to its bringer-of-existence and recognizes that it has been conquered by the subjugation of its Artist (ṣāniʿ) and overpowered by the governing of its Cre- ator; it is capable of making God recognized by way of the lights of His act and the glow of His artifacts. These guide the souls on the path of affirming God’s existent and eternal essence, from which stem all things.³⁰

Another thing that an act reveals about its Actor, according to Rūzbihān, is the Actor’s characteristics, or attributes. He writes, “There is a manifestation of the essence in the clothing of the attributes, while the attributes become manifest in the clothing of the acts”;³¹ “His essence is the quarry of His attri- butes, and His attributes are the quarry of His act”;³² “If the acts and the attributes were recognized, the essence would [also] be recognized.”³³ Thus, God becomes manifest and knowable in stages: He emerges out of the unknowable essence first by way of the knowable attributes and then by the know- able acts. Conversely, His acts, that is to say, the entire creation, reveal His attributes, which in turn reveal the unfathomable divine essence indirectly by “clothing” it, which is a signature term in Rūzbihān’s writings, to be discussed in the subsequent chapters. Put another way, the acts and attributes are the beau- tiful clothes that cover up as well as reveal the invisible divine essence.

Likewise we should reconsider the verse, “Thou shalt not see Me” (Q 7:143), which, in Rūzbihān’s interpretation, is God’s reply to Moses’s request to see God’s essence. God’s reply then continued like this: “But look at the mountain: if it stays in its place, then thou shalt see Me.” In the light of the foregoing analy- sis, if we translate this part of the verse, it might read: “Thou shalt not see My essence. But look at My act: if it stays in its place, then thou shalt see My essence.” The verse ends in the following manner: When his Lord disclosed Himself to the mountain, He made it crumble down, and Moses fell down in a swoon. When he awoke, he said, “Glory be to Thee! To Thee I have turned in repentance, and I am the first of the believers.” In other

words, in response to Moses’s request, God revealed His essence to His act (i.e., the mountain) instead of revealing it directly to Moses. Facing a direct revelation of God’s essence, the mountain is annihilated, as no creature can bear such a direct manifestation of the divine essence. Moses had indirect witnessing of the divine essence through the intermediary of the divine act that was the mountain. However, even this sight of the mountain crumbling into dust was too strong for Moses to bear, even if he was a prophet. His “swooning” represents, one might say, the annihilation of ordinary consciousness.

Rūzbihān argues that Moses saw God’s beauty in the moun- tain before falling unconscious: “Moses saw the beauty of eter- nity (jamāl al-qidam) in the mirror of the mountain, and then he fell down.”³⁴ The “mirror”—which is a common image for cre- ation in Sufism—is an especially apt symbol for the mountain, since it shows how divine acts function as mirrors of the invis- ible essence by displaying its attributes. Another key term in this discussion is tajallī or self-disclosure, which appeared in the verbal form in the verse Q 7:143: his Lord disclosed Himself (tajallā) to the mountain. If we use both mirror and self-disclo- sure to explain the verse, we can say that the mountain served as a mirror of God and the locus of His self-disclosure.

Thus, in Rūzbihān’s interpretation, both the ḥadīth “Reflect

upon God’s creation, but do not reflect upon God” and the Qurʾānic verse, Thou shalt not see Me. But look at the mountain: if it stays in its place, then thou shalt see Me (Q 7:143) make the same two points: (1) God’s essence cannot be known directly, so it should not be thought about; and (2) human beings should think about God’s acts instead of His essence if they wish to know His essence, because His acts display His attri- butes, through which they can attain approximate knowledge of the divine essence.

The idea that divine attributes become manifest through divine acts also appears in Rūzbihān’s interpretation of the following key ḥadīth and Qurʾānic verse, both mentioning jamāl: “[The Prophet] said, ‘Indeed God is beautiful, and He loves beauty.’ God said, There is beauty in them [i.e., the cattle] for you when you bring them home to rest and when you drive them forth abroad to pasture [Q 16:6]. This is the beauty that stems from the beauty of His act and His power.”³⁵

The Qurʾānic verse points out how beauty (jamāl) is appar- ent in the cattle, that is, a divine attribute becomes manifest in a divine act. The ḥadīth explains why beauty can be found in creation: because God is beautiful. What the beautiful Creator creates is also beautiful, as it reflects its Creator’s attributes. This is also the point Rūzbihān makes in his interpretation of another Qurʾānic verse, Blessed is God, the most beautiful (aḥsan) of creators (Q 23:14), as we saw in the previous chapter.³⁶

Attributes (s. ifāt): The Knowable, Beautiful God

The third term to be discussed is attributes (ṣifāt, sing. ṣifa), which derives from the root w-ṣ-f, meaning “to describe.” The Arabic for “essence,” dhāt has a close relationship with ṣifāt, because dhāt is a term that functions in conjunction with ṣifāt, for the root meaning of dhāt is “possessor of,” implying the possessor of attributes. As one Ashʿarite theologian put it, dhāt is “what is described by the attributes” (mawṣūfa bi-l-ṣifāt),³⁷ which is analogous to saying “possessor of attributes.” Such grammatical analysis of the word dhāt is not always present in theological texts, but this is most probably because it was so obvious for Arabic speakers. Thus, dhāt is a contentless word that only indicates possession of something, which is in fact fully in line with the idea of the unknowability of the divine essence: dhāt is unspecifiable in itself and can only be described indirectly by the attributes it possesses.

In order to investigate the place of jamāl and ḥusn in Rūzbihān’s understanding of God, it helps to understand the close relationship between divine attributes and divine names. Both attributes and names describe the divine essence, and the difference between the two is grammatical. While divine attri- butes take the form of substantives (e.g., life, power, and maj- esty), divine names appear as adjectives, e.g., the Living (al-ḥayy) and the Majestic (al-jalīl); or as active participles, for example, the Powerful (al-qādir), the Exalter (al-rāfiʿ), and the Abaser (al-khāfiḍ); or as nouns, for example, the Light (al-nūr) and God (Allāh). In short, divine attributes are the qualities designated by the divine names that have come in the Qurʾān.

For this reason, if God is said to possess ninety-nine names, these names designate ninety-nine attributes at the same time. At the beginning of Masālik al-tawḥīd, Rūzbihān introduces seven attributes of God in the following order: knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, life, and desire.³⁸ In the second chapter of the Masālik, entitled “The Second Pole: On the Knowledge of the Attributes,”³⁹ Rūzbihān discusses each of these seven attributes in detail while supporting his exposi- tion with relevant passages from the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth. Since the affirmation of the distinct and eternal existence of these seven attributes of God is one of the centerpieces of early Ashʿarite theology in contradistinction to Muʿtazilism, which denied their eternal existence, Rūzbihān’s presentation of divine attributes in the Masālik is also limited to those seven attributes typically discussed by the Ashʿarites. The above seven attributes are what Ashʿarites call “attributes of the essence” (ṣifāt al-dhāt) or “essential attributes” (ṣifāt dhātiyya), which they contrast with another category of attributes called “the attributes of the act” (ṣifāt al-fiʿl), which will be discussed

later.

In the Masālik, Rūzbihān’s subscription to Ashʿarism becomes clear from such statements as: “These [seven] attri- butes are in His essence beginninglessly and endlessly (azali- yyatan abadiyyatan),”⁴⁰ by which he opposes the Muʿtazilite denial of the existence of divine attributes. Muʿtazilites denied the existence of divine attributes in distinction to the divine essence, arguing that affirming their existence would imply multiplicity in God’s being, which contradicts the principle of God’s oneness. The Ashʿarite response to this criticism was to say that the attributes are neither the essence nor other than the essence (lā hiya huwa wa-lā ghayruhu).⁴¹ In the Masālik Rūzbihān criticizes Muʿtazilites multiple times, and the main purpose of its second chapter seems to be to counter the Muʿtazilite denial of the existence of divine attributes by taking up the Ashʿarite position on the matter.

While these seven attributes are the most commonly dis- cussed, Ashʿarites did not necessarily limit their discussion of the attributes of the essence to seven. For instance, some Ashʿarites (including al-Ashʿarī himself) consider subsistence

(baqāʾ) as the eighth essential attribute.⁴² Moreover, the Ashʿarites accept those anthropomorphic attributes men- tioned in the Qurʾān, such as “hand,” “face,” and “foot” also as essential attributes therefore eternal. In the Mashrab, Rūzbihān confirms, “Hand is one of the specific attributes of the essence and is beginningless and endless and is the quarry of power.”⁴³ In the subsequent two sections he also confirms God’s “foot” and “face” as attributes of the essence.⁴⁴ These anthropomorphic attributes are also called “revealed attri- butes,” for they are the attributes of God confirmed by the Qurʾān.⁴⁵

While Masālik al-tawḥīd contains Rūzbihān’s most focused discussion of divine attributes, it is certainly not the only place where he analyzes them. For example, in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, a much longer Arabic work, Rūzbihān gives a more extensive treatment of the subject than in the Masālik. At the beginning of the book’s sixteenth chapter, he explains the seven essential attributes of God one by one while focusing on the experience of the human spirit traversing the path to God in the process of realizing the true meaning of each attribute.⁴⁶

In his Qurʾān commentary, Rūzbihān discusses the seven attributes of the essence in association with the six days of creation as described in the verse, Indeed your Lord is God who created the heavens and the earth in six days (Q 7:54). He explains that out of the divine essence emerged the divine attributes, which appeared one by one over the six days of creation in the order of knowledge, power, hearing, sight, speech, and desire. Once these six attributes became manifest, God completed the process of creating the world by manifesting the seventh attri- bute, life. This is analogous to the process of creating Adam, which is completed by God’s breathing of the living spirit into clay. Rūzbihān writes,

Each of His days is the manifestation of one of His attributes from the rising place of eternity. Each arises in nonexistence so that a temporal being may come to be. These six days were the manifestation of six of His attributes. The first was knowledge, the second power, the third hearing, the fourth sight, the fifth speech, and the sixth desire. Things were

perfected through the manifestation of the lights of the six attributes. When He completed them, the temporally originated things became like Adam’s body without a spirit, which is one of the seven attributes, that is, His eternal, beginningless, and subsistent life, incomparable with the roaring of breaths, similarity, and analogy. Hence the things abide through His attributes, which abide through His essence.⁴⁷

The attributes of the essence presented above constitute a cat- egory of the divine attributes that is contrasted with the attri- butes of the act. The basic difference between these two categories is that the first designates God in Himself and the second designates Him in relation to His creation. Thus, life, which is an attribute of the essence, designates God regardless of any act He may perform. In contrast, gentleness and sever- ity, forgivingness and vengefulness, are attributes that become manifest through His activity.

A second important difference between the attributes of the essence and the attributes of the act is that the latter include pairs of complementary qualities such as gentleness and sever- ity, forgiveness and vengefulness, and exaltation and abase- ment, showing the two opposing aspects of God’s dynamic relationship with His creation. In contrast, essential attributes are not accompanied by their opposite qualities: God has life, knowledge, power, and so on, but never death, ignorance, or powerlessness. Over the course of time in Muslim intellectual history (especially in dogmatic theology and Sufism), these two subcategories of the active attributes came to be referred to as gentle and severe attributes, or beautiful and majestic attributes.⁴⁸ Thus, beauty and majesty are themselves two attri- butes of God’s act as well as the names of the above two oppos- ing subcategories of the attributes of act.

At the beginning of his Qurʾān commentary, in interpreting

the very first verse of the Qurʾān, In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, Rūzbihān analyzes the word “God” (Allāh) in terms of beauty and majesty. First, he presents the Arabic tetragram,  A-L-L-H  to  stand  for  five  concepts:  I-ness (A: anāniyya), unicity (A: waḥdāniyya), beauty (L: jamāl), majesty

(L: jalāl), and He-ness (H: huwiyya). He then calls the middle two concepts—jamāl and jalāl—as “two attributes” (ṣifatān) of God, by which he is referring to the whole range of the beauti- ful and majestic attributes. He-ness refers to the divine essence, whose unknowability is highlighted by the use of the third- person pronoun, He, which grammatically refers to what is absent, making it a common choice to symbolize the unknow- able. Rūzbihān writes, “The [letter] A is an allusion to the I-ness (anāniyya) and unicity (waḥdāniyya)….In His name Allāh there are two Ls: the first is an allusion to beauty (jamāl) and the second to majesty (jalāl). None recognizes these two attributes except the possessor of the attributes. The H is an allusion to His He-ness (huwiyya), which none recognizes except He.”⁴⁹

Names (asmāʾ): God as the Possessor of the Most Beautiful Names (al-asmāʾ al-h. usnā)

Numerous Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths refer to various names of God. On the basis of these, generations of Muslim scholars have compiled lists of divine names, often varying in the total number, while the most widely accepted number has been ninety-nine, largely due to the famous ḥadīth, “To God belong ninety-nine names.”⁵⁰ Among the key Qurʾānic verses that address the notion of divine names is Blessed is the name of thy Lord, possessor of majesty and generous giving (Q 55:78). The main point Rūzbihān makes in interpreting this verse is the utter transcendence of God’s essence, which he expresses by the term majesty (jalāl). Yet at the same time, he maintains that approximate knowledge of God’s essence is attainable incrementally by way of His names, qualities, and finally attributes. This is where Rūzbihān recognizes the dilemma of the human situation: human beings need divine names to call upon God, yet these names are ultimately inad- equate in addressing Him. Rūzbihān’s Qurʾān commentary reads:

His saying, Blessed is the name of thy Lord, possessor of majesty and generous giving (Q 55:78), is what we say about Him whose name is hallowed beyond the

perception of imaginings and the allusion of intel- lects, since His name is a quality, while the qualities are attributes, and the attributes abide through the essence. How would he who is incapable of perceiv- ing the reality of the name of the eternal object of description attain the knowledge of the existence of the named? He is more majestic than that thoughts can comprehend the holiness of His majesty or that formulas of remembrance can encompass an iota of His qualities. His majesty bewilders the intellects of the recognizers in the fields of His exaltedness. He drowns the spirits of those who profess oneness in the oceans of His tremendousness and annihi- lates the secret cores of those who arrive in the lofty mountains of His magnificence.⁵¹

The ultimate inadequacy of the divine names in addressing God is an idea that Rūzbihān, like Sufi teachers generally, sees as also underlying the following saying of the Prophet: “I do not count Thy laudations before Thee; Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself.”⁵² Rūzbihān writes, “The most eloquent of the worlds spoke about the reality of bewilderment and the court- yards of tremendousness: ‘I do not count Thy laudations before Thee; Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself.’ He remem- bered Him by remembering [His] majesty.”⁵³ In other words, even the Prophet, who is the most eloquent human being, had to declare his incapacity to praise God adequately, for only God is capable of praising Himself in the true sense. In the above passage, Rūzbihān makes use of such terms as bewil- derment, tremendousness, and majesty again to allude to the unfathomable, hidden, and transcendent nature of the divine essence. In his Ḥadīth commentary, he explains why even the Prophet’s laudation is ultimately inadequate: it is because

laudation stems from the fact of being temporally originated and [the Prophet] knows that laudation by a creature is fitting only for a creature. He saw the incomparability of the beginninglessness and said: “I do not count Thy laudation.”…He added [God’s own] laudation to it because He knows it but no

one else does. Then he said, “Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself.”⁵⁴

Rūzbihān thus emphasizes the unfathomable gap between temporally created beings and the eternal, uncreated God, a gap that renders any creature’s naming and lauding God inad- equate. In the end,

everything lauds God according to its capacity, and every rememberer remembers according to the measures of his capability, nature, knowledge, and understanding. Remembrance of the Real is outside the imaginings of humans, because laudation and recognitions are without limits. No one has truly lauded Him except He; no one has described Him with what is proper to Him except He. All the proph- ets are incapable of doing that such that the most majestic in capacity and loftiest in position among them said: “I do not count Thy laudations before Thee; Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself.”⁵⁵

Another important Qurʾānic verse on the subject of the divine names is To God belong the most beautiful names, so call upon Him by them (7:180). In his commentary on this verse, Rūzbihān subdivides divine names into four categories: (1) the names of the essence, (2) the names of the attributes, (3) the names of the acts, and (4) the specific (khāṣṣa) names or “the tremendous names” (al-asmāʾ al-ʿiẓām), which constitute a subcategory of the names of the essence. The idea of “God’s most tremendous name” (ism Allāh al-aʿẓam) appears in some ḥadīths, in which the Prophet explains it as a name “by which if God is called, He answers.”⁵⁶ Rūzbihān writes,

He described Himself that He has the names of the essence, the names of the attributes, the names of the acts, and the specific names that report the won- ders of His beginningless attributes to the hearts of the recognizers and that originate from His eternal essence, as He says: And to God belong the most beau- tiful names, so call upon Him by them. He reported to

the people in search of those tremendous names that they will not attain them except through their unveilings. Those names will not be unveiled to them except through the unveilings of the specific attributes,⁵⁷ the keys to whose treasury are those names. Those attributes will not be unveiled except through the unveiling of the essence. Whoever is specified for these unveilings will be guided to His most tremendous name and be guided through His light to the meanings of the attributes and the lights of the essence. If he calls upon Him by [the most tremendous name], he will be answered.⁵⁸

Rūzbihān seems to regard the first three categories of the divine names as commonly known to people, while the fourth category is only known to the elect,⁵⁹ as its knowledge leads to the knowledge of the most tremendous name, the secret and powerful name of God, invoking Him with which is guaran- teed His response. In Mashrab al-arwāḥ Rūzbihān briefly dis- cusses the most tremendous name of God and argues that it is also the name by which God calls the human being who has attained all the most beautiful names of God. “When all the [divine] names, qualities, and attributes are attributed to the recognizer while he is unified with the lights of the [divine] essence, has become God’s bride in the beauty (jamāl) of inti- macy, and has become holy in God’s holiness, the Real names him with His most tremendous name just as He named Himself with His most tremendous name.”⁶⁰ It is worth noting that Rūzbihān does not discuss this fourth category in his pre- sentation of either the divine names or attributes in Masālik al-tawḥīd, which, as had been pointed out earlier, is a work of the Ashʿarite dogma. In contrast, in his works that are not spe- cifically concerned with Ashʿarite theology, he talks about the attributes in a variety of ways, some of which would be beyond the pale of the standard Ashʿarism.

A further examination of the verse, To God belong the most beautiful names (Q 7:180), brings out yet another key aspect of divine beauty. The word for “most beautiful” is ḥusnā, which is a superlative from the adjective ḥasan, “good-and-beautiful.” What this verse indicates is that each of the divine names is the

most beautiful. Now, we might recall that God is the possessor of majestic (jalīl) and beautiful (jamīl) names and attributes. If God possesses both jamāl and jalāl in names and attributes and yet each and every one of His names is considered the most beautiful, it means that the most beautiful names encompass both jamāl and jalāl.⁶¹

Figure 3.1 A Venn diagram showing the interrelationship among jamāl, jalāl, and ḥusnā/aḥsan

Rūzbihān, like most other scholars, understands jamāl as an attribute of God’s act, which is accompanied by its counter- part, jalāl, another attribute of God’s act. He considers ḥusn an eternal attribute of God’s essence, as God is good-and-beauti- ful (ḥasan) in Himself, independent of His acts. Rūzbihān writes in Mashrab al-arwāḥ: “God’s ḥusn is one of His most spe- cific descriptions”;⁶² and “Understand that ḥusn is one of the attributes of God and is eternal because His essence is eter- nal.”⁶³ Possibly on the basis of these statements, Corbin asserted that beauty is not just one of the numerous attributes of God’s act but rather an attribute of His essence.⁶⁴ This is a logical conclusion also in the light of the fact that God’s ḥusn is not accompanied by its opposite, qubḥ (“ugliness”), which cannot be attributed to God as it contradicts God’s nature by denoting deficiency and imperfection, a principle that applies to the rest of the attributes of the essence.

Summary

In sum, there are multiple senses to God’s “beauty”: (1) God is the possessor of ḥusn, which is an attribute of His essence; (2) God is the possessor of jamāl, which is an attribute of His acts, understood in contrast to jalāl; (3) God is the possessor of a number of attributes of acts categorized as beautiful (jamāliyya) and contrasted with majestic (jalāliyya); (4) all the names and attributes of God are the most beautiful (ḥusnā); (5) God is the most beautiful creator (aḥsan al-khāliqīn), whose creation is also beautiful. Thus, the transcendent, unfathomable God of There is nothing like Him (Q 42:11) and Thou shalt not see Me (Q 7:143) is countered by the knowable, approachable God of To Him belong the most beautiful names (Q 7:180). Rūzbihān understands creation as a gradual process of divine self-disclosure (tajallī) out of His unknowable essence, which corresponds to the pro- cess of the unfolding of the Hidden Treasure by way of the manifestation of the most beautiful (ḥusnā) names, attributes, and acts, including those of beauty (jamāl) and majesty. The driving force for God’s creation of the world is God’s love of His own beauty and His desire for this beauty to be recog- nized rather than remaining forever hidden and unknown.

The next chapter will shed light on Rūzbihān’s understand-

ing of the different degrees to which the divine attributes of ḥusn and jamāl become manifest in creation—the domain of divine acts—with a focus on the beauty of the human being and the world. We will also see how the ḥadīth of the Hidden Treasure connects to the purpose of human life in Rūzbihān’s anthropology.

4

The Anthropology and Cosmology of Beauty

Indeed We have created the human being in the most beautiful stature.

He who made beautiful everything He has created

—Qurʾān 95:4

—Qurʾān 32:7

T

he Qurʾān calls God the most beautiful creator (Q 23:14), which signifies two things: God is beautiful Himself and what He creates is also beautiful. The present chapter investi- gates the latter: the beauty of creation. We have seen in the previous chapter how God in His love to be recognized begins to unfold His Hidden Treasure to show forth His most beauti- ful names and attributes. The unfolding continues by way of the divine acts, or creation. Key questions to be addressed in this chapter are: What is the role of beauty in the creation of the world and human beings? What makes anything beauti- ful? Why is perception of beauty pleasurable? What differenti- ates divine, human, and cosmic beauty? What purpose does beauty serve in human life? In addressing these questions, the chapter will trace the entire cycle of created existence, from its

origin to return.

Rūzbihān presents the cycle of created existence, particu- larly human existence, in terms of the journey of the spirits

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from their creation by way of their embodied life on earth to their eventual return to God. He enumerates the key stages or stations (maqāmāt) that the spirits may go through in their journey to God in two of his Arabic works, namely Mashrab al-arwāḥ and Sayr al-arwāḥ (“The Journey of the Spirits”). Mashrab al-arwāḥ contains Rūzbihān’s most elaborate and detailed presentation of these stations, which he counts as 1,001. In many of these stations, beauty has an important role to play.

The story of creation coincides with the story of the Hidden Treasure. In Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt, Rūzbihān explains that this ḥadīth indicates God’s love for His own beauty in eternity, which is love that extends to His beautiful creation as well. Regarding God’s love for creation, Rūzbihān distinguishes two kinds: general love and specific love. He maintains that God’s general love is the driving force for the creation of all creatures, that is, all divine acts. In contrast, His specific love is connected to His essence, and with this specific love God creates the prophets and saints. The distinction between the general (ʿāmm) and the specific (khāṣṣ) is a recurring theme in Rūzbihān’s discussion of both love and beauty, as will be seen.

When [God] looked at the act through love, He cre- ated the universe with desire. This love is general. When He made the lover appear through this love, He looked at him through the eternal essence. This love is specific. He knows this love from Himself in His eternal knowledge; it is His love for the proph- ets and the saints. Know that He loves them, and they love Him [Q 5:54] pertains solely to eternal attributes. It is incomparable with the tenderness of nature and the changes of temporal origination.

In eternity He became the lover of His own beauty (jamāl). Inevitably love, lover, and beloved were one. Since they are attributes, they do not have the de- fect of temporal origination. When He became His own lover, He wanted to create a creation so that it would become the place of His love and gaze, with- out alienation or intimacy. In His eternity He created

the spirits of the lovers and made their eyes see His beauty (jamāl). He taught them that He was their lover before they came to be: “I was a Hidden Trea- sure so I loved to be recognized.”¹

Rūzbihān thus explains the mechanism of how God and His saints and prophets become mutual lovers: first God creates them out of love and then displays His beauty to them, which makes them love God in return.

At the beginning of Sayr al-arwāḥ, Rūzbihān enumerates the initial stages of creation, which comes forth from the hidden and unknowable essence in its process of self-disclosure. At the first disclosure of Himself to Himself in His hidden essence, God recognizes His own beauty (jamāl). Out of this recogni- tion the multiple attributes emerge. Thereafter begins the pro- cess of creation per se, or the manifestation of His creative acts: He creates first His lovers and then the prophets and saints. Finally He creates the world by issuing the engendering com- mand, Be! (kun), as in the Qurʾānic verse, When He desires a thing, His command is to say to it “Be!”; then it is (36:82), to which Rūzbihān alludes by the two letters K and N (which together spell kun). The command brings everything into existence except human beings, whose creation requires a more elabo- rate process.

When [God] shone forth from the rising place of eter- nity and disclosed Himself to nonexistence through His knowledge, He did not see anything other than Himself. He marveled at His beauty (jamāl). His attributes spread apart from one another. Then He brought His lovers into existence so that they might take pleasure in union with Him and rejoice in His subsistence. Then He desired to create the spirits of His prophets and saints, just as He said, “I was a Hidden Treasure, so I loved to be recognized.” Then He scooped up some water from the ocean of the letters K and N.²

The process of creation may be better understood if we also examine a parallel passage in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, where

Rūzbihān explains how God’s self-disclosure takes place in stages. God discloses Himself first to His essence in its abso- lute unicity; second to His attributes in their multitude, which involves the dynamic tension between beauty and majesty; and finally to His command of love, “Be!” (Q 36:82). Rūzbihān says that the driving force for God’s creation of the world is His love (maḥabba) for the beauty of “the self-disclosure of all the attributes and the essence,” which directly connects to the wording of both the ḥadīth, “so I loved (aḥbabtu) to be recog- nized” and the Qurʾānic verse, the most beautiful (ḥusnā) names. In short, it is God’s love for the ḥusn of His attributes—which embrace beautiful (jamīl) and majestic (jalīl) attributes—that leads to the creation of the world.

When God wanted to bring the realm of being into existence, He exalted Himself in His magnificence and disclosed Himself to His essence through His essence and from His essence to His attributes, so beauty was subtilized for majesty and majesty for beauty. He Himself sought from Himself in knowl- edge of eternity the hiding places that He had rec- ognized from Himself before the known objects. Desire responded to knowledge, knowledge to contentment, contentment to the decree, the decree to the ruling property, and the ruling property to the essence. The beauty (ḥusn) of the self-disclosure brought together all the attributes and the essence in the brilliance of love (maḥabba) such that the All itself became manifest in the love. He disclosed Himself from the love to the command, and He disclosed Himself from the command in the K and N, which are among the names and the qualities. From between the two became manifest a light, and that light became the non-compound intellect (al-ʿaql al-basīṭ).³

The “non-compound intellect” that emerges from the light in the above passage seems to be what the philosophers and Sufis commonly call “the universal intellect” (al-ʿaql al-kullī). Both  “non-compound”  (or  “simple”)  and  “universal”

emphasize the fact that this is a singular intellect (i.e., not mul- tiple) and has no parts (i.e., not composite), yet it is the germ of all created reality. The subsequent stages of creation, namely how multiple things emerge from the non-compound and sin- gular intellect, are presented below.

Beauty in the Creation of Human Beings

The Birth of the Spirits

After God utters the engendering command, “Be!,” the multi- stage formation of the human being begins. From the non- compound intellect spirits emerge in all their multiplicity. Rūzbihān describes the process thus: first there was a com- plete state of equilibrium of the attributes and the essence, but then there appeared agitation due to “the overpowering force of eternity. Then the equilibrium became dispersed. God then gathered together the dispersed things,” and out of them He created the spirits that would eventually become embodied in human form.⁴ Once God created the spirits, He taught or made them recognize the entirety of His most beautiful names. Rūzbihān writes that having created the spirits, God then “kept them in the veils of the unseen in order to make them recognize all the names, attributes, qualities, acts, and the maj- esty of the essence, and to show them the treasures of the mar- vels of the eternity of the essence and the wonders of the subtleties of the attributes, just as He said…‘I was a Hidden Treasure, so I loved to be recognized.’”⁵

After the spirits are born in the very first of the 1,001 sta-

tions presented in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, they start enjoying God’s self-disclosure, which is described by the subsequent three stations: the spirits taking pleasure in the direct perception of the divine act (the second station); their finding the direct self-disclosure of the divine attributes (the third station); and their vision of the self-disclosure of the divine essence (the fourth station).⁶ In the fifth station, the spirits find servant- hood in relation to God. Then the spirits gain preparedness for recognition (the sixth station) and then reach the station of standing still in presence (the seventh station). It is in the

eighth station that the spirits hear the divine address, “Am I not your Lord?” (Q 7:172),⁷ which is a key Qurʾānic event to which we will turn next. In sum, in the first seven stations of the spirits’ journey, the spirits are born and then through expo- sure to God’s essence and attributes gain the preparedness to encounter God on the Day of the Covenant.

The Day of the Covenant: The First Manifestation of God’s Beauty, or a Covenant of Love

The notion of the covenant (ʿahd, mīthāq) is a major discussion in Sufi literature and important in the Qurʾān generally. A key verse reads: When thy Lord took from the children of Adam, their seed from their loins and made them testify of themselves, “Am I not your Lord?” they said, “Yea, we testify”—lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, “Indeed, we were heedless of this” (Q 7:172). Basic Muslim understanding of this verse is that it indicates human beings’ primordial acknowledgment of God as their Lord, whom alone they promise to worship. If we turn to Sufi literature, we find that this covenant—often referred to by Sufis as ʿahd-i Alast (“the covenant of ‘Am I not?’”)—is a recur- ring theme and has special significance beyond the simple acknowledgment of monotheism.

Rūzbihān refers to the covenant in various places in his writings. He often uses the term (divine) address (khiṭāb)⁸ to refer to it, emphasizing the auditory nature of the event. When he presents it as constituting the eighth station in the Mashrab, he writes that it is an event in which the spirits hear (samāʿ) the divine address of “Am I not your Lord?”⁹ “Audition” (samāʿ) is an important practice in Sufism, referring to an auditory encounter with God by way of hearing His words. Audition and vision constitute the two key modes in which human beings may encounter God. In Rūzbihān’s view, human audi- tion of God originates in the covenant, for it was the human spirits’ primordial audition of the divine address.¹⁰ For this reason, he sometimes uses the term samāʿ by itself to allude to the covenant. Audition was the human experience of God’s “address.”

A striking feature of Rūzbihān’s interpretation of the cove- nant is that he understands it as an occasion at which God

manifested His beauty to the spirits for the first time. Moreover, since witnessing beauty causes passionate love, he argues that this in fact was a covenant of passionate love. Humans accepted God not only as their Lord but also as their beautiful Beloved. Rūzbihān writes, “The Real unveiled His beauty (jamāl) to the spirits of the passionate lovers in His first appear- ance after introducing Himself to them by saying, ‘Am I not your Lord?’”¹¹; and “He unveiled to [the spirits] the beauty (jamāl) of [His] majesty, and spoke to them in a specific address.”¹² He also says, “He made [the spirits] all become passionate lovers of [God’s] beauty and majesty between the light of [His] attributes and the light of [His] essence.”¹³ While Rūzbihān is quite explicit in presenting the covenant as a cov- enant of love for divine beauty, he is hardly the first person to associate the event with beauty. For instance, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt (d. 1131) wrote, “Remember that day on which the beauty (jamāl) of ‘Am I not your Lord’ was unveiled to you.”¹⁴

Rūzbihān further explains that the covenant was an occa- sion on which God made the spirits recognize Him through the most beautiful attributes, both the beautiful and the majestic. He writes that the divine address of “Am I not your Lord?” was an expression of God’s “making Himself recog- nized to them as well as self-disclosure to them through the quality of majesty and beauty (jamāl). When the spirits’ faces became enraptured in eternity’s face and when they became impassioned after the [divine] address and the vision of the beginningless and endless essence, they responded to the Real with ‘Yea’ in love and recognition. This is one of the mean- ings of their immersion in the witnessing of the beauty (jamāl) of His exaltedness, magnificence, and subsistence.”¹⁵ Rūzbihān also writes, “The spirits were immersed in the oceans of the eternal beauty (jamāl) and became enraptured through the quality of passionate love in the deserts of recognition.”¹⁶

In ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, Rūzbihān again discusses the two types of love for God (maḥabbat-i ilāhī): general and specific. General love for God derives from seeing God’s beauty in creation, which people in general are able to do. In contrast, specific love belongs only to the elect, which originates in their witnessing of God, one of whose occasions is the covenant.

Rūzbihān then applies the distinction between the general and the specific to his categorization of God’s attributes and acts.

As for the specific love, it belongs to the elect after witnessing [God]. The folk of witnessing have three occasions of witnessing. One occurs to the spirits before the bodies, before human existence, in the presence of the [divine] glory. When He brought them together, He said to the chieftains of the spirits: “Am I not your Lord?” They said “Yea” (Q 7:172) vol- untarily. The pleasure of the speech reached them. They asked for beauty (jamāl) from the Real so that recognition would become complete. The Real took off the veil of invincibility and presented to them the beauty (jamāl) of the majesty of the essence. The spirits of the prophets and saints became drunk from the effect of the listening and the beauty of the majesty. They fell in love with the eternal Witness (shāhid) without any trace of temporal origination. From that friendship (walāyat), their love (maḥabbat) increased in accordance with the degree of divine nurturing, because when the holy spirits appeared in the earthly form, all became sayers of “Show me” because of the ancient love-madness.¹⁷

The last sentence refers to Abraham and Moses, both of whom said “Show me” (arinī) to God on different occasions (Q 2:260 and 7:143, respectively) but who, in Rūzbihān’s view, were in the state of intoxication or love-madness, a subject examined in detail in the next chapter.

It is also worth noting that in the above passage Rūzbihān presents the divine address as directed at some of the spirits rather than all: “When He brought them together, He said to the chieftains of the spirits: ‘Am I not your Lord?’” He argues that the specific love belongs to the elect, and it originates in the divine speech addressed exclusively to them. This argu- ment is in line with Rūzbihān’s view that while all human spirits saw God’s first manifestation of beauty on the Day of the Covenant, only some of them said “Yea” (Q 7:172) in acknowledgment of God as their Lord.¹⁸

In sum, the Day of the Covenant proceeds in the following manner: God addresses the spirits while disclosing His beauty and majesty to them. The spirits hear that address and see the divine beauty. Consequently, they come to recog- nize and love God, not just to serve Him as their Lord. Finally, these human spirits reply to God by saying “Yea” to acknowledge God as their only Lord and Beloved. This cov- enant further indicates the primordiality of human love for God, which is a major theme in Sufi literature. A famous example is Aḥmad Ghazālī’s Sawāniḥ, in which he exten- sively discusses the beginninglessness of ʿishq and its rela- tion to ḥusn.¹⁹ He also describes the covenant as an occasion for the human spirits to witness God’s beauty thereby becoming His passionate lovers, which is in agreement with Rūzbihān’s view.

The Birth of the Human Body

After presenting the primordial witnessing of God’s beauty at the covenant as the eighth station in the Mashrab, Rūzbihān gives further accounts of the spirits’ witnessing of God (the ninth to thirteenth stations).²⁰ Thereafter begins the spirits’ gradual descent to earth, which culminates in the bodily birth of the spirits or their entrance into the human body. Rūzbihān’s presentation in the Mashrab is elaboration on the Qurʾānic account of the bodily formation of human beings, which is concisely presented by Böwering as follows:

The Qurʾān mentions four stages in the creation of humans…God created the first human being, Adam, from dust (min turābin, Q 3:59), procreat- ing human beings through the sperm, shaping them individually to their complete figure, and finally making them male and female. “[God] cre- ated you of dust, then of a sperm-drop (min nuṭfa), then shaped you in the form of a man (rajulan)” (Q 18:37), and “then made you pairs” (Q 35:11), while other qurʾānic verses state that God created every animal of water (Q 24:45) and the jinn from a flame of fire (Q 55:15).²¹

In the Mashrab, the fourteenth station marks the spirits’ entrance into the realm of sovereignty (malakūt). In the fif- teenth station, they enter the world of form.22 Thereafter, the spirits oversee the development of the clay, first in the form of a sperm drop (cf. Q 76:2) in the womb, then an embryo, and so on in the subsequent three stations. In the nineteenth station, the spirits gaze at the “beauty of the form” (jamāl al-ṣūra), which is then perfected in the twentieth station.23 Thereafter the spirits enter the bodily form (the twenty-first station),24 which is a process described by the verse, I blew into him of My spirit (Q 15:29; 38:72). This marks the birth of human beings proper; earlier there were only disembodied spirits and life- less bodies. It must be noted that Mashrab al-arwāḥ focuses on human beings, and Rūzbihān does not discuss how God cre- ated other creatures such as the jinn and angels.

Blowing of God’s Spirit and Shaping with His Two Hands

Rūzbihān maintains that God’s blowing of His spirit into the bodily form signifies the impartation of the full range of the divine attributes, including those of the essence (one of which is life) and those of the acts (which encompass beautiful and majestic attributes). He writes, “I blew into him of My spirit, that is, I brought him into life through My life and spirit, which appeared from the manifestation of [My] majesty and beauty.”²⁵ He also writes, “Blowing is the manifestation of the attribute in the act. Do you not see that He says regarding the reality of Adam, When I shaped him and blew into him of My spirit (Q 15:29)? The ‘shaping’ [refers to] the world of the divine act, while the ‘blowing’ [refers to] the world of the attribute.”²⁶ Human existence encompasses two realms: bodily and spiri- tual. The bodily realm is visible and hence manifests God’s activity, such as “shaping,” while the spiritual realm pertains to the higher, inner dimension of the human being that is inseparable from the presence of the divine life and the rest of the attributes.

Rūzbihān often discusses the verse I blew into him of My

spirit alongside another: I created with My two hands (Q 38:75). For instance, in ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, he presents these two verses as constituting the meaning of the ḥadīth, “God created Adam

in His form.”²⁷ In other words, he suggests that “God’s form” in which Adam was created consists of the divine attributes, one group of which is represented by spirit and the other by the two hands. The first group is the attributes of the essence, one of which is life, symbolized by spirit here. The other group is the attributes of the act, which are divided into two types as discussed in the previous chapter: beautiful and majestic attri- butes. As Rūzbihān writes, “The self-disclosure of the essence is what He said: I blew into him of My spirit; the self-disclosure of the attributes is what He said: I created with My two hands.”²⁸ Other key verses describing the process of the formation of the human being are: He formed thee and made your forms beautiful (Q 40:64); He who created thee then shaped thee and balanced thee and composed thee in whatever form He willed (Q 82:7–8); and Indeed We have created the human being in the most beautiful stature (Q 95:4). The root utilized for describing the beauty of the human form (ṣūra) and stature (taqwīm) in the above two verses is ḥ-s-n rather than j-m-l. As already mentioned, j-m-l has a very limited application in the Qurʾān, whereas ḥusn designates all-encompassing beauty, including both jamāl and jalāl. Hence, ḥusn is a more fitting term to describe the beauty of the human being, for human beauty is nothing but a reflection of the full range of the divine attri- butes, which are altogether the most beautiful (ḥusnā). This point is clear from Rūzbihān’s interpretation of the verse, “He formed you and then made your forms beautiful (Q 40:64): for I clothed you with the lights of My majesty and beauty (jamāl)

and with My character.”²⁹

Elsewhere, he comments on the Qurʾānic notion of creating and forming the human being: “We created you through the acts and formed you through the attributes. Also, We created you through the command then formed you through the man- ifestation of the self-disclosure of the attributes to you.”³⁰ He thus points out how the distinction between creating and forming parallels that between the body and the spirit, between the act and the attribute, which moreover corresponds to the distinction between khalq and khuluq, or creation and charac- ter. In other words, the human being is made up of a divine act (“Be!”) that engenders the clay and the divine attributes (“cre- ated with My two hands,” “blew into him of My spirit,” etc.) that

shape, nurture, and enliven the clay and give it the inner and outer form of beauty. The foregoing discussion may be sum- marized in the following chart.

Figure 4.1 A diagram showing human constitution with corresponding Qurʾānic verses

Once human beings begin their life on earth, this also marks the beginning of their long journey back to God, which pro- cess takes the rest of the Mashrab for Rūzbihān to explain. Given the primordial covenant of love that the spirits made with their beautiful God before entering into their bodies, embodied life is a test of whether they can stay true lovers of God by seeking and finding signs of God’s beauty in the world and in themselves. Whether or not they have kept the cove- nant will become clear on the Day of Judgment, a key Qurʾānic event in which beauty and majesty, according to Rūzbihān, have major roles to play.

The Day of Judgment: Vision of God’s Beauty or Majesty in the Hereafter

We have seen in the previous chapter that whether humans can have a vision of God in this life and/or the next was a topic of major debate among dogmatic theologians in the early centuries of Islam. Their primary concern seems to have been whether it was possible to see God in this life and the next, not what could have happened before this life. As dis- cussed earlier, Rūzbihān’s presentation of the events on the Day of the Covenant is clear: humans not only heard but also saw or witnessed God: on that day, God addressed humans

and disclosed His beauty to them. Moreover, Rūzbihān affirms the possibility of seeing God in this life and the next, though this does not imply that he thinks that all human beings will attain it.

Two key verses that refer to the vision of God in the afterlife are the following, which describe the Day of Judgment: Some faces on that day shall be radiant, gazing upon their Lord (Q 75:22– 23) and Some faces on that day shall shine, laughing and joyous (Q 80:38–39). Rūzbihān comments on the first verse in this manner:

They gaze upon [God’s] beauty (jamāl). Then their faces come to gaze [upon it] radiantly, delightedly, and happily. This is due to the beauty (ḥusn) of the self-disclosure of His jamāl.…Had they witnessed Him face-to-face through the description of maj- esty, tremendousness, and magnificence, then they would have perished at the first of His assaults, and their faces would have been baffled.³¹

With regard to the second Qurʾānic verse, Some faces on that day shall shine, laughing and joyous (Q 80:38–39), Rūzbihān com- ments, “That is due to the brilliance that reaches [the faces] from gazing at God’s beauty (jamāl).”³² In other words, their faces shine with delight because they are now allowed to see God’s beauty.

In contrast, the Qurʾān describes the state of those who fail to attain that joyous state like this: Some faces on that day shall be scowling (Q 75:24). This is because they will be seeing God’s majesty rather than His beauty. Moreover, Rūzbihān com- ments on the verse, On that day there shall be dust on some faces, overspread with darkness (Q 80:40–41) thus: “Upon them there shall be dust (ghabra) of separation on the day of meeting; and upon them there will be darkness (qatara) of the lowliness of the veil and the darkness of punishment—we seek refuge in God from rebuke.”³³ Rūzbihān then interprets the “dust” as indi- cating three things: distance, darkness, and separation, follow- ing the commentaries of al-Sarī al-Saqaṭī (d. 865), Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 896), and al-Qushayrī (d. 1072), respectively.³⁴ These ideas point to God’s majesty.

In short, Rūzbihān maintains that the human story begins with a vision and audition of the beautiful God and ends with a vision of either the beautiful God or the majestic God, depending on whether or not people have kept the covenant of love during their lives on earth. Those who have kept it will encounter God’s beauty and mercy, and those who have not kept it will face God’s majesty and wrath. The true test lies between the Covenant of “yesterday” and the Judgment of “tomorrow”: this earthly existence that they face today. How human beings live today determines how they will re-encounter their Lord after death.

Search for Beauty in the World

Seeing human life as a search for divine beauty, Rūzbihān sug- gests that all beauty found in this world is a reminder of God’s beauty as witnessed on the Day of the Covenant. For this reason, there is great benefit in seeking beauty on all levels, and Rūzbihān encourages people to do so whenever possible. He points out that in each human being there remains at least a vague memory of God’s jamāl witnessed on the Day of the Covenant. In a key passage in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, he writes,

In everyone who witnesses [the Unseen], there remains the sweetness of the address of eternity. When [those who have reached the station of audi- tion] hear any goodly sound, see and witness any- thing comely and deemed beautiful, or smell any goodly fragrance in this world, they will hear it as an intermediary between the attribute and the essence through the quality of being prior to any act that emerges from the Real. It is as if one hears from the Real through the Real. Hence, every speck of engen- dered being has a specific tongue that speaks to him with the eternal speech.³⁵

Thus, it turns out that for those who have reached the advanced station of being able to recognize God at all times, every aes- thetic experience—i.e., a sensory encounter with a beautiful

object—is a reminder of the Day of the Covenant as it evokes the same pleasure that they had experienced in beholding God’s beauty on that day. In other words, every instance of beauty in the sensible world—be it a flower, a good smell, or a handsome face—triggers recollection of the beautiful God along with the pleasure this brings to its perceiver. Rūzbihān continues, “So, [this eternal speech] stirs him up away from his own existence toward the subsistence of the Real through the quality of annihilation [of everything other than Him]. God said, Those who hear the speech and follow the most beautiful of it [Q 39:18].”³⁶ For those who are able to hear God’s speech, that speech is so loud that it annihilates creation from their awareness, making them turn away from creation toward God alone, or away from things’ beauty toward God’s beauty.

Seeking Intimacy with Every Instance of Beauty

There is a term of particular importance in Rūzbihān’s discus- sion of beauty in general: istiʾnās, which means “to seek inti- macy (with something).” In Rūzbihān’s usage, this verb usually takes as its direct object something beautiful. Rūzbihān seems to have taken this expression from a saying of an enig- matic early Sufi, Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 861), though Rūzbihān does not always mention the name. For example, in his Ḥadīth commentary, Rūzbihān explains the saying, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful (aḥsan) form” in this manner: “It was [the Prophet’s] seeking intimacy with the beautiful (ḥasan) face, just as it has been reported that he used to love beautiful faces, because ‘Whoever seeks intimacy with God seeks intimacy with everything comely (malīḥ) and every handsome face.’”³⁷ Rūzbihān attributes the last statement to Dhū al-Nūn in Mashrab al-arwāḥ.³⁸ Dhū al-Nūn’s statement serves as one basis for Rūzbihān’s defense of the practice of loving beautiful human faces as a commendable activity for Muslims on the example of the prophet Muhammad. Elsewhere, Rūzbihān also observes rather matter-of-factly that it is natural for every “seeker of inti- macy to seek intimacy with all things deemed beautiful.”³⁹

In Manṭiq al-asrār Rūzbihān explains that gazing on beauti- ful faces is commendable because seeking intimacy with beauty is a sign of strong yearning for the divine beauty to

which every other beauty connects. Moreover, seeking inti- macy with beauty in the world clarifies human beings’ vision of reality, increasing their capacity to behold divine beauty. He writes: “Whoever seeks intimacy with the beauty (jamāl) of the beginninglessness seeks intimacy with the beauty of the forms of temporal origination by yearning for the quarry of holiness, because no one knows the degrees of intimacy with the Real except those who recognize the saying of the master of human- ity: ‘Gazing at a beautiful (ḥasan) face increases sight.’”⁴⁰ A fuller version of the ḥadīth is mentioned in ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn: “Three things increase the power of sight: gazing at greenery, gazing at beautiful faces, and gazing at flowing water.”⁴¹

While interpreting this ḥadīth, Rūzbihān points out the onto- logical difference between human beauty and cosmic or natu- ral beauty. He argues that all creatures are beautiful insofar as they are divine acts, which is the general sort of beauty given to creation. This general beauty is the result of God’s “general love” mentioned at the beginning of this chapter; likewise, the specific beauty is the result of God’s specific love. Human beings have both general and specific beauty, the latter of which derives from the light of God’s essence and attributes. Since all divine acts point to divine beauty, looking at them enhances human insight, which is the ability to recognize reality beyond appearances, but to a much lesser degree than gazing at beauti- ful human faces does, because they reveal God’s essence and attributes. Rūzbihān writes, “In beauty (ḥusn) there is the light of the specific act in which the light of the essence and attri- butes is clothed, while in the purity of greenery and flowing water there is the light of the general act in which the Real man- ifests the light of the specific act by way of describing Himself.”⁴² Rūzbihān further comments on the above ḥadīth: “This is from the station of the eye of gathering, and in this is an allusion to the station of becoming clothed.”⁴³ “Eye of gathering” is a term that Rūzbihān uses to indicate the ability to see the created and the uncreated in a thing at the same time as if gathering the two in one vision. “Becoming clothed” (iltibās) is a unique term that appears in his writings. Ernst translates it as “clothing with divinity,” which he contrasts with kashf, or unveiling.⁴⁴ Ballanfat notes the peculiar significance of iltibās in Rūzbihān’s thought and devotes sixteen pages of his book to analyzing it.⁴⁵

He translates the term as amphibolie (as Corbin does) and specu- lates on its etymological connection to talbīs. However, he casts a negative connotation on the term by emphasizing its connec- tion to Iblīs, a connotation that I do not find in Rūzbihān’s use of the term. I translate the term as “becoming clothed” to pre- serve the literal sense of the word. I do not include “divinity” in my translation of the term as Ernst does, because clothing seems to work both ways—creation becoming clothed by God and God becoming clothed by creation. With regard to the former, Rūzbihān writes, for instance, “the recognizer is clothed with the brilliance of the beauty (jamāl) of eternity.”⁴⁶ As for the latter perspective, he writes, “Do you not see how Moses fled from his cane when tremendousness was clothed by it?” referring to the episode of his cane turning into a snake.⁴⁷ Here Rūzbihān takes the cane as the thing by which tremendousness, a word often referring to the divine essence, was clothed.

It is the human being in possession of the eye of gathering who is capable of seeing the uncreated Creator clothed by every created thing, for every instance of sensible beauty is a pointer to God, the source of all beauty. Since God’s essence and attributes are intangible and too intense to be seen directly by humans, they appear as veiled or clothed by the human form. At the same time, beautiful human beings are clothed in the divine essence and attributes. It is the eye of gathering that can perceive both what is clothed (God) and what clothes (creation) or both what is clothed (creation) and what clothes (God) simultaneously. The opposite mode of perception is called the eye of separation (tafriqa), which sees the created apart from the Creator.⁴⁸

Superiority of Human Beauty over Cosmic Beauty

Rūzbihān regards human beauty as far superior to cosmic beauty, because the former is a stronger reflection of divine beauty in that it carries the full range of the divine attributes. In other words, human beauty is specific beauty, whereas cosmic beauty is general beauty. We can see how the tripartite analysis of God in terms of essence, attributes, and acts as dis- cussed in the previous chapter serves as a basis for Rūzbihān’s examination of the difference between divine, human, and cosmic beauty.

Because human beings are able to reflect the full range of the divine attributes, it was said, “He who recognizes himself rec- ognizes his Lord,” the saying commonly attributed to the Prophet to which Rūzbihān alluded earlier. To know oneself may be sufficient for attaining knowledge of God because the human being can mirror the full range of the divine attributes. The world is a mirror of God, and so are individual human beings. To know God by observing the world is possible, but one must search through the entire world to discover the divine attributes scattered throughout. This suggests the greater “effi- ciency” of knowing oneself as a path to knowing God than studying the entire world. Rūzbihān ascribes to the common notion of the human being as a microcosm, because “the two worlds are kneaded within the human being.” As he writes, “In the creation of the human being and in beautiful (ḥisān) faces the marks of His power are more than those found in the realm of being, because the two realms of being and the two worlds are kneaded within the human being. Within him [God’s] work is known. If he recognizes himself, he will recognize his Lord.”⁴⁹ Rūzbihān also points out that although humans can become passionate lovers of both God and other humans, they can never become passionate lovers of things. In his view, human beauty is superior to cosmic beauty not only in that it reveals the beautiful attributes of God, but also in that it can serve as a window through which passionate lovers witness and adore the beautiful God. In contrast, cosmic beauty as found in non- human creatures can only be objects of due respect as God’s beautiful creatures for those naive “ascetics,” by which Rūzbihān seems to mean stiff-minded conservatives who con- demn passionate love of God and the celebration of human beauty as a manifestation of divine beauty. They are suspi- cious of passionate love generally because it is not a Qurʾānic term. They are concerned about the potential harm that it may bring, such as leading people away from God. Rūzbihān explains the opposite approaches to beauty taken by the ascet-

ics and the passionate lovers in this passage:

As for the difference between Adamic beauty (nīkūʾī) and non-Adamic beauty among engendered beings and things in this world, it is that human beauty

(ḥusn) has the specific characteristic of the lights of God’s self-disclosure of the essence, while other things only have beauty from the freshness of the divine act. The vision of an engendered being is the qibla of ascetics, whereas the face of Adam is the qibla of the passionate lovers.⁵⁰

Rūzbihān’s use of the term “specific characteristic” (khāṣṣiyyat), which derives from the same root as “specific” (khāṣṣ), high- lights Adamic beauty’s connection to the divine essence, ren- dering it specific beauty rather than general beauty.

Rūzbihān further points out that while human beauty can cause love, cosmic beauty produces “mere” faith in God devoid of love for Him. In Rūzbihān’s view, this is not enough for the ideal human life: one must not only have faith in God but also love Him, so that God’s love for humans can be recip- rocated, as the Qurʾān says, He loves them, and they love Him (Q 5:54). Rūzbihān writes,

The immature in the Shariah carp at us and say, “The signs of the creation of the heavens are greater— why do you not look at them?” Yes indeed, there are signs in the heavens, and the signs are the path for the tight-hearted in the world. But in Adam’s face is the emergence of the sun of the self-disclosure of the [divine] essence and attributes, because passionate love came out of Adam’s beauty (ḥusn), while the light of faith came from the mold of the engendered being.⁵¹

Rūzbihān’s contrast between cosmic beauty and human beauty and their association with faith and love, respectively, are also clear from his argument “the signs [i.e., the acts] are the locus of faith” but not of love, because “witnessing the beauty (jamāl) of eternity does not occur in the signs.”⁵²

Another implication of the above discussion is that the study of things in the world will not make humans passionate lovers of God, however much they may come to admire God as an amazing Creator of this complex world. Rūzbihān’s warning toward “the immature in the Shariah” is firmly based on his ontological analysis of cosmic and human beauty, for they fail

to understand the order of things. The more perfect a thing is, the more beautiful it is, because it is more similar to God. The more a thing reflects of God’s beauty, the more admiration and love it deserves. The more admirable and lovable a thing is, the stronger its attractive force toward the source of all beauty— God. Therefore, Rūzbihān maintains that there is no reason to restrict human search for beauty in the created domain to non- human objects, ignoring the more obvious human beauty.

In fact, Rūzbihān argues that looking at beautiful human faces is a means to finding God—both His beauty and majesty. In his commentary on the ḥadīth, “Seek good in those with beautiful faces,”⁵³ Rūzbihān writes, “The beauty of the face is the garb of the light of God’s majesty. He garbs it [i.e., beauty] on the face of everyone characterized by His character. Part of His lofty character is His munificence and generosity, so he who is qualified by His beauty is qualified by His munificence and generosity.”⁵⁴ Moreover, this ḥadīth also means:

Seek the purity of the Real’s self-disclosure from the beautiful faces, for they are the locus of the appear- ance of the lights of [God’s] beauty and majesty. Then you may come to love God by means of His act and you may recognize the realities of His art in the holy spirits and pure [bodily] frames. Thus you may attain to the recognition of the secrets of [God’s] attributes and the realities of [His] essence.⁵⁵

Rūzbihān also comments on a closely related ḥadīth: “Make use of beautiful (ḥisān) faces and the black pupil, for God is ashamed to chastise a comely face in the Fire.”56 He further writes, “When God distinguishes a servant with outer and inner beauty (ḥusn) and clothes him with the clothing of love for Him, He makes him a niche for the self-disclosure of His beauty and majesty, so His light appears from his light.”57

Correspondence between Inner and Outer Beauty

Rūzbihān makes it clear that in speaking of beauty, he is referring not only to physical beauty, but also to a hidden cor- respondence between the outer and the inner. He refers to this

correspondence by using two Arabic terms that are commonly contrasted: khuluq and khalq, or character and creation (or physical constitution), which derive from the same root. He argues that it is because of the correspondence between a per- son’s character and creation that the Prophet said, “Let the most beautiful in face among you lead you, for he is more likely to be the most beautiful in character.”⁵⁸ Rūzbihān writes, “[The Prophet] explained that beauty (ḥusn) of character follows upon beauty (ḥusn) of creation.”⁵⁹ Thus, outward beauty is understood to be a reflection of inner beauty. In turn, the inner beauty of a human being mirrors divine beauty: “Whoever has more subtle existence has a finer body, a more noble spirit, and a more precious soul. In his [bodily] frame, the light of the [divine] quarry is more apparent from his substance.”⁶⁰

The idea that there is a connection between inner and outer beauty is also suggested by another ḥadīth: “‘He who prays much by night—his face is beautiful by day,” on which Rūzbihān comments, “God discloses Himself during the night to those who pray, and then garbs their faces with some of His light. Then their faces become the niche of the lights of the Real’s self-disclosure, with the light of the [divine] self-disclo- sure glitters within them. The beauty (ḥusn) to which he alluded is a garb of the Real’s light.”⁶¹

Those Who Know God Are Loved by People

We have already seen that the more beautiful a thing is, the stronger the love it causes in its perceiver. Moreover, there is a relationship between knowledge and love, especially when it comes to God—the more humans know of God, the more they love Him, because they can see more of His beauty. Here are some of Rūzbihān’s descriptions of such lovers/knowers of God:

The truthful, loving recognizer is like roses and sweet basil because his body is created from the dust of the paradises and his spirit from the light of the sovereignty of the All-Merciful. All creatures love him and all things seek intimacy with him, for people find in him a breeze from the Real, and they

perfume themselves with his scent. When someone is accepted by the people, their love for him is an indication of his recognition of God. When some- one is not like that, their hatred for him is a mark of his misery—we seek refuge in God! Thus Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī reported from the messenger of God: “Shall I not tell you who is the most beloved to God? They said, “Yes, O messenger of God,” thinking that he would mention a man. He replied: “Surely the most beloved of you to God is the most beloved of you to the people.” Then he said, “Shall I not tell you who is the most hated by God?” We said, “Yes, O messenger of God,” thinking that he would mention a man. He replied: “Surely the most hated by God is the most hated of you by the people.” He made us understand that the love that people’s hearts have for a person is the testimony to God’s love for him, because hearts incline toward whosoever has the garb of Lordship, they love whosoever has the reality of recognition, and they see God’s gifts in the features of the recognizers. Indeed, when God loves a servant, He makes him lovable to the hearts of all creatures from His throne to the earth.⁶²

If lovers of God are loved by other people, how do these lovers themselves see others and the world around them? On this, Rūzbihān remarks: “When the passionate lover’s journey in passionate love is complete, he will not see anything deemed beautiful without seeing God’s beauty (ḥusn) within it. This is why the passionate lover loves the beauty of every beautiful thing in existence.”63 Earlier, we saw how Rūzbihān encour- ages the practice of loving and seeking intimacy with beauti- ful things as a means to advance on the path to God. At the end of this path, human beings are able to see God’s beauty behind all beautiful things, as if these things become transpar- ent. Rūzbihān refers to this mode of perception by the already mentioned term the eye of gathering. He also uses the term the eye of the spirit in the same meaning. One of his poems reads: “Being became the mirror of the Real and the Real appeared from it. / With the eye of the spirit I gaze at the spirit in the

mirror.”64 Elsewhere, Rūzbihān contrasts the eye of the spirit with the eye of the intellect. While the eye of the spirit sees the beauty of the Creator, the eye of the intellect sees the created object. Given that he uses the eye of the spirit synonymously with the eye of gathering, the eye of the intellect can be under- stood to correspond to the eye of separation.

Rūzbihān further discusses this idea while commenting on the ḥadīth, “God created Adam upon His form.”⁶⁵ In discuss- ing Adam’s beauty, Rūzbihān recognizes the dilemma of whether to see creation (Adam) as “transparent”—which means to see only God with the eye of gathering—or to focus on the “opaqueness” of creation, which hides its Creator. Rūzbihān addresses this issue by calling God the “Artist” (ṣāniʿ) and His creation “art” (ṣunʿ). First, he describes the state in which he was once so overcome with the sheer creative power of the Creator such that he could only see the Creator, consequently falling in love with Him. While the eye of the spirit was fixed on God, his other eye, namely the eye of the intellect was fixated on His creation instead.

 

Figure 4.2 A chart showing the two inner eyes and the corre- sponding objects of their perception

Note that in the following passage, “intellect” refers to the par- tial intellect belonging to individual human beings, which is inferior to the spirit, as opposed to the universal or non-com- pound intellect discussed earlier, which is superior to the spir- its as they derive from it. Rūzbihān writes,

The bird of the garden of beginninglessness had become hidden in the nest of the acts with the cur- tain of the art of the pearl. It put on the clothing of We have created the human being in the most beautiful stature (Q 95:4) and was ornamented by the beauty

(jamāl) of the meaning of “God created Adam upon His form” in the beauty (ḥusn) of He made your forms beautiful (Q 40:64, 64:3). The art of the Artist was lost in the Artist. I did not know what a rarity that was or what that was. Without choice the eye of my spirit lingered on that mirror, and the tumult of passionate love overcame me. The eye of the spirit remained on the Artist, and, in unbelief, the eye of the intellect on the artifact (ṣanīʿat). I saw the eternal beauty (jamāl) with the eye of the spirit, and the form of Adam with the eye of the intellect. It also took possession of me and said: “Look at the human world with the human eye.”⁶⁶

At the end of the above passage, Rūzbihān warns, “Look at the human world with the human eye.” The passage is describing Rūzbihān’s visionary encounter with God, who tells him to use the sober eye of separation to look at the human world rather than the intoxicated eye of gathering. This is because the latter induces a state of intoxication in which one would be unable to distinguish between the created and the uncreated.

In fact, Rūzbihān is aware of the danger of being stuck with either eye. If one is stuck with the eye of separation, one would be incapable of seeing anything beyond sensible phenomena, which is also problematic for seekers of God.⁶⁷ His defense of the love of beautiful human faces may even seem to suggest defense of shāhid-bāzī, literally meaning “witness-play,” refer- ring to an often-criticized practice of watching beautiful youths merely to enjoy the sight of them as manifestations of divine beauty. Later in Muslim history shāhid-bāzī became almost synonymous with homoeroticism in some circles and was vehemently denounced by jurists and theologians. Although Rūzbihān does not use the term shāhid-bāzī in his writings, he does use the term shāhid in a way that is consistent with much of earlier Sufi literature. For instance, Rūzbihān calls Adam shāhid, that is, a beautiful being through whom God is witnessed.

Instead of shāhid-bāzī, Henry Corbin uses another term to characterize  Rūzbihān’s  approach  to  human  beauty:

jamāl-parastī (or zībāʾī-parastī), meaning “adoration of beauty.”⁶⁸ However, no Sufis who were later thought to belong to this trend of thought had used the phrase to label themselves in their own times, so this label is hardly perfect, especially since “adoration” may connote “worship,” when the only proper object of worship is God, as Sufi teachers repeatedly affirm. Rūzbihān would support the adoration of the “beautiful” inas- much as it reminds one of the divine beauty. Gradually, one can cultivate the eye to see that divine beauty disclosing itself in all things.

Summary

Rūzbihān’s distinction between cosmic and human beauty is closely related to his discussion of God’s essence, attributes, and acts. He argues that cosmos has general beauty insofar as it is a divine act, a divine creation. Human beings, in contrast, have specific beauty, consisting of the divine attributes, which in turn describe the divine essence. However, the degrees of their specific beauty vary and largely depend on their effort in beautifying their souls by eliminating vices or ugly qualities.

Rūzbihān presents the driving force for God’s creation as the most beautiful creator (Q 23:14) to be His eternal desire to be recognized, as expressed by the ḥadīth of the Hidden Treasure. Beauty creates beautiful things, which seek to return to their origin. In other words, beauty is the origin and end of human existence as well as the means of returning to the origin. Hence, becoming beautiful and finding divine beauty in all things including oneself are the goal of human life. At the same time, they constitute the fulfillment of the covenant, because it was a covenant of love, promising to love only that beautiful God whom human beings witnessed on that primordial day. If they want to encounter that beautiful God again in this life and the next, that is possible only by beautifying their own souls by embodying the full range of the most beautiful names of God. This is a task too heavy for most human beings without guides on the path. And these guides are the prophets, who represent the most beautiful class of human beings.

5

The Prophetology of Beauty

Surely you have a beautiful example in God’s messenger.

—Qurʾān 33:21

H

uman beauty is superior to cosmic beauty, but not all human beauty is equal. At the zenith of human beauty stand the prophets, who represent the highest degree of human perfection. Rūzbihān calls the prophets the mirrors of God and argues, “Adam, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad…are the quarries of the innate human nature of beauty that derives from the beauty of the beginningless, for God makes His beauty appear from them in the world. Hence, beauty (ḥusn) is inherited from them by the people of beauty (jamāl) in this world and the next, and they are at the center of God’s beauty (ḥusn) in the world.”¹ While all prophets are beautiful, five fig- ures stand out in Rūzbihān’s discussion: Adam, Joseph, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad.² It is in the discussion of prophetic beauty that Rūzbihān’s theory of beauty culminates. The very fact that creation is a realm of relativity seems to necessitate the variety of “perfections” represented by the multiple prophets. In fact, Rūzbihān’s presentation of each instance of prophetic beauty has a different emphasis, as will be seen in the present chapter. Discussion of prophetic beauty is prominent in Rūzbihān’s writings, which led Henry Corbin to declare “prophetology of beauty” to be one of the six themes

101

that characterize the stages of inner journey in Rūzbihān’s scheme.³

Adam: The Symbol of Universal Human Beauty

Adam is the first human being and the first prophet, so he occupies a place of prime importance in Rūzbihān’s discus- sion of beauty. Emblematic is the following episode of Adam’s life in paradise that Rūzbihān recounts: “Adam toured around paradise and returned to the [divine] presence, embarrassed. God asked him, ‘What is this embarrassment?’ He replied, ‘Out of delight with my beauty (jamāl), because Thou hast not created any creature in paradise more beautiful (aḥsan) than I.’”⁴ Rūzbihān constantly praises and admires Adam because he represents the beauty and perfection of the original human state. He emerges as a key figure in both ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn and Mashrab al-arwāḥ, where Rūzbihān mentions Adam almost as often as Muhammad. In ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, a work of about 140 pages, Rūzbihān mentions Adam nearly seventy times. In the very last and highest station in the spirits’ journey to God, namely the 1,001st station in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, Rūzbihān pres- ents a crucial discussion of Adam. What is it about Adam that fascinated Rūzbihān so much? One useful way to examine this question is to investigate the contrast between Adam and the angels, discussed extensively in the Qurʾān and often com- mented upon by Rūzbihān.

We saw in the previous chapter that as the forefather of all humanity Adam symbolizes generic human beauty, for the Qurʾānic term Ādam refers both to Adam as an individual and to the human being (insān) generically, though a crucial differ- ence remains: all are human, but not all are prophets. Most people are beautiful only potentially; their innate human nature of beauty (fiṭrat al-ḥusn) awaits rediscovery. In contrast, Adam and other prophets possess beauty in full actuality. In Rūzbihān’s view, Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīths about Adam simply demonstrate the power of human beauty in full actual- ization. Key to his discussion of Adam’s beauty is the Qurʾānic episode of God presenting Adam to the angels and command- ing the latter to prostrate toward him:

When thy Lord said to the angels, “Indeed, I am placing on earth a vicegerent,” they said, “Wilt Thou place therein one who will do corruption there and shed blood, while we glorify Thee and proclaim Thee holy?” He said, “Indeed, I know what you do not know.” And He taught Adam the names, all of them. Then He presented them unto the angels and said, “Now tell Me the names of these, if you speak truly.” They said, “Glory belongs to Thee! We have no knowledge except what Thou hast taught us. Indeed Thou art All-Knowing, All-Wise. He said, “O Adam, tell them their names.” When he told them their names, He said, “Did I not tell you that I know the unseen [things] of the heavens and the earth? I know what you display and what you were hiding. When We said to the angels, “Prostrate to Adam,” they prostrated themselves except Iblīs; he refused and waxed proud, so he was one of the unbelievers. (Q 2:30–34)

In this Qurʾānic episode, the angels prostrate to Adam because of his knowledge of the names, all of them (Q 2:31), which they lacked. While this verse is often understood to mean that God taught Adam the names of all things, Rūzbihān also takes it to mean all the names of God, that is, the most beautiful names of God. He writes, “Adam became more knowledgeable than the angels because he knew all His most beautiful names, which are the keys to the doors of the treasuries of the [divine] attributes and the realities of the [divine] essence.”⁵ He explains elsewhere that the names that God taught to Adam were such that “in them was the announcement of all of the essence, attributes, qualities, and acts. He taught what was and what will be.”⁶

Rūzbihān maintains that Adam did not simply have knowl-

edge of the divine names, but they were deeply ingrained in his being. In interpreting another verse, Verily God has chosen Adam and Noah (Q 3:33), Rūzbihān argues that this is what made Adam superior to the angels.

He chose Adam by the knowledge of the [divine] attributes. He unveiled the beauty (jamāl) of the

[divine] essence before creating the world in the eter- nity of eternity. When He wanted to create [Adam’s] spirit, He looked toward His majesty through His beauty and looked toward His beauty through His majesty. Then from these two looks appeared Adam’s spirit, which He created with a specific attribute. He blew a spirit into his spirit, which is the knowledge of the [divine] attributes….Hence, through these attributes, he has precedence over the noble, dutiful angels.⁷

Rūzbihān also explains that God commanded the angels, “Prostrate to Adam” (Q 7:11), because God “disclosed Himself to [the angels] through the light of His beauty (jamāl) from the mirror of Adam’s face.”⁸ In this process, Adam became “the qibla of the self-disclosure of the attributes and the essence.”⁹ Therefore, it was not toward Adam’s humanity that God com- manded the angels to prostrate; it was toward the divine beauty that was manifest in Adam. The only creature in this episode that did not prostrate to Adam at God’s command was Iblīs because, Rūzbihān explains, “he was veiled from that majesty and beauty by his looking at himself, his making analogy, and his ignorance.”¹⁰

One theme that emerges here is the close connection between beauty and knowledge or recognition (maʿrifa). The dividing line between those who prostrated to Adam and Iblīs was whether or not they were able to recognize God’s beauty and majesty in Adam. Rūzbihān points out this connection more directly in the following passage: “The difference between things deemed beautiful and things deemed ugly is that God created what is deemed beautiful to be a mirror of gentleness and what is deemed ugly to be a mirror of severity. Severity came to be the locus of disavowal (nakarat), and gen- tleness the locus of recognition.”¹¹ Recognition of reality leads to finding beauty and deeming things beautiful; disavowal of reality results in finding ugliness or deeming things ugly. The latter describes Iblīs’s state in which he refused to bow down to Adam.

Rūzbihān makes a further point: it is wrong to deem God’s majestic aspect ugly and only His beautiful (jamīl) aspect

beautiful (ḥasan), for they together comprise God’s ḥusn, while there is no ugliness in God.

If an idle talker says that what appears in Adam’s face is the same in a face deemed ugly, then he has not recognized the marvelous innate human nature and the extract of nearness. Do not listen to his sor- cery, fraud, trickery and meaningless talk, because it is all nonsense. If he says that [i.e., what appears in Adam’s face] is apparent in this [i.e., human face deemed ugly], these are purely foolish words. Those who profess oneness know that what is deemed ugly is one of the relative things, for in eternity itself, there is nothing ugly. But he [i.e., the idle talker] has supposed that His severe face is uglier.¹²

Here the distinction between jamāl and ḥusn becomes essen- tial, because Rūzbihān is arguing that it is the mistaken identi- fication of God’s jamāl with ḥusn that leads to another mistaken identification of God’s jalāl with qubḥ. It is true that in the cre- ated realm of relative things, things deemed ugly may reflect God’s severity, as discussed in the previous quote. However, in the eternal realm of the absolute, there is nothing but ḥusn, with no room for ugliness, things deemed ugly, or even things deemed beautiful. This is because absolute ugliness is by defi- nition nonexistence, and things deemed beautiful or ugly are relative things, therefore, do not belong to the realm of the absolute.

Rūzbihān notes that the angels were also ignorant when they protested to God, saying, “Wilt Thou place therein one who will do corruption and shed blood, while we glorify Thee by praise and proclaim Thee holy?” (Q 2:30). He writes, “When [the angels] did not know God truly and were incapable of perceiving the truth…they were turned away from the door of Lordship and God turned them toward Adam…because they were worshipping God in ignorance.”¹³ Here Rūzbihān presents the angels as ignorant worshippers of God. In a more nuanced presentation of the difference between the angels and human beings who share Adam’s level of knowl- edge, he writes:

The difference between the bearing witness (shahāda) of the angels and that of the folk of knowl- edge among the children of Adam is that the angels bore witness with respect to certitude and the pos- sessors of knowledge with respect to witnessing (mushāhada). Also, the testimony of the angels was from the vision of the acts, and the testimony of the knowers was from the vision of the attributes. More- over, the testimony of the angels was from the vision of tremendousness, but the testimony of the know- ers was from the vision of beauty (jamāl). Hence fear was born from [the angels’] vision, but hope [was born] from the knowers’ vision.¹⁴

Another difference between the angels and Adam is that God created the angels to worship Him, but He created Adam to love Him. Rūzbihān explains that God “did not see any pure lover in the realm of being as He would have desired. So He placed Adam for the sake of love, because He created the angels for the sake of worship. Upon consultation with the angels, He made them recognize that they are empty of love due to their preoccupation with Him by way of worship.”¹⁵ Since love is the inevitable response to seeing beauty, if the angels do not love God, it is because they are unable to see God’s beauty.

The idea that the angels are compulsory worshippers of God who do not know passionate love is a common theme in Sufi literature. Even though the angels are usually placed above all other creatures in the hierarchy of being, when con- trasted with the best of human beings—that is, those who have lived up to their innate nature—the angels become the same as the rest of nonhuman creatures in the sense that they are all static “end-products” of God’s act of pronouncing “Be!” (Q 36:82), out of which they emerged. Both the angels and nonhu- man creatures are incapable of disobeying God, for which reason they can never move “up” or “down” in relation to God. They are fixed in their own places, and God will neither reward nor punish them for their action because they do only what God commands them to do. They worship God out of compulsion, but never out of love, for love by nature is

voluntary and can never be forced. In contrast, human beings constantly fluctuate in their relation to God, either by obeying or disobeying God. If they do obey, they do so out of love for Him. Rūzbihān shows that it is this possibility of love for God that puts humans above all other creatures, including the angels.

Adam’s superiority over the angels is clear, but so is the superiority of the rest of the prophets over the angels. Then what fascinated Rūzbihān about Adam so much that he praised him much more often than most other prophets? There seems to be nothing special about Adam’s beauty, because it is shared by all humanity in their innate nature. In fact, it is precisely the universality of Adamic beauty that seems to constitute its unique appeal for Rūzbihān. Adam symbolizes the original human perfection and beauty that all human beings are able to rediscover within themselves. Hence, Rūzbihān’s celebration of Adam’s beauty turns out to be the celebration of the beauty of innate human nature— what he calls fiṭrat al-ḥusn—which is waiting to be rediscov- ered by each human being. The human quest, then, is to recover the primordial state in which Adam existed in the full image of God, embodying all His most beautiful attributes. When people achieve that state, Rūzbihān says that they become “the second Adam”¹⁶—and that, Rūzbihān seems to suggest, is the goal of human life.

Joseph: The Beautiful Prophet

The prophet most commonly associated with the idea of beauty in Islam is undoubtedly Joseph. The twelfth chapter of the Qurʾān—Sūrat Yūsuf—is named after him and devoted to his story, providing ample evidence for his special beauty, both external and internal, that is, his attractive physical appearance and moral uprightness. The significance of Joseph’s beauty is also noted in the Ḥadīth literature. In line with the Qurʾānic depiction of Joseph as an extremely beauti- ful human being, Muhammad is reported to have said, “Joseph was given half of [all] beauty” (shaṭr al-ḥusn).¹⁷ The Qurʾān even calls Sūrat Yūsuf the most beautiful of tales (Q 12:3).

Rūzbihān comments: “How would it not be the most beautiful of tales? This tale is eternal without beginning or end. Every beauty (ḥusn) in the world goes back to it, and every beauty and everything deemed beautiful emerge from it.”¹⁸

Rūzbihān’s most concentrated treatment of Joseph is found in his Qurʾān commentary on Sūrat Yūsuf, even though the predominant theme there is not beauty per se but rather love (ʿishq), specifically the love of Jacob and Zulaykhā for Joseph. This is nothing unusual, as beauty is almost invariably dis- cussed along with love, and love is a common discussion in Sufi texts, because it designates the true relationship between human beings and God.¹⁹ In ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, Rūzbihān spends more time praising Adam’s beauty than Joseph’s, and the same applies to Mashrab al-arwāḥ, in which he mentions Joseph at various points but usually in passing. Thus, outside Rūzbihān’s Qurʾān commentary, the figure of Joseph finds no concentrated treatment in Rūzbihān’s works.

The relative dispersion of Rūzbihān’s discussion of Joseph’s beauty does not undermine his importance for Rūzbihān’s understanding of prophetic beauty. In fact, he does not shy away from making such striking statements about Joseph as, “The entire world was not worth a single hair of Joseph”;²⁰ and “our master [Muhammad] said that ‘half of [all] beauty was given’ to Joseph. His beauty (ḥusn) came as miracles and signs, for in him was the mark of God’s beauty (jamāl).”²¹ These are statements that Rūzbihān makes to highlight the true worth of Joseph in contrast to the paltry price (Q 12:20) for which the caravan sold him as a slave in Egypt.

In interpreting the verse, When Joseph said to his father, “O father, indeed I saw eleven stars, the sun, and the moon prostrating to me” (Q 12:4), Rūzbihān writes, “So the sun is like the essence, the moon the attributes, and the stars the descriptions, quali- ties, and names.”²² Elsewhere he explains the prostration of the sun, the moon, and the stars to Joseph in this manner:

In the mirror of his beauty (jamāl) the counte- nance of the beginningless beauty appeared, so the planets of the heavens of messengerhood pros- trated to him reverently, just as the angels did to Adam. This is because both were the Kaʿbas of the

attributes as well as the rising places of the sun of beginningless things. Because of that, the sun wor- shippers of eternity prostrated to those two princes of nonexistence.²³

The “sun” represents God Himself, who is the only proper object of worship and prostration by the creatures. Joseph and Adam were prostrated to because both displayed the divine attributes, through which the sun of the divine essence shines forth, even though they are “princes of nonexistence,” that is, prophets created ex nihilo by God.

Rūzbihān recognizes that the beauty of both Joseph and Adam was due to an endowment of the divine attributes, but he seems to regard Joseph’s beauty as superior to Adam’s because angels prostrated to Adam, but Jacob and his sons prostrated to Joseph, and prophets are superior to angels.

[Joseph] was the second Adam because he had the same garb of lordship that Adam had. When the angels saw what they saw upon Adam, they all pros- trated to him. However, here noble prophets pros- trated to him, and they are better than the angels. How should they not prostrate to these two when the holy lights and the majesty of the gloriousness shine forth from [their] faces?²⁴

From the theological viewpoint, the prostration of creatures to another creature—even a prophet—poses a problem. Rūzbihān explains that it happened in the cases of Adam and Joseph because these were instances of becoming clothed (iltibās). Joseph became clothed in the divine attributes, which are what Jacob and his sons witnessed, causing them to prostrate.²⁵

Rūzbihān often discusses Joseph’s beauty as a mirror. He writes about him, “In the mirror of his beauty (jamāl) the face of eternal beauty was apparent”;²⁶ “He was the mirror of the Real’s beauty (ḥusn), and his beauty was an effect of the quar- ries of beginningless beauty.”²⁷ Like the Kaʿba in an earlier passage, the mirror signifies the locus of divine self-disclosure. To be a mirror of God’s beauty is to be clothed in His beauty: “The beauty (ḥusn) of the beginningless beauty (jamāl) clothed

[Joseph’s] face, and in God’s lands he was God’s mirror from which the Real disclosed Himself to the worshippers.”²⁸

In the story as told in Sūrat Yūsuf, the first person to display intense affection for Joseph was his father, Jacob. Rūzbihān takes Jacob’s love for Joseph as an indication of Jacob’s strong love for God, as he writes about Jacob, “His love (ʿishq) for Joseph was nothing but love for the Real. Joseph’s beauty (jamāl) was a means of approach to God’s beauty in love. It was for this reason that our master [Muhammad] said, ‘[Joseph] was given half of [all] beauty.’”²⁹ Rūzbihān also writes, “[Joseph’s] beauty was from that [divine] beauty, and the light of the attributes in his creation (khalq) and character (khuluq) was from that very perfection [of God].”³⁰

After Joseph was separated from his father by his half-broth- ers’ plot (cf. Q 12:9–18), the first person to discover Joseph was a water-carrier of the caravan that happened to pass by the well into which Joseph had been cast. Upon discovering Joseph in the well, the water-carrier says, “Good news! Here is a boy” (Q 12:19). Rūzbihān interprets this verse as meaning, “This is the one through whom eternity is witnessed (shāhid al-qidam).”³¹ As discussed earlier, shāhid literally means “wit- ness,” a term that has gained a special connotation in later Sufi literature (especially in the Persianate world). It designates a beautiful person through whom divine beauty can be wit- nessed and contemplated upon.³² Rūzbihān often calls Joseph a shāhid, for instance, in such phrase as “Jacob’s passionate love for that shāhid of God,”³³ that is, the person through whom God is witnessed. However, the water-carrier from the cara- van did not call Joseph a shāhid but merely referred to him as “a boy” (ghulām), which certainly does not do justice to either Joseph’s extreme beauty or his status as a noble prophet. In other words, the water-carrier did not have full perception of Joseph’s perfect qualities when he made the above statement. Rūzbihān explains that this is the reason why the caravan ends up selling Joseph for a paltry price (Q 12:20): “God had a secret in Joseph and He concealed His secret from them. If He had unveiled the reality of what He had put in him, they would have died. Do you not see how they said, ‘Here is a boy’? If they knew the traces of [divine] power in him, they would have said, ‘This is a prophet and a righteous man.’”³⁴

Rūzbihān also writes, “When they did not recognize him through the specific characteristics of prophecy and sainthood and did not see the traces of God’s beauty (jamāl) upon him, they sold him for a paltry price (Q 12:20) due to their ignorance of him and of the treasures of power, the lights of witnessing, and the divinely-given knowledges of the unseen placed within him.”³⁵ Thus, the connection between beauty and knowledge is again clear: people’s perception of prophetic beauty depends on their level of understanding.

Another important character in Sūrat Yūsuf is Zulaykhā, the unnamed wife of the man from Egypt who buys Joseph in the Qurʾān (the biblical Potiphar), who is attracted to Joseph. She strikes a good contrast with Jacob, whose particular affection for Joseph was due to his awareness of prophetic qualities in Joseph. However, Sufi commentators on the Qurʾān did not hesitate to elevate Zulaykhā’s love for Joseph to the love of God. This interpretation appears prominently in versions of the Joseph and Zulaykhā tale in Persian literature culminating in that by Jāmī (d. 1492). Rūzbihān takes a similar line of argu- ment when he presents Zulaykhā’s passionate love for Joseph as coming from a higher origin than shahwa, or sexual appetite. He interprets the verse, She made for him and he would have made for her (Q 12:24), as indicating the inseparability of beauty and love: “Zulaykhā’s passionate love and Joseph’s beauty (jamāl) are two attributes that stem from two beginningless quarries, and they are the attributes of beginningless beauty and begin- ningless love (maḥabba).”³⁶ Thus, Joseph and Zulaykhā symbol- ize beauty and love, which are joined for eternity and the inseparability of which is one of the common themes in Sufi literature.

Another group who witness Joseph’s beauty in Sūrat Yūsuf are the women of Egypt. Upon seeing Joseph, they proclaim, “God save us! This is no mortal; he is no other than a noble angel” (Q 12:31). Their calling Joseph a noble angel indicates their real- ization that Joseph’s beauty transcends ordinary human beauty, but like the water-carrier, they failed to see the truth about him: that he was a prophet—neither a mere young boy nor an angel. Rūzbihān writes, “They saw him in the attribute of holy angels…meaning: This is no person to delude anyone into having sexual appetite. He is hallowed beyond our world

because upon him is the garb of the angels [made] of the beam- ing lights and the divine proof.”³⁷

Part of the evidence that the Egyptian women noticed some- thing special about Joseph’s beauty is that they cut their hands upon seeing him: “O possessor of intellect! Understand that when the female companions of Joseph saw Joseph, they saw the garb of Lordship upon the locus of servanthood. Hence, upon seeing him they fell into [the state] in which the angels fell, prostrating to Adam upon seeing him.”³⁸ Such is the effect of perceiving divine beauty in the prophets. The fact that the women of Egypt cut their hands highlights their sense of bewilderment and awe.

Zulaykhā was the only person in the gathering who did not

cut her hands. By focusing on this fact, Rūzbihān makes another point: Zulaykhā was superior to the women of Egypt in appreciating Joseph’s beauty, as she was better prepared to bear the actual sight of its intensity: “Zulaykhā knew that [the women of Egypt] were too weak to bear the initial sights of Joseph, his beauty (ḥusn), beauty (jamāl), gentleness, and visage.”³⁹ Since Zulaykhā had become accustomed to the beauty of Joseph over time, she was not bewildered to the point of cutting herself with a knife. Here emerges another important fact about human perception of beauty: one must have the receptivity and preparedness for bearing its sight. Otherwise one will be bewildered by its intensity and not be able to perceive it fully.

Just as Adam’s superior beauty and knowledge caused Iblīs’s envy, which became a major source of the trials of the children of Adam, Joseph’s beauty became the source of tribu- lation for him and those around him. Joseph’s beauty was so intense that it caused diverse reactions: intense affection and love (Jacob), envy (his half-brothers), passionate love (Zulaykhā), and bewilderment (the women of Egypt). The complex human attributes and psychological states that arose in reaction to Joseph’s beauty have no doubt contributed to elevating Sūrat Yūsuf as one of the most extensively com- mented and elaborated upon sūras in Muslim history.

While there are certain parallels between the Qurʾānic sto- ries of Adam and Joseph, one key difference is that Rūzbihān understands Joseph’s beauty to be special in the sense that it

was not given to all humans, unlike Adam’s beauty, which lies in each human being’s innate nature. In contrast to the Adam story, which deals with the human situation across the board, the Joseph story focuses on his chosenness as a locus of the extraordinary manifestation of divine beauty. As the intensively beautiful human being, Joseph’s life becomes the epicenter of the most intense love—one that eventually transforms his lover into a lover of God in the Sufi retelling. This seems to be what makes Joseph’s story the “most beau- tiful” of stories.

Moses: The Witness to the Self-Disclosure of the Divine Beauty

For many Muslim thinkers, the most significant Qurʾānic epi- sode of Moses is his encounter with God’s self-disclosure (tajallī) on the mountain. He said, “My Lord, show me so that I may look upon Thee.” God replied, “Thou shalt not see Me, but look at the mountain. If it stays firmly in its place, then thou shalt see Me.” When his Lord disclosed Himself to the mountain, He made it crumble into dust, and Moses fell down in a swoon (Q 7:143). According to Rūzbihān, this was not the self-disclosure of “God” but rather of God’s beauty. He interprets Moses’s request this way: “If You were to show me Your beauty (jamāl), I would be able to look at You.” Rūzbihān explains that Moses made this request not because he was unable to see God. Rather, “every atom of Moses saw God. When his intoxication became predominant and his yearning increased, the formali- ties of knowledge fell away from him, and only passionate love remained. Then the tongue of expansion got into motion in search of awareness of the Reality.”⁴⁰

God’s reply to Moses’s request was, “Thou shalt not see Me.”

Rūzbihān explains that this was the denial of the possibility for Moses as a creature to see God’s essence directly. However, God does not simply leave Moses at that but suggests that he “see” God through the intermediary of creation, that is, the mountain. Rūzbihān writes, “The Real replied to him saying, ‘Thou shalt not see Me’—that is, ‘You will not perceive Me just as I  am,  because  you  have  the  intermediary  of  temporal

origination in the midst—even though you have from Me beginningless eyes and endless sight.’ Then He turned him over to an intermediary by saying, ‘Look at the mountain.’”⁴¹ Note the difference between “looking” (naẓara) and “seeing” (raʾā): everyone can look, but only some will see, just as every- one who listens will not necessarily hear (cf., Q 7:198). When God finally disclosed Himself to the mountain, “Moses saw the beauty (jamāl) of eternity in the mirror of the mountain, and then he swooned.”⁴² Thus, Moses had an indirect vision of God. Rūzbihān provides another commentary on God’s reply to

Moses, “Thou shalt not see Me but look at the mountain”:

“As long as you are you, you will not see Me through the description of eternity, subsistence, the assaults of tremendousness, and magnificence. Look at your likeness in the realm of temporal origination, that is, the mountain. Look at the mountain, because in you is the defect of temporal origination, and you will not see Me except through the intermediary of temporal origination.” So He made the moun- tain a mirror of His acts and then disclosed Himself through His attribute to His specific act and then to the mountain. Then Moses saw the beauty of eter- nity in the mirror of the mountain. He fell down in a swoon, because he reached his goal to the extent of his state. Had He disclosed Himself solely to Moses, then Moses would have become dust; and had He disclosed Himself solely to the mountain, the moun- tain would have been burnt down to the seventh earth, for He disclosed Himself to the mountain from the source of exaltedness and the glories of beginninglessness.⁴³

There is an unfathomable gap between the Creator and the created, the eternal and the temporal. Creatures—even prophets—can never see God in Himself (i.e., in His essence) but only His attributes as manifest in creation (i.e., divine act). That is why God disclosed His attribute, beauty, to Moses through the intermediary of a divine act, that is, the mountain functioning as a mirror. In the preceding sections on Adam

and Joseph, we have seen that Rūzbihān calls both Adam and Joseph “mirrors” of God for others to see God. One difference here is that it is an inanimate object, the mountain, that serves as a mirror to display God to Moses (as opposed to Adam for the angels).

Other Qurʾānic verses also indicate Moses’s connection to beauty, such as, “I threw love upon thee from Me and that thou mightest be made upon My eyes” (Q 20:39). This is a verse com- monly cited by Muslim thinkers primarily to indicate the con- nection between Moses and the notion of love. And if God loves Moses, he must be beautiful. This is a point that Rūzbihān also makes:

Adam was the qibla of the angels, because he was God’s means of approach [placed] between Him and His angels, for on him was the garb of His maj- esty and beauty. Thus [the Prophet] said, “God cre- ated Adam upon His form,” meaning that He threw upon him the beauty (ḥusn) of His attributes and the light of witnessing Him. Likewise, God said with regard to the reality of Moses, “I threw love upon thee from Me.” And love is a specific property of His beginningless attributes.⁴⁴

While Moses had a similar function to that of Adam and Joseph in that he was a mirror to display God’s beauty, Rūzbihān does not call Moses a qibla because in contrast to Adam and Joseph he was never an object of prostration in the Qurʾān. If Adam received his beauty by being created upon God’s form, then it was God’s throwing love upon Moses that made him beauti- ful. Both the form and the love consist of the most beautiful divine attributes. In other words, God’s casting love upon Moses meant endowing him with the most beautiful attributes.

In discussing the same verse in Mashrab al-arwāḥ, Rūzbihān explains that the “love” (maḥabba) that God cast upon Moses consisted in “comeliness” (malāḥa):

The recognizer said—God bless his spirit—“Love and beauty (ḥusn) are two beginningless attributes,

neither of which emerges in the truthful servant without the other, because there is no division in the attributes.” This meaning is well known from God’s speech in which He said concerning His speaking companion, Moses: I threw love upon thee from Me and for thee to be made upon My eyes [Q 20:39]. Qurʾān commentators said, “There is comeliness in your eyes, so no one sees you with- out loving you.”⁴⁵

In the above passage we can also see the recurring theme of the inseparability of love and beauty and the idea that seeking intimacy (istiʾnās) is a natural effect of beauty. In his commen- tary on Q 20:39 in the ʿArāʾis, Rūzbihān makes the connection with intimacy more explicit: the verse “means that whoever saw him loved him and sought intimacy with him.”⁴⁶ In sum, Rūzbihān presents Moses both as a lover of God who seeks a vision of His beauty and as a beautiful prophet embodying the divine attributes.

Abraham: The Seeker of Intimacy with Divine Beauty

While Rūzbihān discusses Adam, Joseph, and Moses as beau- tiful in themselves, he presents Abraham primarily as a seeker of beauty, or to use Rūzbihān’s expressions, a mustaḥsin (liter- ally,  “one  who  deems  beautiful”)  and  a  mustaʾnis bi-l-mustaḥsanāt (one who seeks intimacy with things deemed beautiful). Rūzbihān’s understanding of him as a mustaḥsin is largely due to the famous Qurʾānic event of Abraham saying about the stars, moon, and sun, “This is my Lord” (Q 6:76; 6:77; 6:78).

The passage begins with the verse, Thus We were showing Abraham the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth (Q 6:75). Rūzbihān explains that God “tested him with the vision of the sovereignty to distract him from witnessing eternity by the sweetness of seeing it.”⁴⁷ This was Abraham’s first test, fol- lowed by the second test: When night outspread over him, he saw a star and said, “This is my Lord” (Q 6:76). Rūzbihān explains that Abraham mistakenly regarded the star as his Lord because

he was fascinated by the beauty of the star as a divine act. Abraham was then in the station of “becoming clothed,” for he saw the star clothed in divine attributes:

In the same way He tested him at his beginning with the station of becoming clothed when the star of the self-disclosure of the light of the specific act became manifest in the form of Sirius. He gazed at it when the night of testing outspread over him. Then he saw with the eye of desire the light of His specific act, whose drinking place is the lights of the attribute. Then he said with the tongue of wonder, “This is my Lord.”⁴⁸

In a way, Rūzbihān’s notion of “becoming clothed” (iltibās) encompasses the two opposing symbols of the world as a sign and a veil (ḥijāb, sitr), pointing out the ambivalent status of God’s creation that reveals and hides God at the same time. While the fact it hides and covers up God may be taken as a “bad” thing for the seekers of God, it is obvious to Rūzbihān that God needs to be veiled in order to be seen, for His essence can never be seen directly by creatures. Abraham’s seeing the star clothed in divine attributes intensifies his wonder and desire for his Lord, who he realizes is not the star that sets.

The next stage of Abraham’s search for God is described in the subsequent verse: When he saw the moon rising, he said, “This is my Lord.” But when it set, he said, “If my Lord does not guide me, surely I will be of the people gone astray” (Q 6:77). At this stage, Abraham sees divine attributes in the moon:

When the night of separation from the first station outspread over him, the light of the attribute appeared from the quarry of the essence. It became manifest to him in the moon from the light of the specific act. He looked at it and saw the witnessing of the attribute in the act. Then He said with the tongue of yearning, “This is my Lord.” Then the turn of intimate friend- ship turned around him. He nurtured him with the light of joining and made him reach the station of passionate love. He made him taste the flavor of the

reality of the joy of his secret core, and his yearning to seek increase was incited.⁴⁹

Abraham says “This is my Lord” (Q 6:78) for the third time in reference to the sun. Rūzbihān explains that the sun here rep- resents the divine essence, manifesting itself in a divine act:

Then the lights of the essence appeared in the attri- butes, and the lights of the attributes and the essence appeared in the specific acts. Then its lights appeared in the sun. When his present moment became limpid and pure and the darkness of the night of separation was enveloped, the sun shone upon his moment. So he looked at and saw the witnessing of the majesty of eternity in the mirror of the sun. Then he spoke with the tongue of passionate love, “This is my Lord.” So the jealousy of eternity reached him and disen- gaged him from seeing the intermediaries while see- ing eternity, for he saw the setting of the signs with the attribute of their annihilation in the tremendous- ness of the lights of eternity. Then eternity itself was unveiled to him.⁵⁰

Through his encounter with the star, moon, and sun, Abraham underwent a three-stage transformation from a desirer to a yearner to a passionate lover of God, for he “spoke with the tongue of passionate love” when he said “This is my Lord” for the third time. Hence, Rūzbihān seems to maintain that at this third stage, Abraham no longer regarded a created thing (the sun) as his Lord, but he was actually seeing God’s essence when he said about the sun, “This is my Lord.” Hence, Abraham declares in the subsequent verse (Q 6:79): “I have turned my face to Him who originated the heavens and the earth, as a man of pure faith. I am not of the idolaters,” which is a declaration of his faith in the one and only God.

Rūzbihān also discusses Abraham’s threefold vision in

Mashrab al-arwāḥ in the section entitled “On deeming things beautiful,” because it was Abraham’s deeming the stars, moon, and sun beautiful that made him say, “This is my Lord.” The eye that deems things beautiful is the eye of contentment.

Rūzbihān writes, “When the eye of contentment is opened in the face of trust [in God] through the light of truthfulness, and when the dust of nature is taken away by the limpidness of sincerity and the light of election, one sees the quiddity of exis- tence and the beauty of God’s production appearing from it in all atoms.”⁵¹ Such a person will “deem beautiful all the things decreed by the unseen in the clothing of the [divine] acts….For him the vision of beauty and ugliness will be equal because he is in [the midst of] the vision of tremendousness, where the traces of temporally originated things no longer remain, and the acts of severity and gentleness are equal.”⁵² As examples of those who are in this state, Rūzbihān mentions Abraham for saying “This is my Lord” and Muhammad for saying “Lord, show us things as they are.”⁵³ In fact, Rūzbihān writes that the latter saying was Muhammad’s “asking for what the intimate friend had seen.”⁵⁴

To deem things beautiful is to transcend the distinction between jamāl and jalāl and to see ḥusn in each thing, which is a pointer to the overall beauty and goodness of God. Those capable of finding ḥusn in every thing will be capable of recog- nizing God behind each thing. Hence, Rūzbihān concludes, “Deeming things beautiful does not occur to anyone except one who sees Him who brings things into existence in the things.”⁵⁵ As discussed in the previous chapter, there are two complementary ways of perceiving reality: the eye of gather- ing and the eye of separation. Between the two, it is the eye of gathering that “sees Him who brings things into existence in the things,” thereby bringing together the Creator and the cre- ated in a single perception. Hence, the eye of gathering deems things beautiful, and this is the mode of perception that Abraham had in saying “This is my Lord,” recognizing God’s ḥusn in the celestial objects.

Elsewhere in the Mashrab al-arwāḥ, Rūzbihān comments on

Abraham’s words, “This is my Lord,” in the following manner: “This station pertains to the station of being clothed and the passionate lover’s seeking intimacy with the vision of the Real in everything that is deemed beautiful.”⁵⁶ In other words, the star, moon, and sun were deemed beautiful by Abraham because they were clothed in the divine attributes and essence. Since he was able to recognize God in them, he fell in love and

sought intimacy with them in order to gain access to God. Rūzbihān draws the general conclusion that people seek inti- macy with everything deemed beautiful because the thing reflects the divine beauty. As Rūzbihān writes, “What is deemed beautiful is deemed beautiful due to the appearance of God’s beauty (ḥusn) within it. That is the beauty of His self-disclosure, just as He disclosed Himself to Moses in the mountain.”⁵⁷ Similarly, in an account of his visions Rūzbihān writes, “I saw Abraham among the mountains where the lights of the star [of] the acts had arisen, and the acts are the mirror of the self-disclosure of the essence and the attributes. [Abraham] was seeking the Real and was saying, ‘This is my Lord.’”⁵⁸

Rūzbihān also points to a “subtle allusion” in Abraham’s statement. He writes, “‘This is my Lord’ is an excuse for the angels and the prophets in their prostration to Adam and Joseph, because in that case the Real disclosed Himself from the celestial bodies whose quarries are the [divine] acts, and in this case the Real disclosed Himself from the attributes.”⁵⁹ In other words, since prostrating to what is other than God (i.e., creatures) goes against the principle of monotheism, if there is any excuse for the angels to have prostrated to Adam or Jacob to Joseph, it has already been stated by Abraham: “This is my Lord.” Both Adam and Joseph were loci of divine self-disclosure, clothed in the divine attributes.

In interpreting another key verse involving Abraham, Rūzbihān again presents him as a seeker of beautiful visions of God. He explains Abraham’s words, “Show me how Thou bringest the dead back to life” (Q 2:260), as his request for “beauty (jamāl) in seeing those through whom God can be witnessed (shawāhid),”⁶⁰ that is, beautiful creatures in whom divine beauty is manifest and witnessed. Here Rūzbihān cites Ibn Khafīf as having said that “the requests by Moses and Abraham were the same except that Abraham’s was more subtle in beautiful manners when he asked to see the dead being brought back to life.”⁶¹ Nonetheless, both Moses and Abraham were asking for some vision of God, and their requests were fulfilled to a certain degree, both by way of an intermediary.

In ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, Rūzbihān explains that Abraham made this request (mentioned in Q 2:260) only after he had seen the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth (Q 6:75). His statement, Show me how Thou bringest the dead back to life (Q 2:260) was his another attempt at finding God through observation of the world, having been dissatisfied with his attempt to find Him in the star, the moon, and the sun, “because in them there was no trace of beauty (jamāl).”⁶² It is worth noting that this is an alternative reading of the verses about Abraham’s gazing at the sky, as Qurʾān commentators, not least Rūzbihān, often offer multiple interpretations of a given verse.

In response to Abraham’s request, “Show me how Thou bringest the dead back to life,” God responds, “Or dost thou not have faith?” (Q 2:260). Rūzbihān explains that this “answer came because the signs [i.e., all created things, or the divine acts] are the locus of faith,” but “witnessing the beauty (jamāl) of eternity does not occur in the signs.”⁶³ Abraham had faith in God because he was able to see the world as His act and recog- nize Him as the Creator. However, Abraham wanted to see more than God’s act—His attribute, and specifically His beauty. Here, Rūzbihān’s interpretation of the Abraham story comes close to that of the Moses story, in which Moses asks God, My Lord, show me so that I may look upon Thee (Q 7:143).

Later in the same work, Rūzbihān takes another perspective and highlights differences between Abraham and Moses. Abraham asked for an indirect vision of God by way of cre- ation becoming clothed by Him; in contrast, Moses asked for a direct vision of God. Rūzbihān associates Abraham with sobri- ety and iltibās, and Moses with intoxication and “sheer wit- nessing” (mushāhada-yi ṣirf ), by which he means “witnessing of the Real without intermediary.”⁶⁴

Although Rūzbihān offers various interpretations of Abraham’s and Moses’s encounters with God as depicted in the Qurʾān, he consistently highlights the unbridgeable gap between God and the human being, the uncreated and the cre- ated. As Rūzbihān writes, “God replied to His intimate friend by saying, ‘Or dost thou not have faith?, for surely you did not perceive Me with the conditions of eternity’s secret, since you are a created thing, imprisoned by the qualities of temporal origination.’”⁶⁵

Muhammad: The Most Beautiful Prophet

How then does the beauty of Islam’s last and most important prophet compare with that of the four prophets discussed above? Rūzbihān has no doubts as to Muhammad’s superior beauty. In one passage, for example, he compares them to indi- cate their different degrees of beauty: “If Abraham had seen Joseph and Adam, he would have seen in them much more than what he saw in the celestial bodies.…If all of them had seen the beauty (jamāl) of the master of the prophets and mes- sengers, they would have fallen into rapture in the wastelands and deserts.”⁶⁶

Muhammad’s superior beauty is connected to his superior knowledge of God, for as mentioned, human beauty entails experiential knowledge of the divine. Rūzbihān contrasts Adam with Muhammad and points out that only Muhammad can have a vision of God’s essence.

Adam’s heart is the closest heart to God except for Muhammad’s heart, so no heart in all of God’s cre- ation compares to [Muhammad’s] heart, because his heart is the depository of the secret of the secrets, the realities of the lights, and the vision of the sheer essence. The Real did not open up any heart other than Muhammad’s heart to the God-given knowl- edge, the unknown knowledge, and the realities of recognition, tawḥīd, unveiling, witnessing, secrets, and lights, because his heart was the oceans of [divine] self-disclosure and approach.⁶⁷

Rūzbihān highlights the difference between Joseph and Muhammad by associating Joseph’s beauty with that of the divine attributes and Muhammad’s beauty with that of the divine essence.

[The Prophet] said, “God said, ‘O Muhammad, I garbed the beauty of Joseph’s face with the light of the Footstool, and I garbed the light of thy face with the light of My Throne.’” God discloses Him- self to the Footstool from the light of His attributes,

and He discloses Himself to the Throne from the light of His essence. Hence, the Footstool is illumi- nated by the light of the attributes, and the Throne is illuminated with the light of the essence.⁶⁸

In the same passage he writes, “The light of the Throne is spe- cific to the beauty of the master of the messengers and gives him superiority over Joseph. When he was asked, ‘Are you more beautiful (aḥsan) or is Joseph?’ He replied, ‘I am comelier (amlaḥ) than Joseph.’”⁶⁹

Rūzbihān maintains that Muhammad’s superior beauty is connected to his character, as suggested by the verse, Verily thou art upon a tremendous character (Q 68:4). Rūzbihān explains: “[T]hat is, ‘I have clothed you with My character. You are upon My character, and My character is tremendous,’”⁷⁰ for “tre- mendous” is one of the divine names. He then quotes al-Wāsiṭī: “This is the clothing of the attributes and being characterized by His character traits.” And, quoting al-Wāsiṭī again, “God manifested His power in Jesus, His penetration in Āṣaf, and His anger in Moses’s cane, while He manifested His character traits and qualities in Muhammad, as He said, Verily thou art upon a tremendous character.”⁷¹

On a related ḥadīth, “Assume the character traits of the All- Merciful,” Rūzbihān comments: “This is a description of some- one whom God garbed in the brilliance of the holiness of the beginningless beauty (jamāl) and the endless majesty before the clay of the mortal human being came into being.”⁷² In Rūzbihān’s vocabulary, “to garb” (kasā) means the same as “to clothe” (albasa) and indicates that a creature displays God’s attributes. Muhammad is beautiful because God clothed him with all the most beautiful (ḥusnā) attributes, not least those of beauty and majesty. No other creature surpassed Muhammad in the assimilation of the divine attributes, for his spirit was “the closest creature to God.”⁷³

In Rūzbihān’s presentation, Muhammad’s superior beauty has a double significance: he is not only the most beautiful human being, but he also has the most intense vision of God’s beauty. Rūzbihān discusses the Prophet’s vision of God in his commentary on the verse, The heart did not swerve in what it saw

(Q 53:11), explaining that the Prophet saw God’s beauty with his eye and heart.

God mentioned the vision of the Prophet’s heart, not the eye, because the vision of the eye is a secret between him and his Beloved. It was because of jealousy that He did not mention it, for the vision of the heart is general, but the vision of the eye- sight is specific. He showed His beauty (jamāl) to the Prophet face-to-face, so he saw Him with his eyesight, which had been daubed with the kohl of the light of His essence and attributes. What God had willed remained in his vision through seeing face-to-face. All of his body became merciful eyes, and he saw the Real through them altogether. Then the vision joined to the heart, and his heart saw the beauty (jamāl) of the Real and it saw what he saw with his eye. There was no difference between what he saw with his eye and what he saw with his heart.⁷⁴

A ḥadīth of import for Rūzbihān’s discussion of Muhammad’s vision of God’s beauty is “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form.” Rūzbihān explains this saying in various ways in his writings. In his Ḥadīth commentary, he says, “This is from excessive love. When the servant loves his Lord, he sees Him in a beautiful form so as to have the full enjoyment of witnessing in his vision.”⁷⁵ In Mashrab al-arwāḥ he argues that when the Prophet made the above statement he was seeing with the eye of gathering, which Rūzbihān explains here as “that which sees the lights of the attributes in the clothing of the acts.”⁷⁶ Rūzbihān then com- pares the Prophet’s statement to a Sufi saying, “I have not looked at anything without seeing God within it,” and the verse, Thou didst not throw when thou threwest, but God threw (Q 8:17), both of which indicate the mode of perception dic- tated by the eye of gathering.⁷⁷

Rūzbihān gives another reading of this ḥadīth in ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, where he uses it to contrast Muhammad’s state with those of Abraham and Moses. He writes,

Sobriety in passionate love was the station of Abra- ham. For that reason, he made a request in becoming clothed: My Lord, show me how Thou bringest the dead back to life (Q 2:260). Intoxication was the station of Moses. He wanted the sheer absolute. He said, My Lord, show me so that I may look upon Thee (Q 7:143). Both stations were preserved for Muhammad. In the station of sobriety, he said, “Show us things as they are.” In the station of intoxication, he said, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form.”…When he passed beyond temporal origination with the eye of the drunken spirit, he saw the beginningless being and said, “I do not count Thy laudations.”⁷⁸

Muhammad is not only the most beautiful prophet and the most perfect perceiver of God’s beauty, but he is also the most passionate lover of beauty. Rūzbihān cites a number of ḥadīths to make this point, including “Gazing at a beautiful face increases sight”⁷⁹ and its variants, such as “Greenery and beautiful faces made him marvel”;⁸⁰ “Three things increase the power of sight: gazing at greenery, gazing at beautiful faces, and gazing at flowing water”;⁸¹ and “Gazing at faces increases sight; gazing at greenery and flowing water increases sight.”⁸²

Rūzbihān explains the last of these sayings like this: “In the beauty (ḥusn) [of the face] is the light of the specific act in which the light of the essence and the attributes is clothed. In the limpidness of greenery and waters is the light of the gen- eral act within which the Real discloses the light of the specific act by its being attributed to Him.”⁸³ Moreover, he writes, “This is from the station of the eye of gathering and within it is an allusion to the station of becoming clothed.”⁸⁴ Rūzbihān understands the Prophet’s love of beautiful things in the world as an indication of his vision of reality through the eye of gath- ering and his recognition of the world as clothed in divine attributes. In other words, the Prophet saw God in every instance of beauty in the world, so he took pleasure in looking at beautiful things.

Rūzbihān also discusses another ḥadīth, “Three things from your world were made lovable to me: good fragrance

and women, and my delight is in prayer.”⁸⁵ He explains that the Prophet “is seeking the lights of witnessing in the mirror of the attribute of the act—and here is no accusation of indwelling. Rather, the Real discloses Himself to those who seek to witness Him in the beautiful and the deemed beauti- ful.”⁸⁶ Indwelling (ḥulūl), sometimes translated as incarna- tion, is a heretical belief that some theologians ascribe to some Sufis. Rūzbihān explains that finding God’s beauty in a thing does not mean that God “dwells” in the thing. Rather, it con- stitutes God’s self-disclosure, His showing of Himself, and every instance of His self-disclosure will be deemed beautiful.

The Prophet as a lover of beauty is also indicated by his act of kissing the first fruit of the season (bākūra), which is men- tioned in the Ḥadīth literature.⁸⁷ Rūzbihān writes, “When he saw a first fruit, he would kiss it and place it upon his eyes. One of the recognizers said, ‘I have not looked at anything without seeing God in it.’”⁸⁸ In ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, Rūzbihān explains further: “His kissing was the spirit’s contact with the eternal act from love’s appetite. His putting it upon his eyes was nearness’s wanting nearness.”⁸⁹ Here the first fruit is deemed beautiful by the kisser, who is nothing but the appre- ciator of its beauty and the seeker of intimacy with the beauti- ful. Rūzbihān explains that kissing a beautiful thing is a natural reaction for human beings.

In everything deemed beautiful, there is the effect of that Beauty (ḥusn), because every particle of engen- dered being has a spirit from the Real’s act, in which it is in direct contact with the quality of the attri- butes and the self-disclosure of the essence. In par- ticular, things deemed beautiful have no eye except the eye of the Real. Whatever is closer to the quarry of beauty (jamāl) is closer to the covenant of love…. Whatever came forth newly in the garden of divine decrees from the Beloved, he would immediately kiss it and place it upon his eyes.⁹⁰

Rūzbihān also refers to the rose to make a similar point, in keeping with a saying ascribed to the Prophet, “The red rose is

from the splendor of God. Whenever someone wants to look at God’s splendor, let him look at the red rose.”⁹¹ Rūzbihān explains:

This is an allusion to self-disclosure and the eye of gathering, that is, the self-disclosure of the Real through the quality of splendor in the Garden, for the Garden makes the red rose grow. [The Prophet] also said, “The red rose is the master of the aro- matic plants of the Garden after the myrtle,” for the lights of the essence’s self-disclosure penetrated the rose. The Real made it into a mirror for the beauty (ḥusn) of His splendor for the folk of His intimacy and His love. In the same way the red rose is the most beloved of the aromatic plants to His friends, so much so that [the Prophet] used to love it, kiss it, place it upon his eyes, and say, “This is freshly acquainted with its Lord.”⁹²

In sum, Muhammad is beautiful as a mirror of God, someone clothed in His attributes; he loves beauty found in things in the world because he can see, with the eye of gathering, that these things are clothed in God’s beauty; and he loves beauti- ful things in the world because he sees God’s beauty in them, further enhancing his ability to see God. It follows that to love beauty in creation is a commendable practice for humans. To do so is simply to follow the most perfect human being, who has set down for humankind a beautiful model: Surely you have a beautiful example in God’s messenger—for those who hope for God and the Last Day, and who remember God much (Q 33:21).

Rūzbihān’s discussion of beauty culminates in the proph- ets’ beauty not only because they are the most beautiful beings in creation but also because they are the greatest lovers of beauty, which means the greatest lovers of the beautiful God, the source of all beauty. By imitating the prophets, human beings can become beautiful themselves and increase their chances of encountering God’s beauty and gentleness rather than His majesty and severity in this life and the next. Love of beauty is the way of the prophets, which is nothing but their

longing for the divine, with whom they have made the cove- nant of love. This is the longing famously encapsulated by Rūmī in one of the beginning verses of his Mathnawī:

Whoever remains far from his origin seeks again for the days of his union.⁹³

Beauty, therefore, is the origin and the end of human existence. If human beings live this life beautifully, their beauty will be the means whereby they return joyfully to their beautiful God.

NOTES

Introduction

1.       Sharaf al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. Ṣadr al-Dīn Abī Muḥammad Rūzbihān Thānī, Tuḥfat al-ʿirfān fī dhikr sayyid al-aqṭāb Rūzbihān, in Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Rūzbihān-nāma (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī, 1347sh/1969), 110. This passage is discussed in Carl Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (Richmond: Curzon, 1996), 4; and in Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971–72), 28.

2.       Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic (Alder- shot: Ashgate, 2001), 117.

3.       Kathleen Raine, “The Use of the Beautiful,” in Defending Ancient Springs (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 157.

4.       The editors’ introduction provides a useful survey of the shifts in scholarly discourse on beauty over the centuries.

5.       As the author himself notes, Cyrus Zargar’s Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn ‘Arabi and ‘Iraqi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011) is not, despite its title, about aesthetics or beauty as such, but rather about visions of God in a beautiful human form (p. 2), which is a specific discussion in connection with beauty.

6.       The Oxford Dictionary of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), s.v. “Aesthetics.”

7.       The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, ed. Michael Clarke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), s.v. “Aesthetics.”

8.       The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Simon Blackburn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), s.v. “Aesthetics.”

9.       Nazif Hoca, “Das arabische Werk Kitāb mašrab al-arwāḥ,” Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Göttingen,

15. bis 22. August 1974, ed. Albert Dietrich, Abhandlungen der

129

Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologischhis- torische Klasse, Dritte Folge, no. 98 (Göttingen: Van-denhoeck und Ruprecht, 1976), 211.

10.       Henry Corbin is one of the first Western scholars to discuss this term. See Corbin, “Introduction,” in Le jasmin des fidèles d’amour; Kitâb-e ‘abhar al-‘âshiqîn, ed. H. Corbin and M. Muʿīn (Tehran: Département d’iranologie de l’Institut franco-iranien 1958), 6ff.

11.       The best resource to familiarize oneself with representative texts from these authors isʿAlī Akbar Afrāsiyābpūr’s Zībāʾī-parastī dar ʿirfān-i islāmī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ṭahūrī, 1380sh/2001).

12.       Cf. Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī: Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Saint- hood in Persian Sufism (Richmond: Curzon, 1996), 1–2; Firoozeh Papan-Matin, The Unveiling of Secrets Kashf al-Asrār: The Vision- ary Autobiography of Rūzbihān al-Baqlī (1128–1209 A.D.) (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 5–6.

13.       Rūzbihān, Kashf al-asrār, ed. Papan-Matin, in The Unveiling of Secrets, 7–10; Ernst, trans., The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master (Chapel Hill: Parvardigar Press, 1997), 9–11; Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, 2; Paul Ballanfat, “Une mystique de la ruse: Re- marques sur la pensée de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî,”in Quatre traités inédits de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1998), 58–59.

14.       Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 64.

15.       Ibid. Cf. Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, 12n5.

16.       Papan-Matin, The Unveiling of Secrets, 6; Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 68–70. His trip to Alexandria is disputed. See Papan-Matin, The Unveiling of Secrets, 6n6.

17.       Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 71.

18.       Ibid., 72–73.

19.       Ibid., 75.

20.       Ernst has compiled a handy list of works attributed to Rūzbihān in “Appendix A: The Writings of Rūzbihān Baqlī: A Checklist,” in Rūzbihān Baqlī, 151–59.

21.       An English translation of various passages from Mashrab al-arwāḥ can be found in Javad Nurbakhsh, Sufi Symbolism: The Nurbakhsh Encyclopedia of Sufi Terminology, 16 vols. (London: Khanqah-i Nimatullahi Publications, 1987–).

22.       Cf. Massignon’s edition of Kitāb al-ṭawāsīn by al-Ḥallāj (Paris: Libraire Paul Geuthner, 1913).

23.       Wladimir Ivanow, “A Biography of Ruzbihan al-Baqli.” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal N.S. XXIV (1928): 353–61; “More on Biography of Ruzbihan al-Baqli.” Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society VII (1931): 1–7.

24.       Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Rūzbihān-nāma (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i Āthār-i Millī, 1347sh/1969).

25.      Paul Nwyia, ed., “Waqāʾiʿ al-Shaykh Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī: Muqtaṭafāt min kitāb Kashf al-asrār wa mukāshafat al-anwār,” al-Mashriq LXIV, no. 4–5 (1970): 385–406. For a brief overview of the scholarship until 1996, see Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, xi–xiii.

26.       Corbin and Muʿīn, eds., Le jasmin des fidèles d’amour; Kitâb-e ‘abhar al-‘âshiqîn (Tehran: Département d’iranologie de l’Institut franco-iranien 1958).

27.       In Henry Corbin, ed., Commentaire sur les paradoxes des soufis (Sharh-e Shathîyât) (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1966).

28.       Nazif Hoca, ed., Rūzbihān al-Baḳlī ve Kitāb Kaṣf al-asrār’ı ile Farsça bāzi Šiirleri (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaası, 1971).

29.       Nazif Hoca, ed., Kitāb maşrab al-arvāḥ va huva’l-maşhūr bi-hazār u yak maḳām (bi-alfi maḳāmin va maḳāmin) (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaasi, 1974).

30.       Jawād Nūrbakhsh, ed., ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Yaldā-Qalam, 1380/2001).

31.       Jawād Nūrbakhsh, ed., Risālat al-quds wa risāla-yi ghalaṭāt al-sālikīn (Tehran: Khānqāh-i Niʿmat Allāhī, 1351sh/1972).

32.       Dānishpazhūh, Rūzbihān-nāma (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Anjuman-i

Āthār-i Millī, 1347sh/1969).

33.       See  for  example  Schimmel’s  Mystical  Dimensions  of  Islam

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

34.       See Ballanfat, ed., Quatre traités.

35.       Le dévoilement des secrets et les apparitions des lumières: Journal spirituel du maître de Shîrâz (Paris: Seuil, 1996). Ernst published his English translation of Kashf al-asrār at around the same time in The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master (Chapel Hill: Parvardigar Press, 1997).

36.       See chapter 5 of Ballanfat’s introduction to Quatre traités.

Chapter 1. Discourse on Beauty

1.       Cf. Muslim, Kitāb al-ṣaḥīḥ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 2.74; Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad al-imām Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), V.120, V.121, V.149.

2.       Cf. Valérie Gonzalez, Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 19–25. Jamal Elias has an extensive discussion of Ibn al-Haytham’s aesthetic theory in Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice

in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 156–60. Ḥasan Bulkhārī presents the notion of beauty in optics accord- ing to Ibn al-Haytham and Kamāl al-Dīn Fārisī in Maʿnā wa mafhūm-i zībāʾī dar al-Manāẓir wa Tanqīḥ al-manāẓir (Tehran: Farhangistān-i Hunar, 1387sh/2008).

3.       Deborah Black, “Aesthetics in Islamic philosophy,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.rep.routledge.com/ article/H020 (accessed May 6, 2016).

4.       Aaron W. Hughes, “‘God Is Beautiful and Loves Beauty’: The Role of Aesthetics in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy,” in The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 161.

5.       Al-Fārābī, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī’s Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, trans. R. Walzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 83–85.

6.       Al-Fārābī, Perfect State, 85.

7.       Ibn Sīnā, al-Najāt, ed. M. Fakhrī (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīda, 1985), 281. Gonzalez discusses this passage in Beauty and Islam, 15.

8.       Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.),

4.299. Richard Ettinghausen discusses a parallel passage in Kīmīyā-yi saʿādat in “Al-Ghazzālī on Beauty,” Art and Thought: Issued in Honour of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. K. Bharatha Iyer (London: Luzac, 1947),

163. For further discussion of al-Ghazālī’s view on beauty, see Carole Hillenbrand, “Some Aspects of al-Ghazālī’s Views on Beauty,” in Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit: Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel zum 7. April 1992 dargebracht von Schül- ern, Freunden und Kollegen, ed. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994), 249–65; Jamal Elias, Aisha’s Cushion, 162–68; and Binyamin Abrahamov, Divine Love in Is- lamic Mysticism: The Teachings of al-Ghazâlî and al-Dabbâgh (Lon- don: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 47–56. Abrahamov argues that Ibn al-Dabbāgh, the author of Kitāb mashāriq anwār al-qulūb wa-mafātīḥ asrār al-ghuyūb, largely follows al-Ghazālī’s under- standing of beauty though with some points of divergence; for Ibn al-Dabbāgh’s view on beauty’s connection to perfection and pleasure, see Abrahamov, Divine Love, 105–13.

9.       For a history of Muslim writings on the divine names, see Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam: Exégèse lexicographique et théologique (Paris: Les editions du cref, 1988). For a general survey on the subject, see J. W. Redhouse, On “the Most Comely

Names,” i.e. The Laudatory Epithets, or The Titles of Praise, Be- stowed on God in the Qurʾān or by Muslim Writers (London: Trüb- ner, 1880).

10.       For details see chapter 3.

11.       Cf., Parwīz Sulaymānī, “Jalāl wa jamāl,” Dānishnāma-yi jahān-i islām [The Encyclopedia of the world of Islam], ed. Ghulām Riḍā Ḥaddād ʿĀdil, et al. (Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1996–present), vol. 10, #442, http://rch.ac.ir/article/ Details/9813.

12.       Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of the Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text, trans. M. E. Marmura (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 291. Al-Fārābī’s analysis of the divine attributes such as life, knowledge, etc., can be found in Perfect State, chap- ter 1, 57ff.

13.       See Amnon Shiloah, The Epistle on Music of the Ikhwan al-Safa (Baghdad, 10th century) (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, Faculty of Fine Arts, School of Jewish Studies, 1978).

14.       Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Safāʾ wa-Khullān al-Wafāʾ, ed. Buṭrus al-Bustānī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-ʿIlmī li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 2005), vol. 1, 201. Cf. Hughes, Texture of the Divine, 163; Shiloah, The Epistle on Music, 69.

15.       Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Safāʾ, vol. 1, 201.

16.       Plotinus, Plotinus, vol. 1 (Ennead I. 1–9), trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 235. It must be noted, however, that the Ennead I did not form part of the Plo- tinian corpus that was available in medieval Arabic translation.

17.       It is worth noting that Plotinus describes the experience of hu- man encounter with something ugly as finding something to be “out of tune.” Cf. Plotinus, Plotinus, vol. 1, 235 (Ennead I.6.2).

18.       Though not considered as “sound” by Ḥadīth scholars, this divine saying is quoted frequently in Sufi and other texts. A major Sunni scholar, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209), for instance, mentions it in Tafsīr al-Rāzī (Dār Iḥyāʾ Turāth al-ʿArabī), 28.188 (in his commentary on the verse Q 51:56).

19.       Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī, Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat (Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1381sh/2002), vol. 5, 668 (Q 18:13).

20.       Al-Ghazālī, al-Maqṣad al-asnā fī sharḥ maʿānī asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā, ed. Fadlou Shehadi (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1971), 162. See also its fourth chapter, which is called “Explaining that the ser- vant’s perfection and happiness lie in being characterized by the character traits of God and adorned by the meanings of His attributes and His names in the measure that can be conceived

of for him,” ibid., 42. I translate words derived from the Arabic root ʿ-r-f consistently as follows: “to recognize” (ʿarafa), “recog- nition” (maʿrifa), and “recognizer” (ʿārif). I am fully aware of some scholars’ criticism against using “recognition,” a term less commonly used than “gnosis” to translate maʿrifa. The truth is that no perfect translation exists for this critical term in Sufism. I prefer to use “recognition” to “gnosis” to avoid the latter’s two key problems: being suggestive of Gnosticism, which is a separate tradition, and the lack of a verbal form to translate ʿarafa, which makes one bound to use two etymologically un- related English words to translate ʿarafa and maʿrifa. In the end, it is a question of translation philosophy: some prefer to alter the translation of a single term depending on the context; some prefer to stick to a single translation for each term for the sake of consistency. Each method has its advantages and disadvantag- es, and I belong to the second camp. I translate ʿilm as “knowl- edge” and maʿrifa as “recognition” throughout this book. While ʿārif was a synonym for a Sufi (i.e., someone who has maʿrifa) during Rūzbihān’s time, it came to acquire different connota- tions over the subsequent centuries. For the history of its re- lated terms, ʿirfān and taṣawwuf, and the polemics surrounding them, see Ata Anzali’s forthcoming work, Mysticism in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (University of South Carolina Press). Also, for Chittick’s rationale for translating maʿrifa as “recognition,” see his Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 230–32.

21.       Ibn Sīnā, Risāla fī al-ʿishq, in Traités mystiques d’Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusain ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Sīnā ou d’Avicenne, ed. August Ferdinand Meh- ren (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic- Islamic Science, 1999), 3:5–22; Emil L. Fackenheim, “A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sina,” Mediaeval Studies 7 (1945): 215–25.

22.       Black, “Aesthetics in Islamic philosophy.”

23.       Aḥmad Ghazālī, Sawāniḥ, in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i fārsī-yi Aḥmad Ghazzālī (ʿārif-i mutawaffā-yi 520 A.H.), ed. Aḥmad Mujāhid (Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1370sh/1991), 135. Cf. Pour- javady, Sawāniḥ: Inspirations from the World of Pure Sprits, the Oldest Persian Sufi Treatise on Love (London: KPI, 1986), 33; Hellmut Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul: Man, the World, and God in the Stories of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. O’Kane (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 416; Joseph Lumbard, “Aḥmad al-Ghazālī (d. 517/1123 or 520/1126) and the Metaphysics of Love,” PhD disserta- tion (Yale University, 2003), 275. Ḥishmat-Allāh Riyāḍī pres- ents Aḥmad Ghazālī’s view on love and beauty in relation to

various other Sufis’ views on the subject in Āyat-i ḥusn wa ʿishq, 2 vols. (Tehran: Ḥaqīqat, 1381sh/2002), see esp. vol. 1, 195ff.

24.       Al-Fārābī, Perfect State, 85.

25.       Ibid.

26.       Ibn Sīnā, al-Najāt, 282. Gonzalez discusses this passage in Beau- ty and Islam, 15.

27.       Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī, “On the Reality of Love,” trans. W. M. Thackston, The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999), 58–76.

28.       Michael Sells, Approaching the Qurʾān: The Early Revelations

(Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1999), 23.

Chapter 2. The Language of Beauty

1.       Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 298. To demonstrate her point of the impossibility of translating Rūzbihān’s flowery language, Schimmel provides a sample translation of Rūzbihān’s Persian work, Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt: “Look well, for the heart is the marketplace of His love, and there the rose of Adam on the branch of Love is from the color of manifestation [tajallī] of His Rose. When the nightingale ‘spirit’ becomes intoxicated by this rose, he will hear with the ear of the soul the song of the bird of Alast [‘Am I not your Lord?’] in the fountainplace of preeternity.”

2.       Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, 10.

3.       Cf. ibid. I have modified his wording (“in the state of overpow- ering and ecstasy”) here in accordance with a newer edition of Jāmī’s Nafaḥāt al-uns, ed. Maḥmūd ʿĀbidī (Tehran: Sukhan, 1386sh/2007), 261. Ernst’s own assessment of Rūzbihān’s “elliptical style”—with a special attention to the question of “fidelity” and “infidelity” in Rūzbihān’s writings—can be found in his Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State Univer- sity of New York Press, 1985), esp. 85–94. There, Ernst notes that Rūzbihān’s difficult language is partly responsible for the limited general circulation of his works: “His works were less commonly read than `Ayn al-Qudat’s because of their greater difficulty, but they were influential among learned Sufis,” 85.

4.       Ibn Fāris, Tartīb maqāyīs al-lugha (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i Ḥawza wa Dānishgāh, 1387sh/2007), s.v. ḥusn; Al-Jawharī, Tāj al-lugha wa-siḥāḥ al-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1999), s.v. ḥusn; Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1988), s.v. ḥusn.

5.       See al-Jawharī, Tāj al-lugha wa-siḥāḥ al-ʿarabiyya, s.v. ḥusn.

6.       See for instance, Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab, s.v. ḥusn, where he contrasts ḥusnā (the adjectival form of ḥusn in the feminine superlative) with sūʾā (“the worst,” “the most evil”). In addition, he contrasts ḥasana (a substantive form) with sayyiʾa (“bad/evil deed”).

7.       Edward William Lane translates sūʾ as “evil, ill; iniquity, in- jury, offence, calamity, misfortune” and explains the verb, sāʾa thus: “to be or become bad, evil, foul, wicked; to become worse, deteriorate (condition); to grieve, sadden, afflict, hurt, vex, torment, trouble, offend, pain, make sorry, displease,” Arabic-English Lexicon (New York: F. Ungar, 1955–56), s.v. sūʾ and sāʾa, respectively.

8.       Ibid., s.v. ḥusn.

9.       If we turn to contemporary Persian scholarship, we see that Nasrollah Pourjavady regards nīkūʾī (not zībāʾī, which is the more common Persian word for “beauty” today) as the most accurate Persian translation of ḥusn. He therefore translates ḥusn as nīkūʾī and jamāl as zībāʾī in Persian. See Pourjavady, “Maʿnī-yi ḥusn wa ʿishq dar adabiyāt-i ʿirfānī [The meaning of ḥusn and ʿishq in Sufi literature],” Sophia Perennis 2, no. 1 (1976): 43. In another article on the topic of beauty, Pourjavady explains that the word zībāʾī comes from zībanda būdan, i.e., to be “befitting,” “becoming,” for which reason he considers zībāʾī inadequate as a full rendering of ḥusn—see Pourjavady, “Ḥusn wa marātib-i idrāk-i ān: Nigāhī bih naẓar-i ḥukamā wa ʿurafā [Ḥusn and the levels of its perception: An observation on the views of the philosophers and Sufis],” in Ishrāq wa ʿirfān: Maqālahā wa naqdhā [Illumination and Sufism: Articles and cri- tiques] (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1380sh/2001),

178. Also see Pourjavady, “ḥusn,” Dānishnāma-yi jahān-i islām, vol. 13, #384, http://rch.ac.ir/article/Details/12004.

10.       See Aḥmad Ghazālī, Sawāniḥ, 132; Suhrawardī, Fī ḥaqīqat al-ʿishq [On the reality of passionate love], in The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises, ed. W. Thackston (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 1999), 58.

11.       Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (Tehran: Shirkat-i Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī wa Farhangī, 1386/2007), vol. 2, 575.

12.       Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾan

(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 224.

13.       See chapter 11, “Good and Bad,” in Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān, esp. 221ff. Cf. Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 108–11 and 268.

14.       Well-known versions of the ḥadīth of Gabriel are found in al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4.1792 and Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1.134, 1.143. Its variations as well as partial reports are found in numerous col- lections including: al-Tirmidhī, Sunan (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 7.331; Abū Dāwūd, Kitāb al-sunan (Mecca: Dār al-Istiqāma, 1997), 12.459; Ibn Mājah, Sunan, 1.24, 1.25;

Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 1.46, 1.84, 1.86, 1.524, 3.159, 5.169, 5.113,

among others. Murata and Chittick explain the ḥadīth of Gabriel in The Vision of Islam, xxv–xxxiv.

15.       While this is a well-known saying of the Prophet, in this ex- act form it appears only outside the six books of standard Sunni Ḥadīth: al-Dārimī, al-Musnad (Riyadh: Dār al-Mughnī, 2000), II.1366; Abū Yaʿlā Mawṣilī, al-Musnad (Damascus: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l-Turāth, 1984), IV.475; Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān fī taʾwīl al-qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1420/2000), 22.507; and Ibn Khuzayma, Kitāb al-tawḥīd wa-ithbāt ṣifāt al-rabb (Riyadh: Maktab al-Rushd, 1994), I.201, II.533, II.539, among others. Variations of this say- ing, however, do appear in major Ḥadīth collections, includ- ing Ibn Ḥanbal’s Musnad, which records “My Lord—exalted and majestic is He—came to me at night in the most beautiful form,” I.607; V.13; VI.522. Essentially the same ḥadīth (except for the glorification formula for God—tabāraka wa-taʿālā in place of ʿazza wa-jalla) is also found in al-Tirmidhī’s Sunan, 9.84. Variations are often found in Sufi literature. A good example— especially in connection to the subject of beauty—is found in ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī’s (d. 1131) writing: “From ‘I saw my Lord’—God—‘in the most beautiful form, a beardless youth’ a group has appeared who worship jamāl.” See Nāmahā-yi ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī, ed. ʿAlī-Naqī Munzawī and ʿAfīf ʿUsayrān (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Asāṭīr, 1377sh/1998), I.156.6–7 (Letter #18). On the Prophet’s seeing God in the most beautiful form as reported in these ḥadīths, also see Corbin, Creative Imagina- tion in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī, trans. R. Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 272–81; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 290.

16.       For a study of color symbolism in Rūzbihān’s Kashf al-asrār, see Antoni Gonzalo Carbó, “El cielo teñido de rojo: La visión del color en el Diarium spirituale de Rûzbihân Baqlî (m. 606/1209),” Convivium: Revista de Filosofia 13 (2000): 31–59.

17.       While discussing the significance of camels to Bedouin life in The Bedouins and the Desert: Aspects of Nomadic Life in the Arab East, Jubrail Jabbur emphasizes that the word for camel, jamal, shares

the same root as jamāl and that the sense of jamāl as “beauty” may even have derived from jamal. He writes, “The lexicographical compendia held that the camel’s name, jamal, is derived from the word jamāl, ‘beauty,’ since the Bedouins consider the camel a fine beautiful animal. In a Prophetic tradition it is said: ‘He brought a fine beautiful (jamlāʾ) she-camel,’ and in another we read: ‘Then a fine beautiful (jamlāʾ) woman appeared before him.’ And who knows, perhaps the word jamāl (‘beauty’) is itself derived from jamal (‘camel’), since the latter is the source of goodness and life for the Bedouin. Desert life decreed that the Bedouin woman should be of slender build, due to the great amounts of mov- ing about, traveling, and working that she did, which kept her something short of plumpness and corpulence. Hence, if she be- came plump and soft-bodied, like a camel (jamal) fills out when it becomes fat, then they would refer to her as jamīla and jamlāʾ, ‘beautiful,’” in Jabbur, Bedouins and the Desert, trans. Lawrence Conrad (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 237.

18.       Although as a lexicographer Lane lists a number of meanings for jamāl, the first meaning he mentions is “beauty,” and the first he mentions for ḥusn is “goodness or goodliness.” His en- try on jamāl reads as follows: “Beauty, goodliness, comeliness, or pleasingness”; “goodness in action, or actions, or behav- iour”; “elegance, or prettiness; i.e., delicacy, or minuteness, of beauty.” Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. jamāl.

19.       See Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam, 215–17. Gima- ret also notes that both al-Qushayrī and al-Ghazālī associate al-jamīl with its counterpart, al-jalīl (“the Majestic”), ibid., 216. However, it is worth noting that while al-Qushayrī does so in his al-Taḥbīl fī al-tadhkīr, he does not mention al-jamīl in the short list of divine names found in his much shorter treatise on Ashʿarite dogma, al-Fuṣūl fī al-uṣūl. See Richard Frank, “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī. Second Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Al-Fuṣūl fī-Uṣūl,’” Melanges 16 (1983): 66–70. For Rūzbihān’s discussion of jamīl as a divine name, see the next chapter on his theology of beauty.

20.       Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, V.120, V.121, V.149.

21.       Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2.74. A later Ḥadīth scholar, al-Bayhaqī (d. 1066), who lived a century before Rūzbihān, also records this ver- sion of the ḥadīth in his Shuʿab al-īmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000), #6201, V.162. After Rūzbihān’s time, an- other variation of this ḥadīth can be found in both Sunni and Shiite collections: “Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty, and He loves to have the trace of His blessing seen

upon His servant” (Inna Allāh jamīl yuḥibb al-jamāl wa-yuḥibb an yurā athar niʿmatihi ʿalā ʿabdihi). This is found, for instance, in al-Haythamī’s (d. 1404) Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid, a secondary col- lection of unique ḥadīths occurring in the six books of Sunni Ḥadīth (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), #8582, V.232; #8589, V.234; al-Suyūṭī’s (d. 1505) Jāmiʿ al-masānīd wa-l-marāsīl (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1994, #5324, II.269; #6716, II.475); as well as the Shiite Ḥadīth collection by ʿAllāma al-Majlisī (d. 1698), Biḥār al-anwār (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Wafāʾ, 1984), 10.92.

22.       Rūzbihān Baqlī, Kitāb maşrab al-arvāḥ va huva’l-maşhūr bi-hazār u yak maḳām (bi-alfi maḳāmin va maḳāmin), ed. Naşreden Nazif M. Hoca (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Matbaasi, 1974). Henceforth referred to as Mashrab (in standard Arabic transliteration).

23.       Ibid., 132.

24.       Ibid., 132–33.

25.       Al-Maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya, ed. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khuʾī, in Kitābkhāna-yi madrasa-yi fiqāhat (N.p.: n.d.), http://lib. eshia.ir/27484/1/293, #62, vol. 1, 293–94.

26.       Mashrab, 133.

27.       Ibid.

28.       Ibid.

29.       It is in the sense of “to approve” that istaḥsana is considered the antonym of istahjana, “to disapprove,” cf. Dakramanjī, Qāmūs al-aḍdād al-kabīr, s.v. ḥ-s-n.

30.       Lane translates its verbal form (with an added objective pro- noun, hu), istaḥsanahu, as “He counted, accounted, reckoned, or esteemed, him, or it, ﺣﺴﻦ [i.e., good, goodly, beautiful, comely, pleasing, &c.; he approved, thought well of, or liked, him, or it],” in Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. ḥ-s-n.

31.       Rūzbihān paraphrases al-Daylamī’s book in several works, especially in discussions of ʿishq. A few scholars have pointed out al-Daylamī’s “influence” on Rūzbihān, the earliest of which is Jean-Claude Vadet, who published the first critical edition of the ʿAṭf (1962). He examines al-Daylamī’s influence on Rūzbihān in his introduction to the French translation of the ʿAṭf (1980), Le traité d’amour mystique d’al-Daylami (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 12–17. The most important and detailed study of the connection between al-Daylamī and Rūzbihān is Masa- taka Takeshita’s “Continuity and Change in the Tradition of Shirazi Love Mysticism,” Orient XIII (1987): 113–31. Carl Ernst compares the two thinkers’ views on various stages of love in “The Stages of Love in Early Persian Sufism from Rābiʿa to Rūzbihān,” Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi, ed.

Leonard Lewisohn (London: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi, 1994), 435–55. Joseph Norment Bell and Ḥasan Maḥmūd al-Shāfiʿī discuss Rūzbihān’s familiarity with al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf in the in- troduction to their English translation of the ʿAṭf, A Treatise on Mystical Love, esp. lxvi–lxix. Nasrollah Pourjavady touches on this subject in his study of love and argues that the first major influence of al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf on subsequent Sufism is found in the works of Rūzbihān: “The book ʿAṭf was written in Shiraz at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century [A.H.]. However important this book may be in the history of Sufism in general, it did not have an extensive influence on Sufi writers in the fifth and sixth centuries. In fact it seems that the first person in Shiraz to follow Daylamī’s work by writing a book on ʿishq is Rūzbihān Baqlī.” Pourjavady, Bāda-yi ʿishq: Pazhūhishī dar maʿnā-yi bādah dar shiʿr-i ʿirfānī-yi fārsī [The Wine of passionate love: Study on the meaning of wine in Persian Sufi poetry] (Tehran: Nashr-i Kārnāma, 1387/2008), 54–55.

32.       Chapter 5 in ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, ed. J. Nūrbakhsh (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Yaldā-Qalam, 1380/2001), 35–44. All subsequent references to the ʿAbhar in this study will be to the Nūrbakhsh edition, which has eliminated many of the textual problems in the previous Corbin-Muʿīn edition (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Manūchihrī, 1383sh/2004, originally published in 1958).

33.       All “beauty” in this passage translates ḥusn.

34.       Al-Daylamī, ʿAṭf, 10 (ed. Vadet); 23 (ed. Bell and al-Shāfiʿī). Translation is mine, in order to keep the translation of technical terms consistent. For Bell’s translation, see Treatise on Mystical Love, 15.

35.       As Bell and al-Shāfiʿī note, al-Daylamī rarely names the sourc- es of the sayings that he has compiled in the ʿAṭf. Similar dis- cussions with the use of such philosophical terms as emanation (fayḍ) can be found, for instance, in Ibn Sīnā’s al-Risāla fī al-ʿishq. See Fackenheim, “A Treatise on Love,” 212, 213, 223, 224; Fri- thiof Rundgren, “Avicenna on Love: Studies in the ‘Risāla fī māhīyat al‘išhq’ I,” Orientalia Suecana 27–28 (1978-1979): 56.

36.       ʿAbhar, 41.

37.       Mashrab, 134.

38.       Ibid., 132.

39.       Ibid., 134.

40.       Rūzbihān, Ghalaṭāt al-sālikīn, 101, in Risālat al-quds wa risāla-yi ghalaṭāt al-sālikīn, ed. Jawād Nūrbakhsh (Tehran: Yaldā Qalam, 1381sh/2002).

41.       Ibid., 101–102.

42.       Mashrab, 73. I am reading maʿārif in the first sentence as ʿurafāʾ to make sense of the passage. Elsewhere, Rūzbihān attributes virtually the same sentence found in the middle of this pas- sage to another Sufi: “al-Nūrī said, ‘Things deemed beautiful are beautiful through His self-disclosure, and things deemed ugly are ugly through His being veiled,’” in Mashrab, 134.

43.       See, for instance, al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, trans. Alexander Knysh (Reading: Garnet, 2007), 205–207. In a parallel discussion of riḍā, Rūzbihān quotes part of this dis- cussion by al-Qushayrī, whom he consistently refers to as “the Teacher,” in Mashrab, 33.

44.       ʿArāʾis al-bayān II.29 (Q 9:66).

45.       Mashrab, 72–73.

46.       Ibid., 73.

47.       The word is ḥadathān, from ḥudūth, “temporal origination” or “new arrival,” which is the opposite of qidam, “eternity.” The Persian equivalent for ḥadathān that Rūzbihān employs is the unusual word, naw-āmadagān (“newly arrived things”), cf., Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt, 18.

48.       Mashrab, 73.

49.       Cf. Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, 40–42.

50.       Mashrab, 72–73.

Chapter 3. The Theology of Beauty

1.       The poem cited in the epigraph is recorded by Rūzbihān’s great-grandson, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf b. Ṣadr al-Dīn Abī Muḥammad Rūzbihān Thānī (d. 705/1305), in Rawḥ al-jinān fī sīrat al-shaykh Rūzbihān, ed. M. Dānishpazhūh, Rūzbihān-nāma (Tehran: Bahman, 1347sh/1969), 340–41. The verse continues thus: “O far removed from understanding, estimation, and imagination, / speaking in description of You is impossible. / In Your beauty (jamāl) the intellect is mad, / in Your majesty the spirit is a moth.”

2.       Though widely known among Muslims and popular especially among Sufis, this saying is not part of the standard six collec- tions of Sunni Ḥadīth but found for instance in al-Majlisī, Bihār al-anwār, 84.198; 84.344. Slightly after Rūzbihān’s time, Najm al-Dīn Dāya Rāzī (d. 1256) centrally features the saying in Mirsād al-ʿibād, where he presents it to be God’s response to the prophet David when he asked Him why He created the world. According to Chittick, “Early authors do not suggest that it

came from the Prophet’s mouth, but attribute it rather to the corpus of stories handed down about the prophet David.” He finds an early citation in the Rasāʾil of Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ from the tenth century, while noting that Ibn al-ʿArabī is the first author he knows of who explicitly attributes the saying to the prophet Muhammad. See Chittick, Divine Love, 439n6.

3.       Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1994).

4.       One must note that intermixture of the technical terminology of kalām, falsafa, and Sufism is nothing new, which may be best represented by the works of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) be- fore Rūzbihān’s time, and after him by the works of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240). However, one major difference between Rūzbihān and these two thinkers—who may be considered “Sufi theoreti- cians”—is that he makes no explicit attempt at systematizing his ideas through extensive importation of technical terms from kalām and falsafa nor does he make any visible effort to make the task of reading his writings easier by defining his terms. For a useful survey of the interaction between dogmatic theology and Sufism, see Toby Mayer, “Theology and Sufism,” in The Cambridge Com- panion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 258–87. A case study of the complex nature of Sufi language can be found in Martin Nguy- en, Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abū Qāsim al-Qushayrī and the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

5.       Masataka Takeshita, “Continuity and Change in the Tradition of Shirazi Love Mysticism”: 113–31. For an example of parallel discussions in al-Daylamī’s ʿAṭf and Rūzbihān’s writings, see the section on mustaḥsan in the previous chapter.

6.       Mayer, “Theology and Sufism,” 272.

7.       Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, 39.

8.       The position of Masālik al-tawḥīd in relation to the rest of Rūzbihān’s compositions is similar to that of al-Qushayrī’s Lumaʿ fī al-iʿtiqād and al-Fuṣūl fī al-uṣūl, two works of Ashʿarite dogma, in relation to his other (mostly Sufi) works. Cf. Richard Frank, “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī. First Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Luma‘ fī l-i‘tiqād,’” Melanges 15 (1982): 53–74; and “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī. Second Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Al-Fuṣūl fī l-Uṣūl,’” Melanges 16 (1983): 59–94. Ibn Khafīf, another Ashʿarite Sufi, whom Rūzbihān holds in great respect through the intermediary of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Daylamī’s trans- mission of his ideas, has a work of similar nature, namely a

work of dogma called Muʿtaqad Ibn Khafīf, edited by Schimmel in the appendix to al-Daylamī’s Sīrat al-shaykh al-kabīr Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Khafīf al-Shīrāzī. While both Ibn Khafīf and al-Qushayrī exerted influence on Rūzbihān’s thought, the content of his Masālik al-tawḥīd is closer to al-Qushayrī’s Lumaʿ than to Ibn Khafīf’s Muʿtaqad.

9.       Rūzbihān, Kitāb masālik al-tawḥīd, ed., Ballanfat, Quatre traits in- édits de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî, 167–90. Henceforth referred to as Masālik.

10.       Ballanfat, Quatre traits inédits de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî, 38–39.

11.       Masālik, 171.

12.       Ibid.

13.       Ibid., 170.

14.       Tafakkarū fī kulli shayʾin wa-lā tafakkarū fī dhāti Allāh. This ḥadīth in this exact wording is not included in the standard six books of Sunni Ḥadīth. Among the early sources that record it are: Hannād b. al-Sarī al-Kūfī, Kitāb al-zuhd, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿAbd al-Jibār al-Farīwāʾī (Kuwait: Dār al-Khulafāʾ li-l-Kitāb al-Islāmī, 1986), II.469; Abū al-Muẓaffar Manṣūr b. Muḥammad al-Samʿānī, al-Intiṣār li-aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, ed. Muḥmmad b. Ḥusayn

b. Ḥasan al-Jīzānī (N.p.: Maktabat Aḍwāʾ al-Manār, n.d.), I.9; Shīrawayh b. Shahrdār al-Daylamī al-Hamadhānī, al-Firdaws bi-maʾthūr al-khiṭāb, ed. al-Saʿīd b. Basyūnī Zughlūl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1986), II.56. Among the well-known scholars of Ḥadīth in the later generations, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) records this ḥadīth in slight variations. In his Jāmiʿ al-masānīd wa-l-marāsīl, al-Suyūṭī records, “Reflect upon every thing, but do not reflect upon God’s essence” (4:112); “Reflect upon God’s creation, but do not reflect upon God” (4:111, 112, 114); “Reflect upon God’s bounties, but do not reflect upon God” (4:111). The second version is also recorded by Shiites, e.g., al-Majlisī in Bihār al-anwār, 54:348.

15.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/355, #183, vol. 1, 355. The print edition is incomplete and omits some of the sentences (surrounding the saying of Abū Bakr) translated above; cf. ʿArāʾis al-ḥadīth aw al-maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya, ed. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khuʾī (Tehran: Sāzmān-i Tablīghāt-i Islāmī, 1389sh/2010), #188, 241–43.

16.       ʿArāʾis al-bayān, III.261 (Q 42:11). Henceforth abbreviated as

ʿArāʾis.

17.       Al-Maknūn,  http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/355,  #183,  vol.  1,

355. This part is also omitted in the printed edition; cf. ʿArāʾis al-ḥadīth aw al-maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya, #188, 242.

18.       Mashrab, 215.

19.       ʿArāʾis, I.368 (Q 6:59).

20.       Cf., ʿArāʾis, I.368 (Q 6:59) and Mashrab, 6.

21.       This echoes the biblical verse, No one shall see me and live

(Exodus 33:20).

22.       Arāʾis, I.465 (Q 7:142).

23.       Mashrab, 150. In addition, Rūzbihān uses ʿayn interchangeably with dhāt when he writes “ʿayn, ṣifa, and fiʿl,” with ʿayn replac- ing dhāt, the more standard term in such a list, in Mashrab, 162.

24.       Arāʾis, I.465 (Q 7:142).

25.       Masālik, 171.

26.       Ibid., 173.

27.       Ibid., 170–71.

28.       My translation. Richard Frank, “Two Short Dogmatic Works of Abū Qāsim al-Qushayrī. Second Part: Edition and Translation of ‘Al-Fuṣūl fī l-Uṣūl,” 60. For Frank’s translation, see ibid., 76.

29.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/355, #183, vol. 1, 355.

30.       Masālik, 174.

31.       ʿArāʾis, I.268 (Q 4:94).

32.       Ibid., I.345 (Q 6:1).

33.       Ibid., I.516 (Q 8:10).

34.       Ibid., I.465 (Q 7:142).

35.       Mashrab, 133.

36.       See the section on mustaḥsan in chapter 2 and Mashrab, 132.

37.       Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliyya fī al-ʿilm al-ilāhī, ed. al-Saqqā (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987), vol. 3, 246. He writes, “The fifth name: dhāt. Know that this expression was put down to indicate the specification of a thing by another thing. They say ‘a woman possessing (dhāt) money’ and ‘pos- sessing beauty’.…It is impossible to define [the essence] except by its attributes….It is what the attributes are attributed to (hiya mawṣūfa bi-l-ṣifāt).”

38.       Masālik, 170.

39.       Ibid., 178ff.

40.       Ibid.,170.

41.       See Gimaret, La Doctrine d’al-Ashʿarī, 260 and 276-81. For a concise discussion of the history of the problem of taʿṭīl, or di- vesting God of attributes, see Josef van Ess, “Tashbīh wa-Tanzīh,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.

42.       Gimaret, La Doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990), 259.

43.       Mashrab, 269.

44.       Ibid., 270.

45.       See Gimaret, La Doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, 323–28.

46.       Mashrab, 258–59.

47.       ʿArāʾis, I.441 (Q 7:54).

48.       In a useful survey of the history of jamāl and jalāl as terms in Muslim theological discourse, Parwīz Sulaymānī points out how these terms were understood by early dogmatic theolo- gians and were further developed by Sufis, in Dānishnāma-yi jahān-i islām, s.v. “Jalāl wa jamāl,” http://rch.ac.ir/article/ Details/9813. The complementarity of God’s beauty and maj- esty is the central subject of Sachiko Murata’s The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

49.       ʿArāʾis, I.16 (Q 1:1).

50.       This ḥadīth is widely accepted and reported by numerous Ḥadīth scholars, including such major scholars as al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Ibn Ḥanbal, and al-Tirmidhī. Ninety-nine is also the number of beads in the Muslim rosary for the purpose of invok- ing (dhikr) God’s names. While Rūzbihān did not write a treatise enumerating the divine names, some preceding Sufi-theolo- gians did, such as al-Qushayrī and al-Ghazālī; cf. al-Qushayrī, al-Taḥbīr fī al-tadhkīr li-Abī al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzin al-Qushayrī, ed. Muḥammad Amīn b. ʿAbd al-Hādī al-Fārūqī (Ḥimṣ: Dār al-Maʿārif, n.d.); al-Ghazālī, al-Maqṣad al-asnā fī sharḥ maʿānī asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1971).

51.       ʿArāʾis, III.381 (Q 55:78).

52.       Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4.170; Abū  Dāwūd,  Sunan, 3.132, 4.302;

al-Tirmidhī, Sunan, 9.372, 9.375, 10.10; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad,

1.155, 1.243, 7.87, 7.287; Mālik b. Anas, Muwaṭṭaʾ, 2.37.

53.       ʿArāʾis, III.381 (Q 55:78).

54.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/276, #22, vol. 1, 276.

55.       ʿArāʾis, III.381 (Q 55:78).

56.       This ḥadīth is found in Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 3.632; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, 4.363; al-Nasāʾī, Sunan al-Nasāʾī bi-sharḥ al-Suyūṭī wa-l-Sindī, ed. al-Sayyid Muḥammad Sayyid, et al. (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1999), 1.386 and 3.59, among others. A brief discus- sion of al-ism al-aʿẓam can be found in Chittick, Sufism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 56.

57.       The Arabic is ṣifāt al-khāṣṣa, which I am reading as al-ṣifāt al-khāṣṣa.

58.       ʿArāʾis, I.498 (Q 7:180).

59.       For this reason, it is also possible to regard this fourth category of names as “the names known to the elect,” reading khāṣṣa as a noun (“the elect”) rather than an adjective (“specific”).

60.       Mashrab, 232.

61.       The idea that ḥusn is a wider notion of beauty than jamāl by encompassing both jamāl and jalāl solves the conundrum dis- cussed by Elaine Scarry regarding Kant’s bifurcation of the sublime and the beautiful in her book, On Beauty and Being Just (83–85), where the sublime seems to correspond roughly to jalāl and the beautiful to jamāl. Scarry laments: “The sublime occa- sioned the demotion of the beautiful” (84); and “The sublime (an aesthetic of power) rejects beauty on the grounds that it is diminutive, dismissible, not powerful enough” (85). Had the notion of ḥusn been put into the picture, there would have been nothing to lament about, as ḥusn is by definition that which is and transcends the dichotomy between the beautiful/jamīl and the sublime/jalīl that belongs only to the temporal realm.

62.       Mashrab, 132.

63.       Ibid.

64.       Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 3, 21.

Chapter 4. The Anthropology and Cosmology of Beauty

1.       Rūzbihān, Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt, 166.

2.       Rūzbihān, Kitāb sayr al-arwāḥ, ed. P. Ballanfat, Quatre traits inédits de Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1998), 6.

3.       Mashrab, 6.

4.       Ibid.

5.       Ibid.

6.       Ibid., 7.

7.       Ibid., 9.

8.       See, for instance, ibid., 306.

9.       Ibid., 9.

10.       Ibid., 85. Rūzbihān devotes the seventh chapter of Risālat al-quds to discussing the purpose and effect of samāʿ, which has been translated into English as “On Listening to Music,” in Ernst, Teachings of Sufism (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), 97–103.

11.       Mashrab, 10.

12.       Ibid., 43. I have translated khiṭāb al-khāṣṣ as “a specific address” as Rūzbihān often drops the first al- in an adjectival phrase, e.g., al-khiṭāb al-khāṣṣ. However, if the iḍāfa construction was intentional, then the phrase would mean “an address for the elect.”

13.       Ibid., 85.

14.       ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī, Tamhīdāt, ed. ʿAfīf ʿUsayrān (Tehran: Manūchihrī, 1380sh/2001), 106.

15.       Mashrab, 28.

16.       Ibid. Cf. ʿAbhar, 9.

17.       ʿAbhar, 129.

18.       Mashrab, 307.

19.       Aḥmad Ghazālī, Sawāniḥ. Also see Pourjavady, “ʿIshq-i azalī wa bāda-yi Alast” [“Eternal passionate love and the wine of Alast”], in Bāda-yi ʿishq, 215–38; and Chittick, Divine Love, 32–35 and 43–49, on the ideas of beginningless love and the Covenant ac- cording to Anṣārī, Samʿānī, and Maybudī.

20.       Mashrab, 9–10.

21.       Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, s.v. “God and his Attributes.” Rūzbihān’s commentary on the above verses can be found in the corresponding sections in his Qurʾān commentary, ʿArāʾis al-bayān.

22.       Mashrab, 10.

23.       Ibid., 11.

24.       Ibid., 12.

25.       ʿArāʾis, III.199 (Q 38:72).

26.       Mashrab, 176.

27.       ʿAbhar, 38.

28.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/46, #225, vol. 2, 46.

29.       ʿArāʾis, III.239 (Q 40:64).

30.       Ibid., I.418 (Q 7:11).

31.       Ibid., III.470 (Q 75:22–23).

32.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/63, #261, vol. 2, 63.

33.       ʿArāʾis, III.487 (Q 80:40–41).

34.       Ibid.

35.       Mashrab, 85. A similar idea is expressed in the biblical tradition: “from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a cor- responding perception of their Creator” (Wisdom of Solomon 13:5), cited by Frank Burch Brown in Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 100.

36.       Mashrab, 85.

37.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/327, #137, vol. 1, 327.

38.       Mashrab, 133. Rūzbihān’s likely source for Dhū al-Nūn’s say- ing is al-Daylamī’s Aṭf, 135, where this statement is presented as Dhū al-Nūn’s response when he was asked “about the rec- ognizers’ state of seeking intimacy.” Al-Daylamī’s teacher, Ibn Khafīf also seems to have had a similar inclination toward ap- preciating beauty in creation, as he is reported to have said,

“The spirit’s pleasure lies in three things: good smell, beautiful voice, and gazing,” in Abū al-Ḥasan al-Daylamī, Sīrat al-shaykh al-kabīr Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Khafīf al-Shīrāzī, 214. This passage is discussed in Leonard Lewisohn, “Sufism’s Reli- gion of Love, from Rābiʿa to Ibn ʿArabī,” in The Cambridge Com- panion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 162–63; and Bell and Shafie, A Treatise on Mystical Love, xxxix. Thus, it is possible to trace Rūzbihān’s strong appreciation of beauty in creation to al-Daylamī (ca. 1000), Ibn Khafīf (d. 981), and Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 859), all of whom Rūzbihān held in great respect.

39.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/304, #88, vol. 1, 304.

40.       Rūzbihān, Manṭiq al-asrār, ed. Mojtaba Shahsavari, unpub- lished critical edition, 57, paragraph 112. I am grateful to the editor for sharing this extremely important unpublished text. The saying by the Prophet is also quoted in Mashrab, 133.

41.       ʿAbhar, 37. The closest that comes to this saying is recorded by a later author, al-Suyūṭī: “Three things clear up sight: gaz- ing at greenery, flowing water, and beautiful faces,” in Jāmiʿ al-masānīd wa-l-marāsīl, IV.157. Lewisohn presents a similar discussion in Rūzbihān’s Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt (150), in Lewisohn, “Sufism’s Religion of Love, from Rābiʿa to Ibn ʿArabī,” 155–56.

42.       Al-Maknūn,  http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/322,  #124,  vol.  1,

p. 322.

43.       Ibid.

44.       Ernst, Rūzbihān Baqlī, 35.

45.       Ballanfat, Quatre traités, 184–201.

46.       Mashrab, 208.

47.       Ibid., 236.

48.       See for instance Rūzbihān’s discussion of tafriqa in Mashrab,

149.

49.       ʿArāʾis, III.173 (Q 36:78).

50.       ʿAbhar, 42. Corbin discusses the extended passage in En Islam iranien, vol. 3, 96.

51.       ʿAbhar, 42. Elaine Scarry argues against various attempts at banishing beauty from modern human life and refutes a simi- lar attack on the contemplation of human beauty in modern discourse in On Beauty and Being Just, 72ff. A common theme that runs through both Scarry’s contemporary example and Rūzbihān’s is the fear that some people feel toward beautiful people—either because they are susceptible to being harmed or because they impart harm to their perceivers, through the sus- tained gaze. Underlying this fear is the recognition that beauty has power: either to guide or misguide people.

52.       ʿAbhar, 42.

53.       Uṭlubū al-khayr ʿinda ḥisān al-wujūh. This saying is not found in the six books of the canonical Sunni Ḥadīth, but it is recorded in a number of secondary Ḥadīth collections after Rūzbihān’s time, such as al-Haythamī, Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid, #13730, VIII.355; #13732, VIII.356; and al-Suyūṭī, Jāmiʿ al-masānīd wa-l-marāsīl, #3204, I.462; #3205, I.463. Also see Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Beauty in Arabic Culture (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), 64.

54.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/337, #156, vol. 1, 337.

55.       Ibid.

56.       Ibid., http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/39, #208, vol. 2, p. 39.

57.       Ibid., http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/337, #156, vol. 1, 337.

58.       Ibid., http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/46, #225, vol. 2, 46.

59.       Ibid.

60.       ʿAbhar, 41.

61.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/63, #261, vol. 2, 63.

62.       Ibid., http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/345, #162, vol. 1, 345–46.

63.       Mashrab, 133.

64.       Muḥammad Taqī Mīr, Sharḥ-i ḥāl wa āthār wa ashʿār-i shaykh Rūzbihān-i Baqlī-yi Fasāʾī-yi Shīrāzī (Shiraz: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Pahlawī, 1354sh/1975), 88.

65.       Cf. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 14.142; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 2.483, 2:496,

2:620, 3:224, 3:326.

66.       ʿAbhar, 12. I am taking the alternative reading of bāl as bāgh.

67.       Although Rūzbihān does not discuss “two eyes” per se, his contrast between the eye of gathering and the eye of separation seems more or less analogous to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s discussion of the two eyes, consisting of imagination and intellect, that is, one that combines and another that separates, or one that sees tashbīh and another that sees tanzīh. Cf., Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 356–81.

68.      Henry Corbin and Muḥammad Muʿīn, introduction to Le jasmin des fidèles d’amour (Kitâb-e ʻAbhar al-ʻâshiqîn): Traité de soufisme en person (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran, 1987), 97ff.

Chapter 5. The Prophetology of Beauty

1.       Mashrab, 133.

2.       Rūzbihān does mention Jesus’s beauty but does not discuss it extensively. This is probably because of his attention to Jesus’s strong association with spirit, which highlights his incompa- rability (tanzīh) more than his similarity (tashbīh) to the rest of

creation. However, Rūzbihān’s discussion of prophetic beauty primarily focuses on the prophets’ imitability for the rest of hu- manity as their role models.

3.       Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 3, 81.

4.       Mashrab, 87.

5.       Ibid., 156.

6.       ʿArāʾis, I.412 (Q 7:1).

7.       Ibid., I.143 (Q 3:33).

8.       Ibid., I.419 (Q 7:11).

9.       Ibid., I.418 (Q 7:11).

10.       Ibid., I.419 (Q 7:11).

11.       ʿAbhar, 43.

12.       Ibid.

13.       Ibid., 42. Cf., ʿArāʾis, I.41 (Q 2:30).

14.       ʿArāʾis, I.132 (Q 7:18).

15.       Ibid., I.41 (Q 2:30).

16.       Cf., ʿAbhar, 119; ʿArāʾis, II.148 (Q 12:4).

17.       Cf. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2:170; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 3:616; 4:203.

18.       ʿArāʾis, II.147 (Q 12:3).

19.       For a study of the theme of love in the story of Joseph in Sufi in- terpretation, see Jalāl Sattārī, Dard-i ʿishq-i Zulaykhā: Pazhūhishī dar qissa-yi Yūsuf (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Tūs, 1373sh/1994).

20.       ʿAbhar, 36.

21.       Ibid.

22.       ʿArāʾis, II.148 (Q 12:4).

23.       ʿAbhar, 36.

24.       ʿArāʾis, II.148 (Q 12:4).

25.       Risālat al-quds, 24.

26.       ʿAbhar, 36.

27.       Arāʾis, II.147 (Q 12:3).

28.       Ibid., II.146 (Q 12:3).

29.       ʿAbhar, 36.

30.       Ibid., 37. For various thinkers’ approaches to interpreting Jo- seph’s beauty, see Afrāsiyābpūr, Zībāʾī-parastī dar ʿirfān-i islāmī, 66ff.

31.       ʿArāʾis, II.155 (Q 12:19).

32.       See, for instance, Ritter, “Chapter Twenty-Six: Religious Love of a Beautiful Person,” The Ocean of the Soul, 448–519.

33.       ʿAbhar, 36.

34.       ʿArāʾis, II.155 (Q 12:19). Rūzbihān makes this point by way of quoting a certain Jaʿfar.

35.       Ibid., II.155 (Q 12:20).

36.       Ibid., II.160 (Q 12:24).

37.       Ibid., II.168–9 (Q 12:31).

38.       Ibid., II.169 (Q 12:31).

39.       Ibid., II.168 (Q 12:31).

40.       Ibid., I.465 (Q 7:143).

41.       Ibid.

42.       Ibid.

43.       Ibid.

44.       Ibid., I.174 (Q 3:96).

45.       Mashrab, 133.

46.       ʿArāʾis, III.84 (an interpretation of Q 20:39 provided under Q 28:25).

47.       Ibid., I.376 (Q 6:76).

48.       Ibid.

49.       Ibid.

50.       Ibid., I.376–77 (Q 6:76).

51.       Mashrab, 72–73.

52.       Ibid., 73.

53.       Ibid. This is a supplication often ascribed to Muhammad in Sufi literature.

54.       Ibid.

55.       Ibid.

56.       Ibid., 134.

57.       Ibid.

58.       Kashf al-asrār, 35 (section 67). Cf., al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.

ir/27484/1/283, #33, vol. 1, 283, whose incomplete excerpt is found in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Rūzbihān Thānī, Rawḥ al-jinān, 262.

59.       ʿArāʾis, II.148 (Q 12:4).

60.       Mashrab, 66. Cf., Mashrab, 73; ʿArāʾis, I.106.

61.       Mashrab, 66.

62.       ʿAbhar, 42.

63.       Ibid.

64.       Ibid., 125.

65.       ʿArāʾis, I.107 (Q 2:260).

66.       Ibid., II.148–49.

67.       Kitāb al-ighāna, 108–109.

68.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/2/50, #237, vol. 2, 50.

69.       Ibid.

70.       ʿArāʾis, III.444 (Q 68:4).

71.       Ibid., III.445 (Q 68:4).

72.       Ibid., I.159 (Q 3:79).

73.       Sayr al-arwāḥ, 33.

74.       ʿArāʾis, III.358–59 (Q 53:11).

75.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/327, #137, vol. 1, 327.

76.       Mashrab, 149.

77.       Ibid.

78.       ʿAbhar, 126.

79.       Mashrab, 133.

80.       ʿAbhar, 37.

81.       Ibid.

82.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/322, #124, vol. 1, 322.

83.       Ibid.

84.       Ibid.

85.       Versions of this ḥadīth are found in al-Nasāʾī, Sunan, 5:280; Ibn

Ḥanbal, Musnad, 3:581, 4:54, 4:201.

86.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/328, #137, vol. 1, 328.

87.       This ḥadīth is found in secondary collections such as Abū Dāwūd, al-Marāsīl (Riyadh: Dār al-Ṣamīʿī, 1422/2001), 499 and 500; and Haythamī, Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid, 5.39.

88.       Mashrab, 134. Cf., al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/328, #137, vol. 1, 328; al-Daylamī, A Treatise on Mystical Love, trans. Bell and Shafie, 16; al-Ghazālī, Iḥyā, 2.165.

89.       ʿAbhar, 41.

90.       Ibid.

91.       Al-Maknūn, http://lib.eshia.ir/27484/1/345, #162, vol. 1, 345.

92.       Ibid.

93.       Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mathnawī-yi maʿnawī, verse 4 (Tehran: Nashr-i Būta, 1381sh/2002), vol. 1, 7.

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GENERAL INDEX

Abaser (mudhill), 64; abasement, 67

ʿabd, 139n21

Abraham, 20, 82, 101, 116–21,

122, 124, 125

Abrahamov, Binyamin, 132n8 absolute (muṭlaq), 45, 78, 105,

125; beauty, 23, 44; good 21;

nonexistence, 44; ugliness,

44, 105

accident (ʿaraḍ), 57

acquisition (kasb, iktisāb), 57, 60,

61

act (fiʿl), 56, 57, 60–64, 67, 72, 73,

75, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85, 88, 91,

93, 94, 97, 99, 103, 106, 114,

117, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126;

attributes of, 65, 67, 72, 73,

84, 85, 126; clothing of, 119,

124; creative, 60, 77; general,

90, 125; names of, 70; of severity and gentleness, 43, 119; specific, 90, 114, 117, 118,

125; creatures as divine acts, 76, 90

Actor (fāʿil), 61, 62

ādāb, 19

Adam, 66, 67, 83, 84, 85, 93, 97,

98, 101, 102–107, 108, 109,

112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120,

122, 135n1; as shāhid, 98;

children  of,  80,  106,  112;

second, 107, 109; Adamic

beauty, 92–93, 107; Adam’s beauty (see beauty)

ʿadam, 47

address (khiṭāb), 80–83, 86, 88, 146n12; specific, 81, 146n12

ʿadl, 16

adorning, 34, 133n20

aesthetics, 2, 4, 13, 16, 129n5;

aesthetic experience, 13, 18,

25, 88, 131n2; theory, 26, 131n2;  of  power,  146n61;

Aesthetica, 4

affliction, 33, 136n7

afterlife, 87

Aḥmad b. ʿAṭāʾ. See Ibn ʿAṭāʾ.

aḥwāl, 22

akhlāq, 19; akhlāq Allāh, 21

Alast, 80, 135n1, 147n19

Alexandria, 6, 130n16

alienation, 24, 76

alignment, 15

All (al-kull), 78

Allāh, 12, 21, 34, 51, 57, 64, 67, 68, 139n21, 143n14

allusion (ishāra), 68, 69, 90, 120,

125, 127

ambiguity, 51, 53, 57

171

ʿāmm. See general.

amphibolie, 91

analogy (qiyās), 23, 46, 53, 67, 104

anāniyya, 67, 68

angel (malak, malakūtiyān), 3, 12,

84, 102–107, 108, 109, 111, 112,

115, 120; angelic, 21; archan- gel, 31. See also sovereignty.

anger, 20, 123

animal (ḥayawān), 3, 21, 25, 32,

33, 83, 138n17; soul, 18, 21,

25

annihilation (fanāʾ), 35, 54, 58–59,

63, 69, 89, 118

Anṣārī, Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh, 147n19

anthropology, 5, 29, 73, 75

anthropomorphist,  33;  anthro-

pomorphic, 55, 66

apophasis, 53; apophatic, 52, 60 Aristotle, Theology         of,        11;

Aristotelian psychology, 21

arrogance (kibr), 34

art, 2, 4, 13, 24; [God’s] art (ṣunʿ),

94, 97, 98; Artist (ṣāniʿ), 62,

97, 98

artifact (ṣanīʿat), 62, 98

artisanry (iṣṭināʿ), 42, 47 Āṣaf (b. Barakhyā), 123 ascension, 18, 20, 55

asceticism,  2;  ascetics,  92–93;

ascetic life, 6

Ashʿarism, 5, 54, 56, 60, 61, 65,

71; Ashʿarite, 33, 52, 55, 56,

57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 71, 138n19,

142n8

assaults (saṭawāt), 58, 87, 114

ʿAtīq mosque, 1, 6

atom (dharra), 42, 47, 113, 119

ʿAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, 4

attraction, 16, 24, 25, 111; attrac- tive appearance, 107; force, 94

attribute (ṣifa), (defined), 64–68; (mentioned), 14, 16–17, 37,

49,  56–57,  59,  60,  62–63,

69–73,  75–82,  84–85,  88,

90–94, 99, 103–104, 106–11,

114–27,  133n12,   133n20,

144n37,  144n41,  147n21;

anthropomorphic or revealed, 66; beautiful and majestic, 67, 68, 72, 78, 81, 84, 85;

beginningless  (azalī),  70,

115; clothed in, 91; 109, 117,

119, 120, 125; clothing of, 62, 123; divesting God of, 144n41; eternal (qadīm), 36, 56, 66, 72, 76; mirroring full range of divine, 92; light of God’s, 81, 90, 110,

117, 118, 122–23, 124, 125;

Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites on, 56, 65; names of, 70; ninety-nine, 65; of act (or active attributes), 65, 67, 72,

73, 85, 126; of essence (or

essential attributes), 65, 66,

67, 72, 73, 85; positive and

negative,  17;   seven,   56,

65–67; specific, 66, 71, 104; vision of, 106; witnessing of, 117; world of, 84; world reflecting God’s, 35; ḥusn as divine attribute, 36, 43, 72; jamāl as divine attribute, 34, 73, 111

audition (samāʿ), 52, 80, 88

auditory, 12, 53, 80 Avicenna. See Ibn Sīnā. awe, 37, 112

āya, 35

ʿayn, 59–60, 144n23; ʿayn al-ʿayn, 59; ʿayn al-riḍā, 42

azal, 61; azalī, 65

ʿaẓama, 59

badness, bad (sūʾ), 29, 117, 136n6, 136n7. See evil.

bākūra, 126

Ballanfat, Paul, 5, 6, 8, 9, 55, 56,

90

Bamū, Mount, 6

baqāʾ, 66

Baqlī. See Rūzbihān Baqlī.

Basā, 5

basil, sweet (rayḥān), 39, 95

basīṭ, ʿaql al-, 78

bāṭin, jamāl al-, 36

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 4

beasts, 21

beautiful (jamīl, ḥasan), 32, 73; animal, 138n17; beautiful (jamīl) attributes, 67, 68, 72,

73, 78, 84, 85, 99; beloved,

11, 81; creation, 60, 76; cre-

ator, 25, 31, 36, 40, 45, 64, 73,

75,  99;  deemed  beautiful

(mustaḥsan), 37–43, 45, 46,

88, 89, 96, 104, 105, 108, 116,

119, 120, 126, 141n42; deem-

ing     beautiful    (istiḥsān), 37–38, 42, 46, 104, 118–19;

doing  what  is   beautiful (iḥsān), 12, 31; example, 31,

101, 127; face, 89–90, 92, 94,

95, 98, 125, 148n41; garment

and sandals, 34; God as, 1, 2,

12, 16, 19, 25, 33, 34, 35, 63,

64, 75, 86, 88, 92, 99, 127, 128,

138n21; human being, 91, 99,

107, 113, 123, 127; image, 25;

intention, 12; literature, 13;

manner,  33,   120;  object,

13–14, 23, 38, 39, 88–89; par-

doning,  33;  patience,  33;

prophet, 101, 107, 116, 122,

125; script, 15; traits, 20; voice, 15, 148n38; writing,

11, 29; youth, 98; most beau-

tiful form (aḥsan ṣūra), 32, 36,

55, 85, 86, 89, 98, 124, 125,

129n5,    137n15;    names (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā), 16–17, 21,

24, 31, 47, 49, 68, 70–73, 75,

78, 79, 99, 103, 132n8; of cre-

ators (aḥsan al-khāliqīn), 12, 31, 32, 36, 40, 45, 64, 73, 75,

99; of tales or stories (aḥsan al-qaṣaṣ), 23, 107, 108, 113;

speech (qawl), 89; stature (aḥsan taqwīm), 12, 31, 75,

85, 97

beauty (ḥusn, jamāl, nīkūʾī, zībāʾī), 29–40, 73, 136n9, 138n17,  138n18,  146n61;

absolute,  44;  Adam’s,  93,

102, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113;

Adamic, 92, 93, 107; adora-

tion of, 4, 99; all-encompass-

ing, 85; anthropology of, 29,

75; and recognition, 104; as inseparable from love, 22, 111, 116; as perennial beloved, 22; as perfection of being, 14, 16, 132n8; associ- ated with pleasure, 22–23, 89, 125, 132n8; associated with sorrow, 23–25; banish- ing of from modern life, 2, 148n51; beginningless (azalī), 108, 109, 111, 123; cosmic, 5,

75, 90, 91, 92, 93, 99, 101; cos-

mology of, 17, 29, 75; effect

on human soul, 14, 82, 112,

116; equated with being, 11,

17, 47; eternal, 81, 98, 109;

excellence (faḍīla) of, 38; experience of, 12, 18; exter-

nal, 11, 36, 107; eye of, 22; general (ʿāmm) and specific (khāṣṣ), 90, 91, 93, 99; God’s,

19, 34, 42, 45, 47, 50, 63, 72,

73, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 83,

86–89, 94, 96, 101 104–106,

108, 111, 113, 115, 119, 120,

124–27, 145n48; highest, 14,

21, 26; human, 4, 85, 90, 91,

92, 93, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102,

111,  122,  148n51; innate

human nature of, 101, 102;

inner, 36, 37, 94, 95; intelligi-

ble, 21, 23; Jesus’s, 149n2;

Joseph’s,  23,  107–13,  122,

150n30; lover of, 76, 81, 125,

126, 127; material, 3; mirror

of, 18, 95, 108, 109, 115,

127; Muhammad’s, 122–27; names of beauty (jamāl), 16; non-Adamic, 92; of character follows upon beauty of cre- ation, 95; of creation, 32, 75,

95; of Creator, 97; of eternity,

91, 93, 114, 121; of form, 84,

85; of intelligible world, 14; ontology or ontological analysis of, 14–16, 28, 31, 44,

45, 47; outer, 37, 86, 94, 95;

partial, 39, 44; people of, 101;

perception of, 22, 23, 42, 45,

75, 111, 112; physical, 94;

prophetic, 101, 108, 111, 150n2; prophetology of, 101; psychology of, 21–24; quarry of, 126; relative, 44; search

for, 23, 25, 26, 88, 94; seeking,

25, 86, 88, 116; sensible, 18,

21, 23, 91; sensory means of

expressing, 12; shade of, 39;

source of, 25, 39, 40, 91, 94,

127; theology of, 49; trace of,

111, 121; ultimate, 14, 25, 26;

universal, 38, 39, 44; utmost

limit of, 15; vision of, 42, 106,

116, 119, 123, 124; witnessing

of, 81, 83, 93, 121; beautifica-

tion, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 26, 99

Bedouin, 138n17 beginninglessness (azal), 61, 69,

83, 90, 97, 114; beginningless

(azalī), 61, 65, 66, 67, 70, 81,

101, 108, 109, 111, 114, 115,

123, 125, 147n19

being (wujūd, hast(ī)), 11, 14, 22,

44, 47, 51, 96, 125; beautiful,

23, 41, 98, 127; beginning-

less, 125; created, 70; engen-

dered being (kawn), 88, 92,

93, 126; fullness of, 45; defi- cient, 41; equated with beauty, 11, 17, 47; God’s, 65; hierarchy of, 106; imperfect, 15; impossible, 44; necessary,

14, 21, 22, 44, 51; perfect or

perfection of, 14, 16, 24, 26,

41, 45; possible, 44; quiddity

(māhiyya) of, 42, 47; realm of

being (kawn), 18, 43, 78, 92,

106; temporal, 66; ugly, 41.

See also existence.

Bell, Joseph Norment, 140n31, 140n35

beloved (maḥbūb, maʿshūq), 11, 19, 22, 25, 76, 81, 83, 96, 124,

126, 127

bewilderment, 22, 35, 58, 69, 112

biblical, 24, 111, 144n21, 147n35

bird, 97, 135n1

birth, 79, 83, 84

Black, Deborah, 13

body (jism), 23, 57, 82, 83, 84, 85,

86, 95; Adam’s, 67; celestial,

120, 122; disdain  for, 23;

human, 83; medicine for, 19; Muhammad’s, 124. See also frame.

bounty (faḍl), names of, 16 Böwering, Gerhard, 83

breath, 66–67

breeze from the Real, 95 Brethren of Purity. See Ikhwān

al-Ṣafāʾ. bride, God’s, 71

brilliance (sanāʾ, naḍāra), 78, 87,

91, 123

bringer-of-existence or Existence- giver (mūjid), 42, 61, 62

brothers, 24, 110, 112

burhān, 51

calligraphy, 29; calligraphers, 12

camaraderie, 20

camel, 32, 137n17

cataphatic, 52, 60

cattle (anʿām), 32, 63, 64

cause, 21, 23, 37, 81, 93, 95, 112;

chain of causes, 61; first cause (al-ʿilla al-ūlā), 14, 22,

51, 61

celestial, 18, 119, 120, 122

certitude (yaqīn), 35, 36, 61, 106 character      or        character       trait

(khuluq), 21, 25, 85, 94, 95,

110, 123, 133n20

characteristic, specific (khāṣṣiyya), 93, 111

Chittick, William, 134n20, 137n14, 141n2

chivalry, 19–20

Christianity, 2; Christian theol- ogy, 1

clay, 66, 84, 85, 86, 123

clothing (libās), 15, 34, 36, 85, 91,

94, 97, 119, 123, 124; of acts, 62,

119, 124; of attributes, 62, 120,

123, 127; of ḥusn, 36; of love, 94; becoming clothed (iltibās), 90–91, 109, 117, 119, 121, 125

coincidentia oppositorum, 53

color, 15, 135n1; color symbol- ism, 137n16

comeliness (malāḥa), 88, 89, 94,

115, 116, 123

command (amr), 58, 77, 78, 79,

85, 102, 104, 106

companions, of Cave, 20; of Muhammad, 12, 31

contemporary, 2,   46,   136n9, 148n51

contentment (riḍā), 42, 46, 78; eye

of, 42–43, 45–47, 118–19

convent, Sufi, 5, 6

Corbin, Henry, 6, 7, 8, 9, 72, 91,

98, 101, 130n10, 137n15

corporeality, 25; corporeal exis- tence, 18

corpulence, 138n17 cosmogony, 5, 14, 19

cosmology, 5, 13, 14, 17–19; of

beauty, 29, 75

cosmos, 17, 99; cosmic beauty, 5,

75, 90, 91–93, 99, 101; order,

24

covenant (ʿahd, mīthāq), 80–83, 86, 88, 89, 99, 147n19; of love,

81, 86, 88, 99, 126, 128

creation (khalq), 16, 19, 31, 35, 40,

44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 58, 67, 70,

89, 90, 97, 99, 101, 113, 114,

117, 122, 127, 143n14, 147n38,

150n2; as becoming clothed by God, 91, 121; as clothing God, 91; as deemed beauti- ful, 41, 43; as divine act,

60–64; as mirror, 63; as God’s art, 97; as self-disclosure of God’s  beauty,  19,  49,  73;

beauty of, 32, 75, 95; con- trasted with character (khuluq), 85, 95, 110; God as incomparable to, 57; initial stages of, 75–79; love as driv- ing force for, 19, 73, 78; myth,

19; of heavens, 94; of human

being, 79–89, 92; realm of,

41, 58; six days of, 66

creator (khāliq), 2, 41, 61, 62, 64,

91, 93, 97, 114, 119, 121,

147n35; beautiful, 12, 25, 31,

36, 40, 45, 64, 73, 75, 99

creature (khalq), 19, 32, 33, 34, 35,

49, 58, 63, 69, 70, 76, 84, 90,

92, 95, 96, 102, 104, 106, 107,

109, 113, 114, 117, 120, 123

curtain (sitr), 41, 42, 97

Dānishpazhūh, Muḥammad Taqī, 7, 8

Dārā Shukūh, 27–28

darkness (qatara, ẓulma), 87, 118 David, 141n2

day (yawm, rūz), 81; Last Day, 31; of Covenant, 80–83; of Resurrection, 80; six days of creation, 66

Daylamī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-, 38, 39, 54, 139n31,  140n35,  142n5,

142n8, 147n38

death,  67,  88;  death-giver

(mumīt), 16

deficiency, 14, 43, 72; realm of,

15, 26

delight, 18, 23, 87, 102, 126

demonstration (burhān), 51

depth (kunh), 58, 59

descent, 83

description (waṣf), 43, 49, 52, 87,

108, 114, 123, 141n1; most

specific, 36, 72

desert, 81, 122, 138n17

desire (irāda), 19, 24, 25, 56, 61,

65, 66, 73, 76, 77, 78, 99, 106,

117

dhāt, 16, 57, 64, 65, 143n14, 144n23, 144n37

dhawq, 53

dhikr, 145n50 diary, 8, 32, 55

disavowal (nakara), 104 disclosure. See self-disclosure. distance, 16, 39, 87

divine, 3, 5, 25, 26, 75, 122; custom,

34; decrees, 126; glory, 82; life,

84; longing for, 128; manifes- tation, 40; mercy and wrath, 42; nurturing, 82; power, 110;

presence,  26,   102;  proof

(burhān),  112;  quarry,  95;

severity, 43; speech, 82; tre-

mendousness, 42; divinely- given (ladunī) knowledge, 111, 122; divinity, 58, 90, 91. See also address, beauty.

divorce, 33

dogma, Ashʿarite, 71, 138n19, 142n8; dogmatic theology (see theology)

drinking place (mashrab), 35, 117

drunk(en) (mast), 82, 125

duality, of knower and known, 58; of subject and object, 19

dust (ghabra, turāb, ghubār), 83, 87, 95, 119; dust mote, 34

earth (arḍ), 35, 66, 76, 83, 86, 88,

96, 103, 116, 118, 121; sev-

enth, 114; throne to, 58, 61,

96;  earthly  existence,  88;

form, 82; pre-earthly life, 35 ecstasy (wajd), 28, 135n3; ecstatic,

5, 8, 28

ego, 20; alter-ego, 42; egoistic

desires, 25

Egypt, 24, 108, 111, 112

elect (khāṣṣa), 71, 81, 82, 145n59, 146n12

Elias, Jamal, 131n2

emanation (ṣudūr, fayḍ), 39, 40, 140n35

embodied, 79; existence, 35; life,

76, 86

embryo, 84

endless (abadī), 65, 66, 81, 114,

123

enjoyment (ghibṭa, ḥaẓẓ), 23, 124 enmity (ʿadāwa), eye of, 42 envy, 20, 112

Ernst, Carl, 8, 27, 28, 55, 90, 91, 130n20, 135n3, 139n31

eros, 38

essence (dhāt), 57–60, 61–73 et passim; as annihilating, 59,  63;  associated  with

Muhammad’s beauty, 122– 23; associated with specific love or beauty, 76, 93; associ- ated with tremendousness, 91; relation to attributes, 16–17, 64–65, 144n37; attri-

butes of, 65–67, 72, 73, 84, 85;

Muhammad’s vision of, 122; names of, 70; needing cloth- ing, veil, or mirror, 62, 91,

114, 117; self-disclosure of,

62, 63, 78, 79, 85, 93, 104, 120,

126, 127; symbolized by sun,

108-109, 118; unknowability

of, 56–60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68,

69, 73, 77, 113, 114

estimation (wahm), 141n1. See

imaginings.

eternity (qidam), 59, 63, 66, 76, 77,

78, 79, 81, 88, 91, 93, 105, 109,

110,  114,  116,  118,  121,

141n47; of eternity, 59, 104.

See also beginninglessness. ethics (ʿilm al-akhlāq), 13, 14,

19–21; ethical, 2, 3, 31

etiquette (ādāb), 19 Ettinghausen, Richard, 132n8 evil (sūʾ), 29, 136n6, 136n7; eye of

(ʿayn al-sūʾ), 42; problem of,

9; traits (masāwiʾ), 42. See

badness.

exaltedness (ʿizza), 69, 81, 114

Exalter (rāfiʿ), 64; exaltation, 67

excellence (faḍīla), 38

exegesis, Qurʾrānic (tafsīr) 6; exegete (mufassir), 55

existence (wujūd), 14, 17, 18, 21,

43, 56, 57, 58, 61, 69, 77, 78,

89, 95, 96, 119; bringer-of- existence or Existence-giver (mūjid), 42, 61, 62; created,

75; earthly, 88; eternal, 61, 65;

human, 82, 84, 99, 128; quid- dity (māhiyya) of, 119; subtle,

95. See being.

existent (mawjūd), 14, 23, 57, 62 Exodus, 144n21

eye (ʿayn, chashm), 22, 59, 77, 98,

99, 115, 116, 124, 127; begin-

ningless, 114; merciful, 124;

Muhammad’s, 126, 127; of

beauty, 22; of beholder, 46; of

contentment, 42–43, 45, 46, 47,

118–19; of desire, 117; of evil, 42; of gathering (ʿayn al-jamʿ), 90–91, 96, 97, 98, 119, 124, 125,

127, 149n66; of intellect, 97, 98; of the Real, 126; of recog- nizers and witnessers, 41; of separation (ʿayn al-tafriqa), 91, 98, 119, 149n66; of spirit, 96,

97, 98, 125; two (inner) eyes,

97, 149n66; eyesight, 124

face (wajh, rū), 1, 66, 81, 87, 109,

118; Adam’s, 93, 104, 105;

beautiful, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95,

98, 125, 148n41; comely, 94;

deemed ugly, 105; hand- some, 89; Joseph’s 110, 122; Muhammad’s, 122; of eter- nal beauty, 109; severe, 105

faith (īmān), 12, 31, 46, 93, 121; man of pure faith (ḥanīf), 118,

falsafa, 11, 54, 142n4

Fārābī, al-, 14, 16, 23, 39, 133n12

Fārisī, Kamāl al-Dīn, 132n2 Farley, Edward, 1, 2

Fārs, 5, 56

Fasā, 5

fayḍ, 39, 140n35

fear (khawf), 16, 22, 35, 37, 106, 148n51

female, 38, 83, 112

fidèles d’amour, 7 fidelity, 135n3 fiqh, 38

fire, 83, 94

First  (awwal),  14,  23,  24,  61;

Cause,   14,   22,   51,   61;

Principle, 17, 24

fiṭra, 61; fiṭrat al-ḥusn, 102, 107

fitting (lāʾiq), 15, 69; befitting (zībanda), 136n9

foot (qadam), 66

Footstool (kursī), 122, 123

forbearance (ḥilm), 31

forgivingness, 67

form (ṣūra), 31, 32, 83, 85, 91, 115,

117; Adam’s, 98; beauty of,

84, 90; bodily, 84; earthly, 82;

God’s, 85, 97, 98, 115; human,

79, 85, 91, 129n5; most beau-

tiful, 32, 36, 55, 89, 124, 125,

137n15; of beauty, 86; world of, 84

fountainhead (ʿayn), 60

fragrance (rāʾiḥa), 88, 125 frame(s), bodily (ashbāḥ), 94,

(haykal) 18, 95

freshness (ṭarāwa) of divine act, 93

friends (awliyāʾ), 127; friend- ship (walāya), 82; intimate

friendship (khilla), 117; inti- mate friend (khalīl), 119, 121

fruit, first of season (bākūra), 126

futuwwa, 20

Gabriel, ḥadīth of, 12, 31, 137n14

garb (kiswa), 94, 95, 122, 123; of angels, 112; of His majesty and beauty, 115; of Lordship, 96, 109, 112. See garment.

garden (janna, bāgh), 21, 39, 97,

126, 127

garment (kiswa), 34, 35. See garb. gathering. See eye.

gaze (naẓar), 76, 84, 87, 89, 90, 96,

117, 121, 125, 148n38, 148n41,

148n51

general  (ʿāmm),  act,  90,  125;

beauty, 90, 91, 93, 99; con- trasted with specific (khāṣṣ) 76, 81, 82, 90, 91, 93, 99, 124,

125; love, 76, 81

generosity (karam), 20, 94

gentleness (luṭf), 16, 24, 43, 67, 104,

112, 119, 127; names of, 16

ghabra, 87

ghayb, 59

ghayba, 59

Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid al-, 4, 11,

15, 16, 21, 30, 33, 132n8,

138n19, 142n4, 145n50

Ghazālī, Aḥmad, 4, 22, 27, 30, 83, 134n23

ghulām, 110

Gimaret,  Daniel,  33,   132n9, 138n19

gloriousness  (subūḥiyya),  109;

glories (subuḥāt), 114

glory (majd), 82 gnosis, 134n20 Gnosticism, 134n20

God, encounter with, 12, 40, 52,

53, 55, 80, 88, 98, 99, 121; as

eternal shāhid, 82; image of, 107; in His aloneness, 49;

transcendent, 53, 60; unknowable and hidden, 57; God-human relationship, 37,

38;   God-given   (ladunī)

knowledge, 111, 122 Gonzalez, Valérie, 131n2, 132n7,

135n26

good (khayr), 14, 94; absolute, 21; sheer, 51; good(ly) (ṭayyib), 88, 125, 148n38; goodness and beauty (ḥusn), 29–31, 119, 138n18, 139n30

grammar, Arabic, 5, 6

gratitude (shukr), 46

Greek, 4, 17, 18, 26, 29, 39, 51

greenery (khuḍra), 90, 125, 148n41

grooming, personal, 12

guide, 62, 71, 99, 117, 148n51

ḥadathān, 141n47. See temporal origination.

Ḥadīth, 5, 6, 26, 28, 31, 32, 38, 50,

52, 54, 55, 56, 65; commen-

tary, 6, 58, 69, 89, 94, 124

Ḥallāj, al-, 7, 9

Hamadānī ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, 4, 22,

81, 135n3, 137n15

Ḥanbalī, 55

hand (yad), 66, 84, 85, 112

handsome (ṣabīḥ), 89 happiness (saʿāda), 30, 133n20 harmony, 24, 30

ḥasan, 30, 32, 34, 38, 42, 43, 71, 72,

89, 90, 105; ḥasana, 30, 31,

136n6; ḥasuna, 12, 30, 41. See

ḥusn, ḥisān. ḥayy, 64

He-ness (huwiyya), 68

hearing (samʿ), 56, 65, 66, 80

heart (qalb, fuʾād, dil), 22, 25, 34,

70, 96, 135n1; Adam’s, 122;

Muhammad’s 122–24; tight-

hearted (tang-dilān), 93

heavens (samāwāt), 18, 66, 93,

103, 108, 116, 118, 121

hermeneutics, 2, 52

hidden (makhfī), essence, 59, 69,

77; God, 57; treasure (see treasure); hiddenness (khafāʾ) of beauty, 39; (pinhān), 97

hierarchy, 22, 36, 44, 106

ḥijāb, 117

Ḥijāz, 6

ḥilm, 31

ḥisān, 18, 92, 94, 149n53

Hoca, Nazif, 4, 8

holiness (quds), 69, 71, 90, 123;

holy (qudsī), 62, 82, 94, 103,

105, 109, 111

hope (rajāʾ), 22, 31, 35, 37, 106,

127

horse (faras), 15

ḥudūth, 57, 141n47

Hughes, Aaron, 13

ḥulūl, 126

human (being), acts, 56–57, 60–61; and cosmic beauty, 90, 92; and God, 37, 38, 108;

cognitive capacity, 26; con- duct, 33; face, 89, 94, 98, 105;

language, 52, 53; love, 22, 83;

mirroring the divine, 92, 95;

best of, 106; and angels, 105–

107; formation of, 85; origi- nal state of, 102; purpose of life, 4, 107; world, 98. See also creation, form, nature, perfection.

humbleness, 20

humility, 36

ḥusn  (defined),  29–32,  36–37;

(mentioned) 3, 11, 15, 28, 34,

35, 38, 40, 42, 45, 64, 73, 101;

as eternal attribute of God’s

essence, 72, 73; as belonging

to God alone, 43, 44, 45; as encompassing jamāl and jalāl, 85, 146n61; as one of the most specific descrip- tions of God, 72; associated with ʿishq, 83; associated with light, 39, 95; contrasted

with jamāl, 37, 47, 105; al-Daylamī’s explanation of, 39; identified with being, 47; nīkūʾī as Persian transla- tion of, 136n9; interrelation with other terms, 39, 44, 72; Qurʾānic primacy of over jamāl,  37;  aḥsan,  12,  31,

36, 45, 64, 72, 89, 102, 123;

aḥsan al-khāliqīn, 73; aḥsan

ṣūra,  32;  aḥsana,  30,  31;

al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, 16, 68, 71, 133n20; fiṭrat al-ḥusn, 102, 107;  al-ḥusn  al-kullī,  39;

ḥusnā, 73, 78, 85, 123, 136n6;

shaṭr al-ḥusn, 107. See ḥasan, ḥisān.

huwiyya, 68

ḥuzn, 23

I-ness (anāniyya), 67–68

Iblīs, 9, 91, 103, 104, 112

Ibn al-ʿArabī, 4, 16, 20, 22, 142n2, 142n4, 149n66

Ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Aḥmad, 41 Ibn Dabbāgh, 132n8

Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad, 34, 52 Ibn Haytham, 131n2

Ibn Khafīf, 120, 142n8, 147n38, 148n38

Ibn Manẓūr, 29

Ibn Sīnā, 14, 16, 17, 21, 22, 39, 140n35

iconoclasm,   Hebraic    and Christian, 2

ignorance (jahl), 46, 67, 104, 105,

111

iḥsān, 3, 12, 30, 31

Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, 17, 18, 142n2 ʿilla al-ūlā, al-, 51 Illuminationist (ishrāqī), 24, 30

ʿilm, 53; contrasted with maʿrifa, 53, 134n20; ʿilm al-akhlāq, 19;

ʿilm al-nafs, 21

iltibās, 90, 109, 117, 121. See

clothing.

image, 53, 63; of God, 25, 107

imagery, 3, 50

imagination   (khayāl),  141n1, 149n66

imaginings (awhām), 69, 70. See

estimation.

īmān, 12, 31, 46

imperfection, 26, 41, 72; imper-

fect being, 15

incapacity (ʿajz), 46, 58, 69

incomparability (tanzīh), 53, 57,

58, 67, 69, 76, 149n2

indwelling (ḥulūl), 126 infidelity, 135n3

infinite, glory, 17; God, 53; plea- sure and splendor, 23; regress, 61

ingratitude (kufr), 46 initiation, tattered cloak of, 5

inner (bāṭin), 11, 25, 26, 84, 86, 102; beauty (see beauty); cor- respondence between outer and  inner  beauty,  94,  95;

eyes, 97

insān, 102

inṣidār, 39

intellect (ʿaql), 23, 26, 52, 69, 79,

97, 112, 141n1, 149n66; eye of,

97–98; non-compound (basīṭ),

78–79, 97; partial, 97; singu-

lar, 79; universal, 78, 97; intel- lection, 13; intellective (ʿaqlī)

innate nature, 62; pleasure, 17; world, 23

intelligible (maʿqūl), 12, 17, 21, 25; contrasted with sensible, 23; realm or world, 14, 18, 23,

25, 26; intelligibility, 22, 24,

25, 26

intermediary (wāsiṭa), 40, 63, 88,

113, 114, 118, 120, 121

intimacy (uns), 16, 71, 76, 89, 95,

127; station of, 41; seeking

intimacy (istiʾnās), 11, 89–90,

95, 96, 116, 119, 120, 126,

147n38; intimate friendship (khilla), 117; intimate friend (khalīl), 119, 121

intoxication (sukr), 82, 98, 113,

121, 125, 135n1

invincibility (jabarūt), 82

Iran, 6, 8, 27

Iraq, 6

ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn, 4

ʿirfān, 11, 134n20

Islam, 1, 2, 23, 46, 86, 107, 122;

islām, 12, 31

ism al-aʿẓam, 145n56; al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, 16, 68, 71, 133n20; al-asmāʾ al-ʿiẓām, 70. See name.

ʿishq, 38, 54, 108, 110, 139n31;

beginninglessness of, 83; contrasted with maḥabba, 37

ishrāqī, 24

istahjana, 139n29

istiḥsān, 38; istaḥsana, 37, 139n29, 139n30

iṣṭināʿ, 42

istiʾnās, 89, 116

Ivanow, Vladimir, 7

Izutsu, Toshihiko, 30, 31

Jacob, 23, 24, 33, 108–12, 120

jalāl, 16, 24, 39, 68, 72, 73, 85,

145n48, 146n61; jalāliyya, 73

jalīl, 64, 72, 78, 138n19, 146n61

jamʿ, ʿayn al-, 90

jamāl, (defined), 32–37; (men- tioned), 3, 12, 14, 15, 28, 30,

39, 43, 64, 67, 71, 76, 77, 82,

87, 91, 93, 98, 101–14, 120–26,

137n15,  138n18,  139n21,

141n1, 145n48; as attribute of God(’s act), 34, 68, 72, 73; as subsumed under ḥusn/ḥusnā, 72, 78, 85, 146n61; etymolog- ical connection to camel (jamal), 138n17; contrasted with ḥusn, 37, 50, 105, 136n9; contrasted with majesty (jalāl), 24, 138; covenant as

unveiling of, 81, 88; names

of, 16; jamāl al-qidam, 63; jamāl al-ṣūra, 84; jamāl- parastī, 4, 99; jamāliyya, 73

jamal, 32, 137n17

Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 4, 28, 111

jamīl, 12, 33, 34, 35, 43, 45, 47, 72,

78,  104,  138n17,  138n19,

139n21, 146n61

Jawharī, Ismāʿīl b. Ḥammād al-, 29

jealousy (ghayra), 118, 124

Jesus, 101, 123, 149n2

Jewish, philosophers, 13

jinn, 83, 84

Joseph, 20, 23, 24, 33, 101, 107–13,

115,  116,  120,  122,  123,

150n19, 150n30

journey, 86, 96, 102; of human

spirits, 7, 75, 76, 80, 102

joy (rajāʾ), 22, 25, 35, 37; (ṭarab),

118; joyous (mustabshira), 87 Judgment, Day of, 86–88 jurisprudence (fiqh), 5, 6, 11, 38;

jurist, 11, 98

justice (ʿadl), 16

juzʾī, 44

kalām, 6, 7, 11, 51, 54, 55, 142n4

kallos, 29

Kant, Immanuel, 146n61

kanz, 59

kasb, 60

kashf, 54, 90

Kaʿba, 108, 109

kayfa, bi-lā, 52, 55

keys (mafātīḥ), 59, 71, 103

khāfiḍ, 64

khalq, 19, 85, 95, 110

khayr, 149n53; al-khayr al-maḥḍ, 51

khirqa, 5

khiṭāb, 80, 146n12

khizāna, 59

Khudrī, Abū Saʿīd al-, 96

khuluq, 85, 95, 110

Kindī, al-, 39

kingdom (mulk), 40; of heaven (malakūt al-samāʾ), 18

Kirmānī, Awḥad al-Dīn, 4 kiss, 126–27

knowledge (ʿilm), 43, 51, 69, 78,

103, 106, 113, 122; Adam’s,

103, 105, 112; as divine attri-

bute, 56, 65, 66, 67, 133n12;

and beauty, 43, 111, 112, 122; and love, 95; contrasted with recognition (maʿrifa), 53, 134n20; experiential knowl- edge  (maʿrifa),  53,  122;

God’s, 53, 76, 77, 78; God-

given (ladunī), 111, 122; of

divine essence, 63, 68; of divine names and attributes, 65, 71, 103–104; sources of,

51–52;  unknown  (majhūl),

122. See also recognition. knower (ʿālim), of God, 95; of

God’s essence, 59; and known (maʿlūm), 14, 19, 58; contrasted with angels, 106

kohl, 124

kufr, 41, 46

kullī, 44; al-ḥusn al-kullī, 39; al-ʿaql

al-kullī, 78

kun, 77

kunh, 59

Lane, Edward William, 30 language, 7, 14, 27, 30, 39, 50; col-

lapse of, 53; cryptic and flowery, 3, 135n1; equivocal, 9; Greek philosophical, 39;

inadequacy of, 52–53; mythic, 49; of dogmatic the- ology, 51, 54, 55; philosophi-

cal,  26,  43,  44,  45,  51;

Qurʾānic, 16, 25, 25, 29–35,

54; Rūzbihān’s, 27, 28, 39, 45,

50, 54–55, 135n1, 135n3; Sufi,

53, 54, 142n4

Latin, 4

laudation (thanāʾ), 69–70, 125

legalism, 2

Lewisohn,   Leonard,   148n38, 148n41

lexicographer, 29, 30

life (ḥayā), as divine attribute, 56, 64, 65, 66, 67, 84, 85, 133n12;

bringing back to, 120, 121,

125; embodied, 76, 86; human,

2, 17, 22, 26, 73, 75, 86, 88, 93,

99,   107;   pre-earthly, 35;

Rūzbihān’s, 5–6, 7, 8; this life

and next, 86, 87, 127; life-giver

(muḥyī), 16; the Living, 64 light (nūr), 78, 122; as divine name,

64; beaming (sawāṭiʿ), 112; holy (qudsī), 109; of divine quarry (maʿdin ilāhī), 95; of election (ikhtiṣāṣ), 119; of eter- nity (qidam), 118; of faith, 93; of Footstool, 122; of general act (fiʿl ʿāmm), 90, 125; of God, 39, 71, 94, 95; of God’s act, 62,

120; of God’s attributes, 81, 90,

110, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124,

125; of God’s beauty, 104; of

God’s essence, 59, 71, 81, 90,

118, 123, 124, 125, 127; of

God’s majesty and beauty, 85, 94; of God’s self-disclosure, 93, 95; of Muhammad’s face,

122; of six attributes, 67; of sovereignty of the All- Merciful, 95; of specific act (fiʿl khāṣṣ), 90, 117, 125; of Throne,

122, 123; of truthfulness, 119;

of witnessing, 111, 115, 126; realities (ḥaqāʾiq) of, 122

litterateur (adīb), 4, 11, 12, 13

longing, 25, 128

Lord (rabb), 32, 36, 40, 62, 63, 66,

68, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89,

92, 103, 113, 116–27 passim,

135n1,  137n15;  Lordship (rubūbiyya), 96, 105, 109, 112

loss, 2, 24, 33

love (ḥubb, ʿishq, maḥabba), 1, 9, 19,

22, 25, 31, 37, 38, 39, 49, 54, 93,

94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 106, 108, 112,

113,  119,  135n1,  139n31,

140n31, 150n19; and beauty, 3, 21–23, 81, 93, 111, 116; and

knowledge, 95; and sorrow, 23–24; as station on Sufi path, 35, 117; as voluntary worship of God, 106–107; beginning- less, 147n19; cast on Moses, 115–16; clothing of, 94: com- mand of, 78; contrasted with faith, 93; covenant of, 80, 86,

88, 99, 126, 128; excessive, 124; general (ʿāmm) and specific (khāṣṣ), 76, 81–82, 90; God’s, 26,

93, 96, 127; for God, 26, 83, 92,

95–96, 99, 110, 124; for Joseph,

24, 110, 111; of beautiful faces,

89, 98; of beauty, 5, 12, 19, 25,

33, 34, 35, 36, 63, 73, 76, 78, 96,

125, 126, 127; tongue of, 118; ultimate object of, 21; source of all, 22; unfulfilled, 24; lover, 8,

19, 22, 76, 77, 81, 83, 92, 93, 106,

119, 125, 127; of God, 25, 86, 92,

95–96,  113,  118.  See  also

beloved. lust, 20

macrocosm, 4

magnificence  (kibriyāʾ),  69,  78,

81, 87, 114

maḥabba, 37, 78, 82, 111, 115;

maḥabbat-i ilāhī, 81. See love.

maḥbūb, 22

majesty (jalāl), 16, 17, 24, 37, 39,

58, 64, 67, 68, 69, 73, 78, 79,

81, 82, 83–88 passim, 94, 104,

109, 115, 118, 123, 127, 141n1,

145n48; the Majestic, 64

malaʾ al-aʿlā, al-, 18

malāḥa, 115

malakūt, 84

male, 83

malīḥ, 89

man, 34, 83, 96; of pure faith

(ḥanīf), 118; righteous, 110;

young (fatā), 20

manifestation (ẓuhūr), 19, 42, 47,

60, 62, 63, 73, 78, 80, 85, 117,

123, 135n1; of God’s acts, 77; of God’s attributes, 66–67, 73; of God’s beauty, 39, 40,

45, 49, 80–82, 84, 92, 98, 104,

113, 120; of God’s essence, 62

maqām, 35, 76

maʿrifa, 52, 53, 104, 134n20; contrasted with ʿilm, 53; contrasted with nakara, 104; ahl al-maʿrifa, 39; maʿārif, 141n42. See recognition.

martyr, 7

maʿshūq, 22

Masjid-i ʿAtīq, 1, 6

Massignon, Louis, 7

Maybudī, Rashīd al-Dīn, 20, 147n19

Mayer, Toby, 55, 142n4 Mecca, 6

medicine, 2; for soul, 19

mercy (raḥma), 16, 24, 42, 61, 88;

merciful, 16, 24, 67, 95, 123,

124

messenger, 31, 96, 101, 122, 123,

127; messengerhood, 108

metaphor, 53, 54

metaphysics, 11, 13, 37, 39

microcosm, 4, 92

mineral, 25

miracles, 35, 108

miʿrāj, 20

mirror (mirʾāt, āyina), 4, 18, 22,

35, 63, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 101,

104, 108, 109, 110, 114, 115,

118, 120, 126, 127

Miṣrī,  Dhū   al-Nūn   al-,  89, 147n38, 148n38

modern, 2, 4, 7, 27, 32, 37, 148n51

mold (kālbud), 93

monotheism, 80

moon (qamar), 108, 116, 117, 118,

119, 121

Moses, 40, 59, 60, 62–63, 82, 91,

101, 113–16, 120, 121, 123,

124, 125

mosque, 1, 6 moth, 141n1

mountain, 40, 59, 62, 63, 69, 113,

114, 115, 120; Mount Bamū, 6

Mughal prince, 28

Muhammad, 1, 12, 21, 31, 34, 36,

89, 101, 102, 107, 108, 110,

119,   122–27,  142n2.  See

Prophet.

muḥsin, 30, 31

muḥyī, 16

Muʿīn, Muḥammad, 6, 140n32

mukāshafa, 54

muktasaba, 57

multiplicity, 17, 65, 79

mumīt, 16

munificence (sakhāʾ), 94

Murata, Sachiko, 137n14, 145n48

mushāhada, 52, 54, 106, 121

music, 12, 17, 18, 146n61; of

spheres, 17 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, 34

mustaḥsan, 28, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43,

44, 45, 46, 116, 142n5

mustaḥsin, 116

mustaʾnis, 89

mustaqbaḥ, 28, 40–46

Muʿtazilism, 54, 56, 65; Muʿtazilite,

33, 52, 56, 65

nakara, 104

name (ism), divine, 16–17, 24, 25,

67, 68–73, 108, 132n9, 133n20,

138n19, 145n50; ninety-nine, 16, 33, 65; known to the elect, 145n59; taught to Adam, 103; tremendous, 70; most tre- mendous, 71; most beautiful (al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā), 16, 21, 24,

31, 47, 49, 75, 78, 79, 99, 103;

relation to attributes, 64 nature (ṭabīʿa), 4, 119; (ṭabʿ), 76;

innate human nature (fiṭra), 61, 62, 101, 102, 105, 106, 107,

113; natural beauty, 90; phe-

nomena, 35

naw-āmadagān, 141n47

naẓar, 51

negation (apophasis), 53, 54; neg- ative descriptions of God, 52 Neoplatonism, 17, 18; Neoplatonic

explanation of beauty, 39

Nguyen, Martin, 142n4 niche (mishkā), 94, 95

night, 95, 116, 117, 118, 137n15

nightingale, 27, 135n1

nīkūʾī, 30, 92, 136n9

nisbī, 44

non-compound (basīṭ) intellect, 78, 79

nonbeing   (ʿadam),  47.    See

nonexistence.

nonexistence (ʿadam), 43, 44, 46,

61,  66,  77,  105,  109.  See

nonbeing.

Nūrbakhsh, Jawād, 6, 8, 130n21, 140n32

Nūrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-, 141n42 nurturing (tarbiyya), 82, 86, 117

nuṭfa, 83

Nwyia, Paul, 7

ocean (baḥr), 59, 69, 77, 81, 122

oneness (waḥda), 17, 20, 58, 65,

69, 105; the One (aḥad), 39

ontology, 14–17; ontological

analysis of beauty, 15, 28, 31,

44, 45, 47, 93; difference between human and cosmic beauty, 90; perfection, 14;

scheme, 28, 40–41, 44

optics, 12, 26, 132n2

order, 13, 15, 17, 24, 26, 36, 65, 66,

94; Rūzbihāniyya, 8

origin, 4, 18, 21, 25, 26, 75, 99,

111, 128; origination, 14. See

temporal origination.

outer (ẓāhir), beauty, 37, 86, 94,

95; garment, 34, 35

Papan-Matin,  Firoozeh,   8, 130n16

paradise, 34, 95, 102

paradox, 53, 54

pardoning (ṣafḥ), 33

partial  (juzʾī),  beauty,  39,  44;

intellect, 97

participation, 40

Pasā, 6

Pasargadae, 5

path, 20, 22, 26, 35, 62, 66, 92, 93,

96, 99

patience (ṣabr), 33

perception, 3, 18, 22, 23, 38–46

passim, 58, 60, 69, 75, 79, 91,

96, 105, 110, 111, 112, 113,

119, 121, 124, 147n35; defec-

tive, 46; two eyes and their objects of, 97; incapacity in, 58, 69; perceiver, 37, 46, 89,

95, 125, 148n51; perceptible

things, 4

perfection (kamāl), 15, 25, 67, 87,

94, 101, 110, 132n8, 133n20;

human, 26, 101, 107, 127,

133n20; of beauty, 22, 43; of

being, 14, 16, 23, 24, 26, 41,

45; of God, 110; of Muslim faith and worship, 12; of original human state, 102

perfume, 96

Persepolis, 5

Persia, 5

philosophy, 2, 11, 13, 15, 21, 50,

51, 54, 55; philosopher, 4,

11–26 passim, 39, 50, 51, 52,

53, 78; philosophical lan-

guage, 43–45

piety, 31

planets (sayyāragān), 108

pleasure (ladhdha), 2, 17, 22, 23,

25, 77, 79, 82, 89, 125, 132n8,

148n38; pleasingness,  30, 138n18

plenum (malaʾ), highest, 18 Plotinus, 11, 18, 133n16, 133n17;

Plotinian, 17, 19, 23, 133n16 plumpness, 138n17

poetry, 8, 11, 53; poetics, 11, 12,

13, 26; poet, 2, 4, 12, 22,

27, 50

political,  13,   28;   politicized

Islam, 1

postmodern, 1, 2

Potiphar, 24, 111

Pourjavady, Nasrollah, 136n9, 140n31

power (qudra), as divine attri- bute, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 92,

110, 111, 123; the Powerful

(al-qādir), 64

prayer, 95, 126

presence (ḥaḍra), divine, 26, 35,

45, 60, 79, 82, 84, 102

prettiness, 30, 138n18

primordial, 80, 83, 86, 99, 107 property,  ruling  (ḥukm),           78;

specific (khāṣṣa), 115

prophet, 63, 70, 76, 77, 82, 99,

101, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111,

112, 114, 116, 120, 150n2;

Prophet (Muhammad), 20,

31, 32, 34, 36, 55, 58, 63, 69,

70, 89, 92, 95, 115, 122–27,

137n15, 142n2

prophetology, 5, 29, 101

proportion, 15, 18, 30, 38, 39

prostration, 102, 103, 104, 108,

109, 112, 115, 120

psychology (ʿilm al-nafs), 5, 13,

14, 21–24, 46

punishment, 87, 106

pupil, black, 94

purity (ṣafāʾ), 25, 94

Pythagoreanism, 17, 18

qādir, 64

qahr, 16

qalb, 22

qatara, 87

qibla, 93, 104, 115

qidam, 141n47; jamāl al-qidam, 63;

shāhid al-qidam, 110

quality (naʿt), 68, 69, 78, 81, 88,

89, 103, 126, 127

quarry (maʿdin), 39, 62, 66, 90, 95,

101, 109, 111, 117, 120, 126

qubḥ, 28, 29, 40, 43, 44, 47, 72, 105

quiddity (māhiyya), 14, 42, 47,

119

Qurʾān,  5,  6,  29,  36,  38,  50,

54, 55, 65; commentators

(mufassirūn), 111, 116, 121; exegesis or commentary (tafsīr), 6, 7, 66, 67, 68, 108,

147n21; language or termi- nology of, 16, 25, 29–35, 53,

54, 55, 92; rational interpre-

tation of, 52; recitation, 24;

reciters, 12

Qushayrī, Abū al-Qāsim al-, 16, 33, 61, 87, 138n19, 141n43,

142n8, 143n8, 145n50

rāfiʿ, 64

Raine, Kathleen, 2

rationalism, 52; rationalist, 25,

52, 61; rational soul, 20, 21,

22; speculation (naẓar), 51,

52, 53

Rāzī, Abū Bakr al-, 20

Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-, 133n18, 144n37

Rāzī, Najm al-Dīn Dāya, 141n2 Real (al-ḥaqq), 38, 59, 70, 81, 82,

88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 96, 109, 110,

113, 120–27 passim

reality (ḥaqīqa), 37, 58, 69, 84, 94,

96, 103, 104, 110, 113, 115,

118, 122; of reality, 59 recognition  (maʿrifa,  shinākht),

(defined),  52–53,  134n20;

(mentioned), 14, 19, 36, 37,

49, 56, 68, 73, 75, 77, 78, 81,

88, 90, 94, 99, 105, 106, 111,

122, 125; and beauty, 41, 104;

and love, 96; as limitless, 70; contrasted with disavowal (nakara), 104; folk of, 39;

incapacity in, 46, 58; of God,

61–62, 81, 119, 121; of God’s

acts, attributes, and names, 62, 68, 79, 81; of God’s

essence, 57, 58, 62, 79; of one-

self, 92; preparedness for, 79; Yea (Q 7:172) as recognition of God, 81–83

recognizer (ʿārif), 41, 42, 58, 59,

69, 70, 71, 91, 95, 96, 115, 126,

134n20, 147n38

recollection, 18, 89

regress, infinite, 61

relative (nisbī), 46; beauty, 44–45;

perfection, 15; things, 105; ugliness, 45; realm of relativ- ity, 101

religion,  1,  2,  12;  religious

sciences (ʿulūm), 5, 51

remembrance (dhikr), 18, 31, 69,

70,  81,  127;  rememberer

(dhākir), 70

reminder, 25, 88, 89

repentance (tawba), 35, 62

return, 18, 35, 58, 75, 76, 99, 102,

128

Rhazes. See Rāzī, Abū Bakr al-. rhetoric, 12, 13, 26

riḍā, 42, 141n43 rosary, 145n50

rose (ward, gul), 27, 95, 126, 127, 135n1

Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 4, 22, 128 Russell, George William, 2 Rūzbihān  Baqlī,  life  of,  5–6;

ʿAbhar al-ʿāshiqīn, 6, 7, 8, 27,

38, 54, 81, 84, 90, 102, 108,

121, 124, 126, 140n32; ʿArāʾis

al-bayān, 6, 42, 116; Ghalaṭāt

al-sālikīn, 6; Kashf al-asrār, 6,

7, 8, 32, 55; Kitāb al-ighāna, 6,

7;   Lawāmiʿ  al-tawḥīd, 6;

Masālik al-tawḥīd, 6, 7, 50, 52,

54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 65, 66, 71,

142n8; al-Maknūn fī ḥaqāʾiq al-kalim al-nabawiyya, 6, 36, 143n15; Manṭiq al-asrār, xi, 6, 89, 148n40; Mashrab al-arwāḥ, 6, 7, 8, 20, 35, 36, 42, 58, 60,

66, 71, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83,

84, 86, 88, 89, 102, 108, 115,

118, 119, 124, 130n21, 139n22,

141n42; Risālat al-quds, 6, 146n10; Sayr al-arwāḥ, 6, 76,

77; Sharḥ-i shaṭḥiyyāt, 6, 7, 76, 135n1, 148n41

Rūzbihān Thānī, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, 141n1, 151n58

Rūzbihān Thānī, Sharaf al-Dīn, 8, 129n1

Rūzbihāniyya order, 8

ruʾya, 32, 52

ṣabr, 33

ṣafḥ, 33

saints (awliyāʾ), 76, 77, 82; saint-

hood (walāya), 8, 111

Salghurid dynasty, 5

samāʿ, 52, 80, 146n10

Samʿānī, Aḥmad, 16, 22, 147n19

samʿiyyāt, 56

sandal, 34

ṣāniʿ, 62, 97

ṣanīʿat, 98

Saqaṭī, al-Sarī al-, 87 Saunders, Corinne, 2

Scarry, Elaine, 2, 146n61, 148n51 scent, 96

Schimmel, Annemarie, 8, 27, 28, 135n1

script, beautiful, 15

secret (sirr), 59, 71, 94, 110, 121,

122,  124;  of  secrets,  122;

secret core (sirr), 22, 59, 69,

118

seeking, 22, 25, 58, 86, 88, 94, 116,

118, 120, 126, 128; seekers of

God,   98,   117.   See   also

intimacy.

self-disclosure (tajallī), 19, 40, 41,

42, 49, 54, 59, 63, 73, 77, 78,

79, 81, 85, 87, 93, 94, 95, 104,

109, 113, 117, 120, 122, 126,

127, 141n42

self-sacrifice, 20

Seljuk period, 5

Sells, Michael, 24, 53

senses, 4, 25, 53; sensory encoun- ter with beautiful objects, 88–89; means of expressing beauty, 12; things, 18

sensibility, 13

sensible, beauty, 21, 23, 91; level,

13; phenomena, 98; realm,

24; things or objects, 15, 16,

18; world, 12, 15, 25, 26, 89

separation (tafriqa), eye of 91, 97,

98, 119, 149n66

servant (ʿabd), 61, 94, 96, 116, 124, 133n20, 139n21; servant- hood (ʿubūdiyya), 79, 112

severity (qahr), 16, 24, 43, 67, 104,

105, 119, 127

shade (sāya), 39

Shāfiʿī, Ḥasan Maḥmūd al-, 140n31, 140n35

shahāda, 106

shāhid, 82, 98, 110; shāhid al-qidam,

110; shāhid-bāzī, 98

shahwa, 111

Sharaf al-Dīn Rūzbihān Thānī.

See Rūzbihān Thānī.

Shariah, 93

Shiite, 138n21, 143n14

Shiraz, 5, 6, 56, 140n31

shukr, 46

ṣifa, 64, 144n23; ṣifāt dhātiyya, 65;

ṣifāt al-dhāt, 65; ṣifāt al-fiʿl, 65 sight or seeing (baṣar), as divine attribute, 56, 65, 66, 90, 125, 148n41; seeing (raʾā) con- trasted with looking (naẓara), 114; seeing God, 81, 86, 87,

91, 97, 113–15, 117, 118, 119,

124, 126, 127, 137n15

sign (āya), 25, 35, 49, 86, 93, 108,

117, 118, 121

Sirāj al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Khalīfa

b. ʿAbd al-Salām b. Aḥmad

b. Sālba, 5

Sirius, 117

sirr, 22, 59

sitr, 117

sky, 121

smell, 88, 89, 148n38

sobriety, 121, 125; sober eye of

separation, 98

solitude, 19

Solomon, Wisdom of, 147n35 son, 20, 24, 33

song, 135n1

sorrow (ḥuzn), 22, 23–24, 25

soul (nafs, jān), 14, 20, 21, 62, 95, 135n1; angelic, 21; animal, 18, 21, 25; beautification of,

17, 20, 99; human, 20, 24;

medicine for, 19; rational, 20,

21, 22; relation to rūḥ, qalb, and sirr, 22; universal and particular, 18; vegetative, 21,

25

source (ʿayn), 60; of all (ʿayn al- kull), 43; of source, 59, 60

sovereignty (malakūt), 84, 95, 116,

121

specific (khāṣṣ), 36, 66, 93, 145n57,

145n59, 146n12; act, 90, 114,

117, 125; address, 81, 146n12;

attribute, 66, 71, 104; beauty,

90, 91, 93, 99; characteristic

(khāṣṣiyya), 93, 111; con- trasted with general (ʿāmm), 76, 81, 82, 90, 91, 93, 99, 124,

125; descriptions, 36, 72; eye-

sight, 124; love, 76, 81–82, 90; names, 70; property (khāṣṣa), 115; tongue, 88

speculation, rational (naẓar), 51–53

speech (kalām), 56, 65, 66, 82, 88,

89, 116

sperm (nuṭfa), 83, 84

spheres, celestial, 18; music of, 17

spirit (rūḥ, jān), 7, 22, 31, 49, 66,

67, 69, 82–86, 95, 126, 135n1,

141n1; Adam’s, 104; audi- tion of, 80; birth of, 79–80,

83; blowing of God’s, 66, 84, 104; contrasted with intel- lect, 97; drunken (mast), 125;

eye  of,  96–98,  125;  holy

(qudsī), 82, 94; Jesus’s associ- ation with, 149n2; journey of, 7, 35, 75, 80, 102; manifes- tation of beauty to, 81; Muhammad’s, 123; of lovers, 77,  81;  of  prophets  and

saints, 77, 82; pleasure of, 148n38; stations of, 76; wit- nessing God, 83

splendor (bahāʾ), 14, 17, 23, 127

star (najm), 108, 116, 117, 118, 119,

120, 121

state (ḥāl), 5, 22, 35, 36, 82, 97, 98,

114, 119, 135n3, 147n38

station (maqām), 7, 27, 35, 36, 41,

42, 58, 76, 79, 80, 83, 84, 88,

90, 117, 119, 125; highest, 102;

1,001 stations, 35, 42, 76, 79

stature (taqwīm), most beautiful (aḥsan), 12, 31, 75, 85, 97

sublime, 4, 146n61

submission (islām), 12, 31

submissiveness (khushūʿ), 36

subsistence (baqāʾ), 65–66, 77, 81,

89, 114

substance (jawhar), 57, 95

subtle (laṭīf), 79, 95, 120

ṣudūr, 39

Sufism (taṣawwuf, ʿirfān), lan- guage of, 50–55, 142n4; Rūzbihān’s training in, 5–6; Sufi path, 35; Sufis, 11–26

passim, 39, 60

Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Maqtūl, 22, 24, 30

Suhrawardī,  Shihāb   al-Dīn

ʿUmar, 20

Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-, 20

Sulaymānī,   Parwīz,    133n11, 145n48

sun (shams), 93, 108–109, 116,

118, 119, 121

ṣunʿ, 97 supplication, 151n53

sūʾ,  29,  136n7;  sūʾā,  136n6;

sayyiʾa, 136n6 sweetness (ḥalāwa), 88, 116

symbol, 1, 3, 25, 53, 63, 102, 117;

color symbolism, 137n16 symmetry, 30

Syria, 6

Syriac, 17

tafriqa, 91, 148n48

tafsīr, 7

taḥsīn, 29

tajallī, 4, 19, 40, 54, 63, 73, 113, 135n1

Takeshita, Masataka, 54, 139n31

talbīs, 91

tanzīh, 53, 149n66, 149n2

taqwīm, 85

taṣawwuf, 11, 134n20 tashbīh, 139n66, 149n2 taste, human, 13

tasting (dhawq), 53, 117

taʿṭīl, 144n41

tawḥīd, 20, 122

tazyīn, 29

temporal origination (ḥudūth), 57, 76, 82, 90, 113–14, 121,

125, 141n47; realm of tempo- ral origination (ḥudūthiyya), 114; temporally originated,

42, 57, 58, 61, 67, 69, 70, 119;

temporal being, 66, 70; exis-

tence, 49; realm, 24, 146n61

temptation, 1

test, 86, 88, 116

theology,  5,   14,   16–17,  50;

Ashʿarite, 55, 60, 65, 71; apo-

phatic, 60; cataphatic, 60; Christian, 1; dogmatic theol- ogy (kalām), 5, 6, 7, 11, 50, 52,

54. 55, 56, 61, 67, 142n4; of

beauty, 29, 49; Theology of

Aristotle, 11

theologian, 2; Ashʿarite, 64; dog-

matic (mutakallimūn), 11, 12,

14, 16, 17, 25, 26, 33, 50, 51,

52, 53, 57, 60, 86, 98, 126,

145n48;    Sufi-theologians, 145n50

throne (ʿarsh), 122, 123; to earth,

58, 61, 96

trace (athar), 18, 26, 42, 82, 110,

111, 119, 121, 138n21

traits, 20, 42; evil (masāwiʾ), 42.

See character. transcendence, 53, 57, 58, 60, 68,

69, 73

transformation, 26, 118

transparent, 96, 97

treasure (kanz), 19, 59, 79, 111;

hidden, 19, 49, 73, 75, 76, 77,

79, 99; treasure house or

treasury  (khizāna),  59,  71,

103

tremendousness (ʿaẓama), 42, 58,

59, 69, 87, 91, 106, 114, 118,

119; tremendous character,

123; name, 70, 71

tribulation, 112 tune, out of, 133n17 Tustarī, Sahl al-, 87

udabāʾ, 13

ugliness (qubḥ), 26, 29, 40–47, 72,

104, 105, 119; as nonexis-

tence, 43, 46; Plotinus on, 133n17; ugly character traits, 25; qualities, 20, 99; deemed

ugly (mustaqbaḥ), 40–45, 104,

105, 141n42

unbelief (kufr), 41, 46, 98

uncreated, 70, 90, 91, 98, 121

unicity (waḥdāniyya), 58, 59, 61,

67, 68, 78

union (wiṣāl, waṣl), 22, 77, 128 universal            (kullī), beauty,

38–39, 44; intellect, 78, 97;

soul, 18

universe  (jahān),  76.  See  also

world.

unseenness (ghayba), 59; unseen (ghayb), 42, 59, 79, 88, 103,

111, 119

unveiling (kashf, mukāshafa), 49, 54, 71, 81, 90, 103, 110, 118,

122

ʿurafāʾ, 141n42

veil (ḥijāb), 79, 82, 87, 117

vengefulness (intiqām), 67

vice, 20, 46, 99

virtue, 14, 20

vision (ruʾya), 5, 32, 36, 42, 52, 55,

56, 59, 60, 79, 80, 81, 86–88,

120; visio beata, 55 vizier of Egypt, 24 voice, 15, 148n38

waḥdāniyya, 59, 67, 68

Wāsiṭī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad al-, 123

water (māʾ), 46, 77, 83, 90, 125,

148n41; water-carrier, 110,

111

witness(er) (shāhid, mushāhid), 41, 98, 110, 113, 120; eternal,

82;  witness-play  (shāhid-

bāzī), 98

witnessing (mushāhada, shuhūd), 52, 54, 63, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87,

88, 92, 93, 99, 106, 109, 110,

111, 115, 116, 117, 118, 121,

122, 124; lights of, 111, 126; mushāhada-yi ṣirf, 121; bear- ing witness (shahāda), 106

woman,  1,  33,  126,  138n17,

144n37; of Egypt, 111, 112

womb, 84

world (ʿālam, jahān), 2, 3, 7, 24, 39,

44, 45, 61, 98, 101, 108, 125; as

divine act, 56, 121; as mirror

of God, 35, 92; beauty in, 2,

86, 88–89; creation of, 19, 66,

73, 75, 77–78, 104, 141n2;

human, 98; intellective (ʿaqlī), 23; intelligible, 14, 18, 25;

observation of, 52, 92, 121; of divine act, 84; of divine attri- bute, 84; of form, 84; sensible,

12, 15, 25, 26, 89; two worlds in human being, 92

worship (ʿibāda), 4, 12, 31, 80, 99,

106, 109, 137n15; in igno-

rance,   105;   worshipper

(ʿābid), 105, 110; compulsory,

106

wrath (ghaḍab), 16, 24, 42, 88

wujūd, 57; mumtaniʿ al-wujūd, 44; mumkin al-wujūd, 44; wājib al-wujūd, 44, 51

wujūh, ḥisān al-, 149n53

yearning (shawq), 18, 89, 90, 113,

117, 118

youth (fatā), 20, 98, 137n15

Zargar, Cyrus, 129n5

zībāʾī, 136n9; zībāʾī-parastī, 4, 99, 130n11

Zulaykhā, 24, 108, 111, 112

INDEX OF QURʾA NIC VERSES

1:1         In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. 67 2:30–34               When thy Lord said to the angels, “Indeed, I am placing

on earth a vicegerent”…. 103, 105

2:195     Verily God loves those who do what is beautiful. 31

2:260     Show me how Thou bringest the dead back to life. 82, 120, 121, 125

3:33       Verily God has chosen Adam and Noah. 103 3:59  He created him from dust. 83

5:54       He loves them, and they love Him. 76, 93

6:59       With Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them but He. 59

6:75–79 Thus We were showing Abraham….“This is my Lord.”…I have turned my face to Him…. 116–21

7:11       We have created you then formed you…. 86, 104

7:143      “My Lord, show me so that I may look upon Thee.” He said, “Thou shalt not see Me….” 40, 59, 60, 62, 63, 73, 82,

113, 114, 121, 125

7:172      Am I not your Lord? 80, 81, 82, 135n1

7:180     To God belong the most beautiful names. 16, 31, 49, 70, 71,

73, 78

8:17       Thou didst not throw when thou threwest, but God threw.

124

12:3       …the most beautiful of tales. 23, 107–108

12:4       O father, indeed I saw eleven stars, the sun, and the moon prostrating to me. 108

12:19     Good news! Here is a boy. 110

12:20      They sold him for a paltry price. 108, 110, 111

12:24     She made for him and he would have made for her…. 111 12:31 God save us! This is no mortal; he is no other than a noble

angel. 111

193

15:29     I shaped him and blew into him of My spirit. 84, 85, 86 15:85               So pardon thou, with a beautiful pardoning. 33

16:5–6    And the cattle….There is beauty in them for you…. 32, 63 17:110  To Him belong the most beautiful names. 31

18:37     …who created you of dust, then of a sperm-drop, then shaped you in the form of a man. 83

20:8       To Him belong the most beautiful names. 16, 31

20:39     I threw love upon thee from Me and that thou mightest be made upon My eyes. 115, 116, 151n46

23:14      Blessed is God, the most beautiful of creators. 12, 31, 36,

40, 64, 75, 99

24:45     God created every animal of water. 83

32:7       He who made beautiful everything He has created. 31, 43, 75

33:21     Surely you have a beautiful example in God’s messen- ger…. 31, 101, 127

33:28     I will set you free in a beautiful manner. 33 33:49   Set them free in a beautiful manner. 33 35:11       …then He made you pairs. 83

36:82     When He desires a thing, His command is to say to it “Be!”; then it is. 77, 78, 79, 85, 106

38:72     I blew into him of My spirit. 84, 85, 86

38:75     I created with My two hands. 84, 85, 86

39:18     …those who hear the speech and follow the most beauti- ful of it. 89

40:64     He formed you then made your forms beautiful. 31, 85, 98

42:11     There is nothing like Him. 49, 58, 73

53:11     The heart did not swerve in what it saw. 123–24 55:15      He created the jinn from a flame of fire. 83

55:78     Blessed is the name of thy Lord, possessor of majesty and generous giving. 68

59:24     To Him belong the most beautiful names. 16, 31

64:3       He formed you then made your forms beautiful. 31, 98 68:4               Verily thou art upon a tremendous character. 123

70:5       So be thou patient with a beautiful patience. 33

73:10     And bear thou patiently what they say and leave them beautifully. 33

75:22–23 Some faces on that day shall be radiant, gazing upon their Lord. 87

75:24     Some faces on that day shall be scowling. 87

76:2       We created the human being from a sperm-drop. 84 80:38–39 Some faces on that day shall shine, laughing and

joyous. 87

INDEX OF QURʾĀNIC VERSES        195

80:40–41 On that day there shall be dust on some faces, overspread with darkness. 87

82:7–8   He who created thee then shaped thee and balanced thee and composed thee in whatever form He willed. 85

95:4       Indeed We have created the human being in the most beautiful stature. 12, 31, 75, 85, 97

INDEX OF H. ADITHS AND SAYINGS

Assume the character traits of the All-Merciful. 123 Gazing at a beautiful face increases sight. 90, 125

Gazing at faces increases sight; gazing at greenery and flowing water increases sight. 125

God created Adam upon His form. 84–85, 97, 98, 115

God has ninety-nine character traits: whosoever becomes character- ized by one of them will surely enter the Garden. 21

Greenery and beautiful faces made him marvel. 125 He brought a fine beautiful she-camel. 138n17

He who prays much by night—his face is beautiful by day. 95 He who recognizes himself recognizes his Lord. 92

I do not count Thy laudations before Thee; Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself. 69–70, 125

I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form. 32, 36, 89, 124, 125

I was a Hidden Treasure, and I loved to be recognized. So I created the creatures so that I may be recognized. 19, 49, 77, 78, 79

Iḥsān is that you worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you. 12, 31–32

Incapacity to perceive is itself perception [Abū Bakr]. 58

Indeed God is beautiful and He loves beauty. 1, 12, 19, 33, 34, 35, 36,

63, 138n21

Joseph was given half of [all] beauty. 107, 108, 110

Let the most beautiful in face among you lead you, for he is more likely to be the most beautiful in character. 95

Lord, show us things as they are. 119, 125

Make use of beautiful faces and the black pupil, for God is ashamed to chastise a comely face in the Fire. 94

My Lord—exalted and majestic is He—came to me at night in the most beautiful form. 137n15

197

O Muhammad, I garbed the beauty of Joseph’s face with the light of the Footstool…. 122

Reflect upon everything, but do not reflect upon God’s essence.

57–58, 143n14

Reflect upon God’s bounties, but do not reflect upon God. 143n14 Reflect upon God’s creation, but do not reflect upon God. 58, 61, 63,

143n14

The red rose is from the splendor of God. 126–27

The red rose is the master of the aromatic plants of the Garden after the myrtle. 127

Seek good in those with beautiful faces. 94

Surely the most beloved of you to God is the most beloved of you to the people. 96

Then a fine beautiful woman appeared before him. 138n17

Three things clear up sight: gazing at greenery, flowing water, and beautiful faces. 148n41

Three things from your world were made lovable to me: good fra- grance and women, and my delight is in prayer. 125–26

Three things increase the power of sight: gazing at greenery, gazing at beautiful faces, and gazing at flowing water. 90, 125

To God belong ninety-nine names. 68

…the most tremendous name by which if God is called, He answers.

70

Whoever seeks intimacy with God seeks intimacy with everything comely and every handsome face [Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī]. 89

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