Çeviri
Weeping in Classical Sufism
Weeping is mentioned in a positive light in
the Qur'an, the Hadîth, and much of Islamic literature. Anyone who has attended
a ses- sion of Qur’ân recitation can attest that it is not only an accepted but
even an expected phenomenon in Muslim praxis. But what exactly is its
significance? If we want answers provided by Muslims, the best place to look is
in the writings of the Sufis, who have played the role of depth psychologists
and spiritual therapists for most of Islamic history. Two other major schools
of thought—jurisprudence (fiqh) and dogmatic theology (Koldm)—have
little to say about the inner workings of the soul. As for the Hellenophile
philosophers, they aimed at transmuting the soul into pure intelligence and
acquiring virtue, but they rarely discussed phenomena associated specifically
with religious practice.
The Qur'an mentions
“weeping” (buka* and derivatives) in seven verses and “tears” (dam*) in
two more, and these verses become points of reference for much of the later
discussion. The revealed book praises weeping in connection with the
recitation of its own versés: “When the Qur’an is recited to those who were given
knowledge before it... , they fall down on their faces weeping, and it
increases them in humility” (17:109). A hadîth instructs the believers to weep
while they recite the Qur’an, or at least to try to weep ( tabô/d).1 Many
hadîths speak of the Prophet’s own weeping. One tells us that he was reciting
the prayers of Abraham (Qur’an 14:36-37) and Jesus (5:118) for their respective
communities. Then he lifted up his hands in supplication and said, “O God, my
community, my community!” and he wept. God revealed to him that he would not be
disappointed.2 Another hadîth tells us that he wept upon visiting the grave of
his mother.3 Still another says that when his infant son Ibrâhîm died, he wept,
and one of his companions said to him, “You too, O Messenger of God?” He
replied that he was moved by mercy (rafima). Then he said, “The eye sheds tears
and the heart grieves, and we say only what pleases our Lord. O Ibrâhîm, we are
grieved at parting from you!”4
Once when the Prophet was
passing through a village, he saw a woman cooking bread in an open fire and
holding her child on her hip. When flames
shot up, she quickly
jumped back. Later she came forward and said, “Is not God 'the most merciful of
the merciful’ [Qur’an 7:151].” The Prophet replied that he was. She said, “A
mother would never throw her child into the fire.” The Prophet bowed his head
and wept. Then he said, “God docs not chastise any of His servants but the
defiant and recalcitrant, those who defy God and refuse to say, ‘There is no
god but God.’”5
The hadlth literature often ascribes weeping to
Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s close companion and the first caliph. The sayings are
summed up in the remark of one of the other companions: “Abu Bakr was a man who
wept much [baldea3]—he had no control over his eyes.’* He seems to be the
prototype for the occasional ascetic in later literature to whom is applied the
attribute bakka3' Despite the opinion of some of the Orientalists,
however, there is no evidence that there was a group of people known by this
label.7
Although weeping is generally praised, some
authors view it as a sign of immaturity, and Abu Bakr is also cited as someone
who passed beyond the stage of weeping. In explaining the meaning of the
Quranic verse, “Then your hearts became hardened after that, so they are like
stones, or even harder’’ (2:74), an eleventh'century commentator tells us that
there are two sorts of hardening. In the case of the ignorant, hardening means
unkindness, cruelty, and distance from God. In the case of those who are pure
and knowledgeable, hardening is firmness in knowledge and purity. Then he cites
Abu Bakr: When he would see people weeping as they listened to the Qur’an, he
used to say, “1 was like that until ‘hearts became hardened.’”8
Given the dialectical structure of Qur’ànic
rhetoric and Islamic thinking in general, one can hardly speak of weeping
without mentioning laughter (difak)9 The Qur’an suggests that the two
need to be understood as one of the many cosmic pairs: “Surely it is He who
makes to laugh and makes to weep, it is He who makes to die and makes to live,
it is He who created the two kinds, male and female” (53:43-45). That there is
something archetypal about laughter and weeping is indicated in a hadlth about
the Prophet’s ascent to God (mfrâj). When he reached the first heaven, he saw
Adam sitting with two large groups of people, one on each side. When Adam
looked to his right, he would laugh, and when he looked to his left, he would
weep.10 The Qur’an places “the companions of the right hand” (56:38) in
paradise and “the companions of the left hand” (56:41) in hell.
The later tradition is generally critical of
laughter. This is partly because the Qur’an ascribes it and related
phenomena—such as “mockery” (istihzc?) and “derision” (sMriyya)—to
the unbelievers in their dealings with the believers. It tells the unbelievers
that in fact they should be weeping: “Do you wonder at this talk? Do you laugh
and not weep?” (53:59-60). A frequently cited fcadîth makes a similar point:
“Were you to know what I know, you would laugh little and weep much.”11 The
Prophet also said, “Avoid much laughter, for much laughter deadens the heart.”12
Although I have not seen it mentioned, the
corollary seems obvious:
“Weep much, for much weeping enlivens the heart.” Despite the praise of tears
throughout the literature, however, the hadîths attribute laughter to the
Prophet far more often than weeping.
If the Qur’an makes clear that weeping is an
appropriate attribute of believers in this world, it also says that laughter
will be their attribute in the next world: “The believers will be laughing at
the unbelievers” (83:34). It associates laughter with the experience of the
beatific vision: “Some faces on that day shall shine, laughing, joyous; some
faces on that day shall be dusty, overspread with grime” (80:38-41). Even more
interesting, the hadith literature tells us that God laughs. According to one
report, God laughs at the despondency of someone whose fortune is about to
change. When asked if God really laughs, the Prophet replied that he does, and
a companion remarked, “We will lack no good from a Lord who laughs.”13
Another hadith tells us that after the
resurrection, a certain person will keep on pleading with God not to throw him
into hell, and God will agree on the condition that he not ask for anything
more. The man breaks his promise, and God moves him closer to paradise, again
extracting the promise that he will not ask for more. This happens several
times. Finally, God laughs and places him in paradise. In one of the several
versions of this hadith, the narrator, Ibn MasTid, concludes it like this:
The man will
say, “Are You making fun of me, and You are rhe Lord of the worlds?”
Then Ibn
Mas'vid laughed. He said, “Will you not ask me why I laughed?”
They said,
“Why?”
He said,
"God’s Messenger laughed like this, and they asked him, ‘Why do you laugh,
O Messenger of God?*
“He answered,
‘Because of the laughter of the Lord of the worlds when he said, "Are you
making fiin of me, and You are the Lord of the worlds?””’14
Another hadith tells us that the prophets and
their communities will be waiting for God to appear on the Day of Resurrection.
When God reaches Muhammad’s community, he will ask them why they are standing
there, and they will say that they are waiting for their Lord. He will tell
them that he is their Lord, and they will ask him to show himself. “Then He
will disclose Himself to them laughing.”15
When the early Sufi
teachers mention weeping, one of their first concerns is to classify its
causes. Qur’an 5:87 speaks of people weeping as the result of the “recognition”
(ma rifa) of the truth (haqq) of the recited Qur’an: “When they
hear what has been sent down upon the Messenger, you see that their eyes overflow
with tears because of the truth that they recognize” (5:83). In commenting on
this verse, Ibn'Ata (d. 922) adds four other positive qualities of the soul
that may cause weeping: joy, regret, fear, and burning (Jiurqa), the last of
which is the agony of being separate from the Beloved.16 The Sufi manuals
mention weeping but rarely give it a separate discussion. One exception is provided
by Kitab al4umac (The book of flashes) by Abu Nasr abSarrâj (d. 988). In
a miscellany toward the end of the book, he cites weeping as a significant
topic and quotes the words of Abu Sa^id abKharraz (d. 899), who divides weeping
into eighteen sorts according to three categories: from God, toward God, and
over God. Weeping from God is fear of God’s chastisement and grief at being
kept apart from him. Weeping toward God is the yearning of lovers to meet their
Beloved. Weeping over God results from separation after arrival or from
“weeping in joy at the arrival at Him, when He embraces [the seeker] in
kindness like a suckling child nursing at the breast of its mother.”17
As the Sufi authors began
to put together more systematic works, one of their favorite genres was
description of the stages of spiritual growth. They offered diverse schemes
describing the “stations” (maqâmàt, manâzil) on the path to God,
typically enumerating them in terms of archetypal numbers— seven, ten, twelve,
forty, one hundred. Rarely do they single out weeping as a specific stage,
though it often comes up in passing. Only when we look at some of the more
complex meditations on the stations does weeping enter into the title headings.
In Mashrab abarwafi (The drinking places of the spirits) Rüzbi- hân
Baqlï (d. 1209) describes 1,001 stations in twenty categories of fifty sta-
tions each, capped by the realization of full perfection. Five of the stations
are named after weeping: weeping, the drying up of weeping, weeping from the
Real for the Real, weeping in laughter, and weeping in ecstasy. “Weeping,”
Rûzbihân tells us, “takes place in over a thousand stations,” and this may suggest
why it is rarely singled out for a separate discussion.18
Al-Ghazall (d. till),
always an insightful analyst of praxis, has no separate discussion of weeping
in the longest and most influential of his fifty books, Ihyâ* culüm aWih
(Giving life to the sciences of the religion). He gives the topic some
attention, however, in the third section of its fourth and last part, which is
dedicated to fear (khawf) and hope (raja). These two are often
mentioned in the Qur’an and are frequently discussed in the Sufi manuals.
Although he cites one of the early Sufis to the effect that fear and hope are
the two wings of the soul in its flight to God, he devotes most of the chapter
to fear. In doing so, he mentions many examples of weeping by the Prophet, his
companions, and the pious. He tells us that those who fear God’s justice,
severity, and wrath will find it easy to perform the ritual obligations and to
obey the revealed law. “Fear is that which encourages good deeds, dulls the
appetites, and discourages the heart from depending on this world.”19 His
explanation of why he does not stress hope throws light on the whole tradition:
It is best to
let fear dominate over hope—only, however, until the imminent approach of
death. At the time of death, it is best to let hope and a good opinion of God
predominate, for fear plays the role of a whip encouraging activity, and now
the time for activity has passed. The person near death is not able to act and
he cannot endure the causes of fear, for they would break his heart and hurry
his death. As for the spirit of hope, that will strengthen his heart and make
him love his Lord, in whom he hopes. No one should depart this world without
loving God and loving to encounter Him. For, [as the Prophet said,] “When
someone loves to encounter God, God loves to encounter him.” Love is linked to
hope, for when someone hopes for something from someone, he considers him
beloveds And the goal in all knowledge and all practice is to recognize God, so
that recognition may give rise to love.20
The most influential
theoretician of Sufism, Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 638/1240), has relatively little to
say about weeping in his enormous compendium, ab Futühat aFmakkiyya (The
Meccan openings). He devotes only one of its 560 chapters specifically to the
topic. In fact, however, the short chapter 313, “On the knowledge of the
station of weeping and wailing,” focuses on the role of the prophets in their
communities and touches only briefly on weeping itself. He tells us that the
prophets have achieved the station of perfect servanthood (cùbüdiyya)t
which demands being empty of self and full of the divine presence. God,
however, has made them his representatives, so they must make manifest the
attributes of lordship (rubübiyya) and divine authority. Making God’s
attributes manifest introduces a certain duality into their relationship with
him, for in effect they are setting themselves up as minor gods. Outwardly they
display lordship and remain far from God, but inwardly they remain his servants
and stay near to him. They weep because of wariness (taqwâ) and caution
(fiod/wr), for they fear not giving the station of religious obligation
(takiif) its rightful due. In support of this interpretation, Ibn al-‘Arabi
cites Muhammad’s saying, “I am more wary of God than any of you, and I have
the most knowledge.”21 He rightly points out that the Prophet said this after
his companions remarked on his extraordinary exertion in acts of worship, even
though this Qur’ânic verse had already come down: “Surely We have given thee [O
Muhammad] a clear victory, that God may forgive thee thy former and thy latter
sins” (48:2).22
Elsewhere in the Futühât,
Ibn al-'Arabl comments on the verse, “These are they whom God has blessed among
the prophets. . . . When the signs of the All-merciful were recited to them,
they fell down prostrate, weeping” ( 19:58). In this case, he says, the
prophets wept in joy, for the signs of the “Allmerciful” reached them. “Mercy
does not demand severity and magnificence, but gentleness and tenderness.”23
Several times Ibn
al-‘Arabl comments on a saying of Abu Yazid BastamI (d. ca. 874): “I laughed
for a time, I wept for a time, and now I neither laugh
nor weep?’ Generally, he
understands this as reference to Abu Yazld’s having reached “the station of no
station,” the level of spiritual perfection in which the divine image has been
fully actualized and absolute servanthood has been achieved.24 In one passage,
he invokes the saying in a legal discussion: If someone laughs while
performing the ritual prayer (salât), does this invalidate the prayer? Most
jurists hold that it does. Ibn al-'Arabi says that it depends on the state of
the person. If the person is heedless of God, then laughter will invalidate
the prayer. But if the person is receptive to the self-disclosure (tajalli)
of God within the Qur’anic verses that he is reciting, laughter will simply
display the appropriate response. This is why Abu Yazld, who had been
completely overcome by the Qur’an, would sometimes laugh and sometimes weep.
During the
Qur’an recitation in the $aiôt, the states of people with God are diverse—if
they are among the folk of God, those who ponder the Qur’an. One verse makes
them sad, so they weep; another verse makes them happy, so they laugh; still
another verse astonishes them, so they neither laugh nor weep. One verse
bestows a knowledge, another verse makes them ask forgiveness and engage in
supplication.25
In still another passage, Ibn al-'Arabi confirms
that God’s self-disclosure determines whether a saint will laugh or weep. He
mentions as examples two men whom he has met, though he makes clear, both here
and elsewhere, that such people are rare.
There is a
self-disclosure that makes to laugh. I have never seen anyone in this path who
was among the folk of laughter except for one man, who was called 'All
al-SakwI. I journeyed with him and was his companion in both travel and town in
Andalusia. He never ceased laughing, like someone enraptured who comes to his
senses only occasionally. I never saw him say anything sinful. As for the weepers,
I have seen only one of them: Yusuf al-Mughawir al-Jalli in the year 586 [1190
A.D.] in Seville. He accompanied us and was showing his states to us. He was in
great anguish, and his weeping never lapsed. I was his companion when I was
also the companion of the laugher.26
Islamic theological
thinking in its diverse forms begins by unpacking tawfild, the declaration of
divine unity that is the first principle of faith and is expressed most
succinctly in the formula, “There is no god but God.” This means, in brief,
that nothing is true and real but that which is truly real (al- haqq). Everything
derives from the Real and returns to the Real, and tears are no exception. It
is typical of Qur’ânic rhetoric to make this explicit—"It is He who makes
to laugh and makes to weep” (53:43 ).
Given that both laughter
and weeping derive from God, we can ask if they pertain to the divine Reality
itself, or if God brings them into existence only in created things. We have
seen that the hadîth literature offers examples of God’s laughter, but nowhere
does Islamic literature, so far as 1 know, suggest that God weeps. There is a
definite disproportion between laughter and weeping. The first is a divine
attribute, the second is not; both are attributes of creatures. As creaturely
attributes, neither of the two is good in itself, but, by and large, weeping is
praised and laughter is blamed. In the few Qur’ânic mentions, laughter in this
world is ascribed to the unbelievers, and laughter in the next world to the
folk of paradise.
Given that God laughs and
is the cause of laughter and weeping, we might derive three divine names,
though they are not mentioned in the standard lists: He who Laughs, the
Bestower of Laughter, and the Bestower of Weeping.27 These partake of the same
structural relationship as three names commonly mentioned by the theologians:
the Living (aHiayy), the Life-giver (al-mufiyl), and the Death-giver
(al-mumlt). God is the Living who never dies, but all things in the universe
are constantly shifting mixtures of life and death,28 So also, it would seem,
God is the laugher who never weeps, but all things in the universe are mixtures
of laughter and weeping. In the same way, God is die light of the heavens and
the earth (Qur’an 24:35) and “He made the darknesses and the light” (6:1). The
Qur’an is then “A Book We have sent down to bring the people forth from the
darknesses to the light” (14:1), that is, from death to life, from ignorance to
knowledge, from tears to laughter. Only in joining with God can death, sadness,
and suffering be overcome.
If the tradition suggests
that weeping is more appropriate for the soul than laughter, this is because
human beings are by definition separate from God and immersed in death and
darkness. It is true that God created Adam in his own image and “taught him all
the names” (Qur’an 2:31), but this is simply to say that God has a special
regard for human beings, not that happiness is guaranteed. Weeping appears as
the natural response to human awareness of distance from the Creator, who is
the source of all being, good, consciousness, and joy.
Ibn al-'Araba explains
that people are divided into two basic sorts, as suggested by Qur’an 11:105,
which tells us that in the next world they will be either wretched (s/idtf) or
felicitous (scfid). “In this world, the attributes that the wretched will have
in the afterworld appear in the felicitous—that is, grief, affliction, weeping,
abasement, and submissiveness.” As for the attributes that the felicitous will
have in paradise, such as happiness and joy, they appear now in those who will
end up as wretched.29
One might object that
weeping may stem not only from grief and suffering but also from mercy and
compassion, as indicated in various hadïths. If God sent Muhammad as “a mercy
to the worlds” (21:107) and God is “the most merciful of the merciful” whose
“mercy embraces all things” (7:156), surely he should weep in sympathy for the
suffering of his creatures. But Islamic theol-
ogy stresses the divine
qualities of the human rather than the human qualities of the divine. As
Muhammad (and other prophets) are instructed to say in the Qur'an, “I am but
mortal like you” (14:11,16:110). It is true that Muhammad manifests the divine
attribute of mercy, but God does not display the all too- human weakness of
tears.
Moreover, to suggest that God weeps would be to
give too much credit to the human standpoint relative to the timeless,
God’s-eye view of things. God creates the universe out of mercy, love, and
wisdom. The inscription on his Throne, upon which the 11 Alb merciful” is
sitting (Quf an 20:5), reads, “My mercy takes precedence over My wrath.” The
disproportion between mercy and wrath does not allow God to weep—not even in
the anthropomorphic imagery employed by much of the hadith literature—for God
sees that in fact all is well. Thus Ibn ab'Arabl cites a hadith that tells us
God will take “the two handfuls”—the blessed and the damned, the felicitous and
the wretched—and cast one handful into paradise and the other into hell, each
time saying, “I do not care” (la ubdtí). Why should God not care, given that he
is throwing a vast group of people into pain and suffering? Because, Ibn
al-'Arabi tells us, his mercy embraces all things, even those who end up in the
deepest pit of the Fire. “The final issue of both [handfuls] will be at mercy,
and that is why He does not care.”30
Kashf al-asrar
Any attempt at a serious
review of the role of weeping in Islamic literature would demand a major
monograph. Sufi poetry alone provides countless examples. Let me instead
provide a few samples of typical discussions from one seminal work, Kashf
al-asrâr wa ‘uddat al-abrar (The unveiling of the secrets and the provision
of the pious) by Rashid al-Din Maybudi. Completed in the year 1126, it is one
of the longest and most popular commentaries on the Qur’an in the Persian
language. Maybudi divides his explanation of verses into three stages: literal
Persian translation, detailed exposition of the diverse opinions of the early
authorities, and “allusions” (ishàrât) to the inner meanings of the
text. The third stage, in contrast to the first two, offers some of the most
beautiful prose passages in the Persian language. The book provides a foretaste
of the imagery that would soon come to predominate in the poetical traditions
of the Persian, Turkish, and Indic languages, traditions that became the major
vehicles for the Qur’Snic worldview in the vast majority of the Islamic world.
Maybudi well understands that weeping may have a
variety of causes. He suggests some of them in his remarks on the verse, “They
fall down on their faces weeping” ( 17:109):
Weeping is the state of the beginners and the
attribute of the travelers—each per- son according to his own state and every
traveler in the measure of his own activity. The repenter looks upon his own
sin and weeps in fear of punishment, fhe obedient person looks upon his own
defective obedience and weeps in fear of falling short. The worshiper weeps in
fear of the outcome: “What will be done with me tomorrow?” The knower looks at
the beginningless precedent and weeps: “What was done to me and decreed for me
in eternity without beginning?” All this happens in the path of the travelers
and is a sign of the weakness of their state. As for those who have been stolen
away from themselves and achieved stability, for them weeping is an
imperfection and a defect in their path. Thus it is related that Junayd was
sitting with his wife and Shiblî entered. His wife wanted to cover herself,
but Junayd said to her, “Shiblî is not aware of you, so sit,” Junayd kept speaking
to her, and then Shiblî wept. When Shiblî began to weep, Junayd said to his
wife, “Cover yourself, for Shiblî has come back from absence to awareness.”31
Like others, Maybudî sees
both laughter and weeping as appropriate signs of sanctity. He explains this in
the context of 2:180, which instructs believers to prepare last wills and
testaments. The rich leave behind their property, but the poor in spirit leave
behind their stations, among which are laughter and weeping.
The disobedient person fears for himself because
of his bad deeds, but the knower fears for himself ten times as much because of
the sincerity of his deeds and the limpidness of his states. There is, however,
a difference between the two; The disobedient person fears the outcome and is
afraid of punishment, but the knower fears Gods majesty and manifestation. The
fear of the knower is called “awe,” and the fear of the disobedient is called
“fright.” . . .
Awe is a fear that puts no veil before
supplication, no blindfold over perspicacity, and no wall before hope. It is a
fear that melts and kills. As long as the awestruck person does not hear the
call, “Do not fear and do not grieve” [Qur’an 41:30], he does not relax. . . .
Bishr Hafï began weeping and wailing when he was
near death. They said, “O Bishr, is it that you love life and you dislike
death?”
He said, “No,
but stepping forth to God is hard.”. . .
There is another group who come forward to the
disclosure of God’s beauty and gentleness at the time of going. The lightning
of intimacy flashes and the fire of yearning flames up. . . . Makhül Shâmî was
a manly man, unique in his era, and overcome by the pain and grief of this
tale. He never laughed. During his dying illness a group came to see him and he
was laughing. They said, “O Shaykh! You were always full of grief. Right now,
grief is even more fitting for you. Why are you laughing?”
He said, "Why should I not laugh? The sun of
separation has reached the top of the wall, and the day for which I have been
waiting has arrived. The doors of
heaven are open and the
angels are clearing the way: ‘Makhul is coining to the Presence!’”32
In commenting on 2:238,
which commands people to be watchful over their daily prayers, Maybudï provides
a long mythic disquisition that ascribes the origin of each of the five prayers
to one of the prophets. He tells us that Adam, the first human being and the
first prophet, was also the first to perform the morning prayer, in gratitude
for the passing of night.
When he came from heaven
to earth, it was the end of the day. As long as he saw the brightness of the
day, he had a bit of ease, but when the sun was concealed, Adam’s heart became
a mine of grief. ... He had never seen night, nor had he suffered darkness and
grief. Suddenly he saw the darkness that reaches the whole world, and he was a
stranger, ill, and separate from his wife. In that darkness he sometimes
sighed, sometimes turned his face toward the moon, sometimes whispered
silently to the Threshold. . . .
The first of all
strangers was Adam, the forerunner of all those who grieve was Adam, the father
of all the weepers was Adam. It was Adam who laid the foundation of love in
the world and Adam who set down the custom of night vigils. He established the
tradition of moaning in the pain of separation and crying in the middle of the
night. . . .
At last, when the breeze
of dawn began to breathe like a lover and when the army of morning burst forth
from its ambush and clamored against the darkness of night, Gabriel came with
the good news: “O Adam! Morning has come, peace has come! Light has come, joy
has come! Brightness has come, familiarity has come! Arise, O Adam, and recite
two cycles of prayer in this state—one in gratitude for the passing of the
night of separation and distance, one in gratitude for the morning breath of
good fortune and union.”33
Maybudï typically
associates weeping with the fire of love and the burning of the heart. In
commenting on 2:247, “God is the friend of those who have faith,” he begins by explaining
why God is kinder and gentler to the weak than to the strong, and he cites the
saying of God, related by the Prophet, “I am with those whose hearts are broken
for Me.” Then he provides various tales to illustrate the point:
It has been reported that
on the Day of Resurrection, one of the broken and burnt will be taken to the
Presence. God will say, “My servant, what do you have?”
He will say, ‘Two empty
hands, a heart full of pain, and a spirit troubled and bewildered by the waves
of grief and woe.”
He will say, “Go right
ahead into the house.of My friends, for I love the broken and grieving.” . . .
David said, “O
God, I take it that 1 must wash my limbs with water to purify them of
defilement. With what shall 1 wash my heart so that it may be purified of other
than You?’
The command
came, “O David! Wash the heart with the water of regret and grief so that you
may reach the greatest purification.”
He said,
"O God, where can 1 find this grief?’
He said, “We
Ourselves will send the grief. The stipulation is that you stick to those who
are grieving and broken.”
He said, “O
God, what is their mark?’
He said, “They
wait all day for the sun to go down and for the curtain of night to descend.
Then they begin to knock on the door of the cell of ‘We are nearer to him than
the jugular vein’ [50:16]. Burning, weeping, and sighing all night, full of
neediness and melting, their heads placed on the ground, they call on Us with
longing voice: ‘O Lord, O Lord!’. . .
“From the
All-compeller the call comes, ‘O Gabriel and Michael! Leave aside the murmur of
glorification, for I hear the sound of someone burning. Although he has the
load of disobedience, in his heart he has the tree of faith. He was kneaded
with the water and clay of love for Me.’
“From the day
they came into existence until the day of resurrection, the proximate angels
have placed their hands on the belt of serving Me. They observe My every
command and bum in hope for one glance. But then they put the fingers of
longing in the mouth of bewilderment—‘What is this? We do the service, and the
love goes there! We do the running and rushing, and they have the arrival and
seeing! ’
“The
Exaltation of Unity answers them with the description of esteem: ‘This work is
done by burning and grief, and they are the mine of burning and the quarry of
grief? ”
Without the
perfection of pain and burning, don’t mention the name “religion?’
Without the
beauty of desire for union, never lean upon faith.
On the day of
arrival, sacrifice
your wretched,
bleeding heart
only to the
spirit-catching, curling tresses
of the
Beloved.34
'1. Ibn Maja,
Iqâma 176. Hadïths are cited following the numbering system of J. Wensinck, J.
R Mensing, and J. Brugman, Concordance et indices de ïa tradition musul* mane
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1936-1969).
4. Bukhâri, Janâ’iz 43; Muslim, Façiâ’il 62. Another fradith says,
“We were with God’s Messenger at a funeral. He sat at the edge of the grave and
wept until the earth became wet. Then he said, 'My brothers, prepare for the
likes of this!’” (Ibn Maja, Zuhd 19). The general tenor of the hadîths,
however, is critical of ostentatious weep- ing and wailing as a sign of
mourning, partly because this seems to have been the rule among women in the
pre-Islamic period. The juridical literature strongly discourages it, and
preachers criticize excessive grief as a sign of disbelief in the divine mercy.
For a good selection of hadîths on weeping for the dead, see Tabrizi, Mishkat
al-masabih, trans. James Robson (Lahore: Sh- Muhammad Ashraf, 1963-65),
360-68.
7. So says Fritz Meier in his excellent survey of the literature that
ascribes weeping to early Muslims, s.v. "bakka’,” in The Encyclopedia
of Islam, new ed. (Leiden: E. ]. Brill, I960-), 1:959-61.
8. Rashid al-Dîn Maybudï, Kashf aTasrdr wa cuddat ababrar, ed.
‘A. A. Hikmat (10 vols., Tehran: Dânishgâh, 1331-39/1952-60), 1:239.
9. On the role that complementary attributes play throughout the
tradition, see Sachiko Murata’s detailed study, The Tao of Islam: A
Sourcebook on Gender Relationships tn Islamic Thought (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992).
10. Bukhari, Salât 1; Muslim, Iman 263. See also Tabrizi, Mishkat
al-masabih, 1269.
11. This saying is frequently cited and is found in most of the
standard hadith coL lections.
14. Muslim, Iman 310. Compare Bukhâri, Salât 129-, Tawhîd 24.
16. The text is from the important Qur 3n commentary HaqS’tq abtafsir
(The realities of exegesis) by Abu £Abd al-Rafrman al-Sulaml (d. 1021). Cited
in P. Nwyia, Trois oeuvres inédites de Mystiques musulmanes (Beirut: Dar
el-Machreq, 1973), 48.
17. Kitab a!4uma\ ed. R, A. Nicholson (Leiden: Brill, 1914), 229.
18. Mashrab aï-arwôh, ed. N. M. Hoca (Istanbul: Edebiyat
Fakültesi Matbaasi, 1974), 285. For the five passages on weeping, see pp. 110,
241, 265, 280, 285.
19. Ihyà ‘ulümabdïn (Cairo: Dâr al-Hâdî, 1992), 4:242.
21. Bukhâri, Imân 13; cf. Muslim, Çiyâm 74.
22. Ibn al-'Arabî, al-Futühôt abmakkiyya (Cairo, 1911),
3:50-51.
27. There were diverse criteria by which theologians decided which
divine names should be included in their discussions, and by no means did they
necessarily adhere to the notion that God has “ninety-nine” names. If the three
suggested names are not listed, this is no doubt because they lack a certain
majesty. In a similar way, the theologians exclude some divine names that are
mentioned explicitly by the Qu?an, such as “Best of Deceivers” (Qur’ân 3:54,
8:30).
28. To the objection that much of the universe is inert and lifeless,
a Sufilike Ibn 'Arabï replies with metaphysical, theological, cosmological, and
scriptural arguments to show that life and consciousness are the source of all
things and are found everywhere.
29. Ibn al-'Arabi, Futftjwt, 2:211.
30. Ibid., 3:463. Ibn al-fArabi devotes a great deal of attention to
the issue of the ultimate happiness of all creatures. For a review of some of
his arguments, see William Chittick, “Ibn al-4Arabi’s Hermeneutics of Mercy,”
in Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, ed. Stephen Katz (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 153—68.
“No Power oí Speech Remains”:
lears and Iransiormation in South Asian Majlis
Poetry
Amy Bard
I
n this essay, I explore
ritual weeping as a transformative process and address specifically how crying
can concretize feelings and align multiple perspectives and complex emotional
claims. 1 frame tears within ritualists’ experience of poetry in today’s South
Asian ShYi Muslim majlis (the “mourning assembly”). Majlis genres and
their performance context incorporate sev- eral themes explored by other
contributors to this volume: the cosmic exchange of water; tears as an
efficacious performance, often inextricably bound to poetic lament; and the
notion of tears as a doorway between realms.
The majlis customs and rituals of
Urdu-speaking Muslims are embedded in a variety of regional, religious, and
political traditions; more complexity colors their “emotional contour” than a
focus on weeping alone might suggest.1 Yet weeping for Imam Husain, martyred in
680 c.E., is arguably the act that defines the participant in the assembly, the
mourner. ShïT traditions recount how Husain, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson,
and his family were tortured at Karbala (in present-day Iraq) by the forces of
Yazid of the Ummayad clan. Yazïd was one of a series of leaders who claimed the
Islamic caliphate and in so doing displaced the Prophet’s son-in-law, cAlï, and
his progeny after him. Yazïd’s massive army slew Husain’s small but valiant
party of warriors, first depriving them of all access to water, and took the
women of the imam’s household captive after the massacre.
Majlis poetry about this
tragedy depicts tears as the only water in a desert where children are
perishing of thirst; as a substance mixed with henna powder to anoint a
soon-to-be-widowed bride; as the sun in a weeping cosmos; and as a realm of
grief beyond words. As those present in the majlis respond to images of
suffering and crying in recited poetry, it becomes evident that the economy of
the mourning assembly produces, invests, and recycles tears.
The majlis raises insistent questions
about the aesthetics and purposefulness of ritual weeping and about the
assessment of tears. To what extent are ritual tears “instrumental” and to what
extent “expressive” of inner states?2 Gary
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