Tasawwuf Shuyukh
[1] Tasawwuf: Hasan al-Basri
[2] Tasawwuf: Abu Hanifa
[3]
Tasawwuf: Sufyan al-Thawri
[4]
Tasawwuf: Imam Malik
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[1] ON TASAWWUF
al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 110)
--------------------------
One of the early formal Sufis in both the
general and the literal
sense, as he wore all his life a cloak of
wool (suf). The son of a
freedwoman of Umm Salama's (the Prophet's
wife) and a freedman of
Zayd ibn Thabit's (the Prophet's stepson),
this great Imam of
Basra, the leader of saints and scholars in
his day, was known for
his strict and encompassing embodiment of
the Sunna of the
Prophet. He was also famous for his immense
knowledge, his
austerity and asceticism, his fearless
remonstrances of the
authorities, and his power of attraction
both in discourse and
appearance.
Ibn al-Jawzi wrote a 100-page book on his life and manners
entitled Adab al-Shaykh al-Hasan ibn Abi
al-Hasan al-Basri. In his
chapter on al-Hasan in Sifat al-safwa, he
mentions a report that
al-Hasan left behind a white cloak (jubba)
made of wool which he
had worn exclusively of any other for the
past twenty years,
winter and summer, and that when he died it
was in a state of
immaculate beauty, cleanness, and
quality.(1)
In the book he devoted to the sayings and the deeds of Sufis,
Rawdat al-muhibbin wa nuzhat al-mushtaqin
(The garden of the
lovers and the excursion of the longing
ones), Ibn Qayyim relates:
A group of women went out on the day of
`Eid and went about
looking at people. They were asked:
"Who is the most handsome
person you have seen today?" They
replied: "It is a shaykh wearing
a black turban." They meant Hasan
al-Basri.(2)
The hadith master Abu Nu`aym al-Isfanahi (d. 430) mentions in
his biographies of Sufis entitled Hilyat
al-awliya' (The adornment
of the saints) that it is al-Hasan's
student `Abd al-Wahid ibn
Zayd (d. 177) who was the first person to
build a Sufi khaniqa or
guest-house and school at Abadan on the
present-day border of Iran
with Iraq.(3)
It was on the basis of Hasan al-Basri and his students' fame
as Sufis that Ibn Taymiyya stated:
"Tasawwuf's place of origin is
Basra" in his essay al-Sufiyya wa
al-fuqara.(4) This is a
misleading assertion tantamount to accusing
al-Hasan of having
invented tasawwuf. Rather, Basra is chief
among the places of
renown for the formal development of the
schools of purification
which became known as tasawwuf, but whose
principles are none
other than the Qur'an and the Sunna as we
have already
demonstrated at length.
Ghazali relates al-Hasan's words on Jihad al-nafs in the
section of his Ihya' entitled Kitab riyadat
al-nafs wa tahdhib al-
akhlaq wa mu`alajat amrad al-qalb (Book of
the training of the ego
and the disciplining of manners and the
healing of the heart's
diseases) that Hasan al-Basri said:
Two thoughts roam over the soul, one from
Allah, one from the
enemy. Allah shows mercy on a servant who
settles at the
thought that comes from Him. He embraces
the thought that
comes from Allah, while he fights against
the one from his
enemy. To illustrate the heart's mutual
attraction betwen
these two powers the Prophet said:
"The heart of a believer
lies between two fingers of the
Merciful"(5)... The fingers
stand for upheaval and hesitation in the
heart... If man
follows the dictates of anger and appetite,
the dominion of
shaytan appears in him through idle passions
[hawa] and his
heart becomes the nesting-place and
container of shaytan, who
feeds on hawa. If he does battle with his
passions and does
not let them dominate his nafs, imitating
in this the
character of the angels, at that time his
heart becomes the
resting-place of angels and they alight
upon it.
A measure of the extent of Hasan al-Basri's extreme
godwariness and scrupulosity (wara`) is
given by his following
statement, also quoted by Ghazali:
Forgetfulness and hope are two mighty
blessings upon the
progeny of Adam; but for them the Muslims
would not walk in
the streets.(6)
Notes:
(1) Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa 2(4):10
(#570).
(2) Ibn al-Qayyim, Rawdat al-muhibbin p.
225.
(3)
Abu Nu`aym, Hilyat al-awliya' 6:155.
(4) Ibn Taymiyya, al-Tasawwuf in Majmu`a
al-fatawa al-kubra 11:16.
(5) Narrated by Muslim, Ahmad, Tirmidhi,
and Ibn Majah.
(6) In Ghazali, trans. T.J. Winter, The
remembrance of death p. 18.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[2] ON TASAWWUF
Imam Abu Hanifa (d. 150)
Ibn `Abidin relates in his al Durr al
mukhtar that Imam Abu
Hanifa said: "If it were not for two
years, I would have
perished." Ibn `Abidin comments:
For two years he accompanied Sayyidina
Ja`far al-Sadiq
and he acquired the spiritual knowledge
that made him a
gnostic in the Way... Abu `Ali Daqqaq (Imam
Qushayri's
shaykh) received the path from Abu al-Qasim
al-
Nasirabadi, who received it from al Shibli,
who
received it from Sari al-Saqati who received
it from
al Ma`ruf al Karkhi, who received it from
Dawud
at Ta'i, who received the knowledge, both
the external
and the internal, from the Imam Abi
Hanifa.(1)
(1) Ibn `Abidin, Hashiyat radd al-muhtar
`ala al-durr al-mukhtar 1:43.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[3] ON TASAWWUF
Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 161)
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya relates in Madarij
al-salikin, and
Ibn al-Jawzi in the chapter entitled
"Abu Hashim al-Zahid"
in his Sifat al-safwa after the early
hadith master Abu
Nu`aym in his Hilyat al-awliya', that
Sufyan al-Thawri said:
If it were not for Abu Hashim al-Sufi (d.
115) I would
have never perceived the presence of the
subtlest forms
of hypocrisy in the self... Among the best
of people is
the Sufi learned in jurisprudence.(1)
Ibn al-Jawzi also narrates the following:
Abu Hashim al-Zahid said: "Allah has
stamped alienation
upon the world in order that the friendly
company of
the muridin (seekers) consist solely in being
with Him
and not with the world, and in order that
those who
obey Him come to Him by means of avoiding
the world.
The People of Knowledge of Allah (ahl
al-ma`rifa
billah) are strangers in the world and long
for the
hereafter."(2)
(1) Ibn Qayyim, Madarij al-salikin; Ibn
al-Jawzi, Sifat al-
safwa
(Beirut: dar al-kutub al-`ilmiyya, 1403/1989) 1
(2):203
(#254); Abu Nu`aym, Hilyat al-awliya, s.v. "Abu
Hashim al-Sufi."
(2) Ibn al-Jawzi, op. cit.
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem
was-salaat was-salaam `alaa Rasul-illah wa
'alaa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam
[4] ON TASAWWUF
Imam Malik (d. 179)
The scholar of Madina, he was known for his
intense piety
and love of the Prophet, whom he held in
such awe and
respect that he would not mount his horse
within the
confines of Madina out of reverence for the
ground that
enclosed the Prophet's body, nor would he
relate a hadith
without first performing ablution. Ibn
al-Jawzi relates in
the chapter entitled "Layer 6 of the
People of Madina" of
his book Sifat al-safwa:
Abu Mus`ab said: I went in to see Malik ibn
Anas. He
said to me: Look under my place of prayer
or prayer-mat
and see what is there. I looked and I found
a certain
writing. He said: Read it. (I saw that) it
contained
(the account of) a dream which one of his
brothers had
seen and which concerned him. He said (reciting what
was written): "I saw the Prophet in my
sleep. He was in
his mosque and the people were gathered
around him, and
he said: I have hidden for you under my
pulpit (minbar)
something good -- or: knowledge -- and I
have ordered
Malik to distribute it to the people."
Then Malik wept,
so I got up and left him.(1)
Just as Abu Hanifa and Sufyan al-Thawri implicitly
asserted the necessity to follow the Sufi
path for
acquiring perfection, Imam Malik explicitly
enjoined
tasawwuf as a duty of scholars in his
statement:
"He who practices Tasawwuf without
learning Sacred Law
corrupts his faith, while he who learns
Sacred Law
without practicing Tasawwuf corrupts
himself. Only he
who combines the two proves true."
It is related by the muhaddith Ahmad Zarruq
(d. 899), the
hafiz `Ali al-Qari al-Harawi (d. 1014), the
muhaddiths `Ali
ibn Ahmad al `Adawi (d. 1190) and Ibn
`Ajiba (d. 1224), and
others.(2)
Ibn `Ajiba explains:
Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq said: "Tasawwuf
has over two
thousand definitions, all of which go back
to the
sincerity of one's self-application to
Allah... Each
one's definition corresponds to his state
and the
extent of his experience, knowledge, and
taste, upon
which he will ground his saying:
"Tasawwuf is such-and-
such."
It follows that every one of the saints quoted (in
Abu Nu`aym's Hilyat al-awliya') who has a
part of
sincere self-application (sidq tawajjuh)
has a part in
tasawwuf, and each one's tasawwuf consists
in his
sincere self-application. As a rule,
sincere self-
application is a requirement of religion
since it forms
both the manner and the content of the acts
which Allah
accepts. Manner and content are not sound
unless
sincerity of self-application is sound.
"He approves
not unthankfulness in His servants, but if
you are
thankful, he will approve it in you"
(39:7).
Therefore Islam necessitates deeds, and there is
no self-purification (tasawwuf) without
knowledge of
the Law (fiqh), as Allah's external rulings
are not
known except by knowledge of the Law; and
there is no
knowledge of the Law without
self-purification, as
there is no deed without sincerity in
self-application,
and there is neither without belief. Hence
the Law
requires all of them by definition, just as
the body
and the soul necessitate each other, as one
cannot
exist or be complete in the world except in
conjunction
with the other. That is the meaning of Imam
Malik's
saying: "He who practices Tasawwuf
without learning
Sacred Law..."(3)
(1)Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa
1(2):120.
(2)`Ali al-Qari, Sharh `ayn al-`ilm wa-zayn al-hilm
(Cairo:
Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 1989) 1:33; Ahmad
Zarruq, Qawa`id al-tasawwuf (Cairo, 1310);
`Ali al `Adawi,
Hashiyat al `Adawi `ala sharh Abi al Hasan
li risalat Ibn
Abi Zayd al musammat kifayat al talib al
rabbani li risalat
Ibn Abi Zayd al Qayrawani fi madhhab Maalik
(Beirut?: Dar
Ihya' al Kutub al `Arabiyah, ) 2:195; Ibn
`Ajiba, Iqaz
al himam fi sharh al hikam (Cairo: Halabi,
1392/1972) p.
5 6.
(3)Ibn `Ajiba, Iqaz al-himam 5-6.
Blessings and Peace on the Prophet, his
Family, and his Companions
GFH Abu Hammad
[1996-11-16]
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