The Mystics of IslamIslamScholarly ReconstructionEnglish study drawing on Arabic and Persian Sufi sourcesShareThe Mystics of Islam 4Reynold A. Nicholson 1914 - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableReynold A. Nicholson 1914LanguageEnglishEspañol‹The Mystics of Islam 2The Mystics of Islam 3The Mystics of Islam 4The Mystics of Islam 5The Mystics of Islam 7The Mystics of Islam 9The Mystics of Islam 11The Mystics of Islam 12The Mystics of Islam 14The Mystics of Islam 16The Mystics of Islam 18›Ii. NeoplatonismThe Mystics of Islam 4ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Aristotle, not Plato, is the dominant figure in Moslem philosophy, and few Mohammedans are familiar with the name of Plotinus, who was more commonly called ‘the Greek Master’ (al-Sheykh al-Yaunānī). But since the Arabs gained their first knowledge of Aristotle from his Neoplatonist commentators, the system with which they became imbued was that of Porphyry and Proclus. Thus the so-called Theology of Aristotle, of which an Arabic version appeared in the ninth century, is actually a manual of Neoplatonism. 2Another work of this school deserves particular notice: I mean the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul. The pseudo-Dionysius--he may have been a Syrian monk--names as his teacher a certain Hierotheus, whom Frothingham has identified with Stephen Bar Sudaili, a prominent Syrian gnostic and a contemporary of Jacob of Sarūj (451-521 A.D.). Dionysius quotes some fragments of erotic hymns by this Stephen, and a complete work, the Book of Hierotheus on the Hidden Mysteries of the Divinity, has come down to us in a unique manuscript which is now in the British Museum. The Dionysian writings, turned into Latin by John Scotus Erigena, founded medieval Christian mysticism in Western Europe. Their influence in the East was hardly less vital. They were translated from Greek into Syriac almost immediately on their appearance, and their doctrine was vigorously propagated by commentaries in the same tongue. “About A.D. Dionysius was known from the Tigris to the Atlantic.” 3Besides literary tradition, there were other channels by which the doctrines of emanation, illumination, gnosis, and ecstasy were transmitted, but enough has been said to convince the reader that Greek mystical ideas were in the air and easily accessible to the Moslem inhabitants of Western Asia and Egypt, where the Sūfī theosophy first took shape. One of those who bore the chief part in its development, Dhu ’l-Nūn the Egyptian, is described as a philosopher and alchemist--in other words, a student of Hellenistic science. When it is added that much of his speculation agrees with what we find, for example, in the writings of Dionysius, we are drawn irresistibly to the conclusion (which, as I have pointed out, is highly probable on general grounds) that Neoplatonism poured into Islam a large tincture of the same mystical element in which Christianity was already steeped. 4Cf. Goldziher, “Neuplatonische und gnostische Elemente im Hadīt,” in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xxii. 317 ff. 5Though little direct evidence is available, the conspicuous place occupied by the theory of gnosis in early Sūfī speculation suggests contact with Christian Gnosticism, and it is worth noting that the parents of Maʿrūf al-Karkhī, whose definition of Sūfism, as ‘the apprehension of divine realities’ was quoted on the first page of this Introduction, are said to have been Sābians, i.e. Mandæans, dwelling in the Babylonian fenland between Basra and Wāsit. Other Moslem saints had learned ‘the mystery of the Great Name.’ It was communicated to Ibrāhīm ibn Adham by a man whom he met while travelling in the desert, and as soon as he pronounced it he saw the prophet Khadir (Elias). The ancient Sūfīs borrowed from the Manichæans the term siddīq, which they apply to their own spiritual adepts, and a later school, returning to the dualism of Mānī, held the view that the diversity of phenomena arises from the admixture of light and darkness. 6“The ideal of human action is freedom from the taint of darkness; and the freedom of light from darkness means the self-consciousness of light as light.” 7Shaikh Muhammad Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (1908), p. 150. 8The following version of the doctrine of the seventy thousand veils as explained by a modern Rifāʿī dervish shows clear traces of Gnosticism and is so interesting that I cannot refrain from quoting it here: 9“Seventy Thousand Veils separate Allah, the One Reality, from the world of matter and of sense. And every soul passes before his birth through these seventy thousand. The inner half of these are veils of light: the outer half, veils of darkness. For every one of the veils of light passed through, in this journey towards birth, the soul puts off a divine quality: and for every one of the dark veils, it puts on an earthly quality. Thus the child is born weeping, for the soul knows its separation from Allah, the One Reality. And when the child cries in its sleep, it is because the soul remembers something of what it has lost. Otherwise, the passage through the veils has brought with it forgetfulness (nisyān): and for this reason man is called insān. He is now, as it were, in prison in his body, separated by these thick curtains from Allah. 10“But the whole purpose of Sūfism, the Way of the dervish, is to give him an escape from this prison, an apocalypse of the Seventy Thousand Veils, a recovery of the original unity with The One, while still in this body. The body is not to be put off; it is to be refined and made spiritual--a help and not a hindrance to the spirit. It is like a metal that has to be refined by fire and transmuted. And the sheikh tells the aspirant that he has the secret of this transmutation. ‘We shall throw you into the fire of Spiritual Passion,’ he says, ‘and you will emerge refined.’” 11“The Way” of a Mohammedan Mystic, by W. H. T. Gairdner (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 9 f. ‹Previous chapterThe Mystics of Islam 3Next chapterThe Mystics of Islam 5›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg