The Persian Sufis (RLE Iran C) by Cyprian Rice

Author:Cyprian Rice [Rice, Cyprian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136835179
Google: 6Z125mKEewoC
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-04-27T04:41:32+00:00

NOTES

1 Asaph was the Vizir of King Solomon.

1 Saying attributed to Mahomet.

1 ‘In the Name of God the merciful, the clement’—the first words of the Qorān.

1 Qorān, s. 40, v. 62.

FIVE

THE MYSTICAL STATES

As we have seen, the maqāmāt are the stages through which the wayfarer must pass in his strivings after perfection and in his efforts to dispose himself for the flooding in of mystical graces. Being moral and spiritual purifications and rectifications which can and must be brought about by the disciple’s own efforts, they are known as ‘acquired’ (iktisābi) and not ‘infused’, the nearest word to which is, perhaps, ladunni. We come now to the aḥwāl (pl. of ḥāl), which, according to the customary Ṣūfi interpretation, represent mystical graces, sheer gifts of divine grace and generosity to a soul stripped of all self-seeking and self-regard. Henceforth, it is not so much the earnest striving and pressing forward of the pilgrim himself that is in the foreground, as the victorious and irresistible attraction of the divine beloved (Jānān), sweeping the traveller off his feet and carrying him along in a state of utter bewilderment.

The word ḥāl is not easy to translate. Like a number of other Ṣūfi terms, its meaning is not necessarily that which would be given in a dictionary. It is used in much subtler ways, which can be learnt only by familiarity with their writings. By its derivation it implies change, a changing state of soul. The qalb (heart) in which these mystic changes take place, is also, by definition, a changing thing, constantly turned this way and that by its divine transformer (muqallib). Hence it could almost be translated by ‘phase’ or ‘mood’.

Jurjāni, in his Book of Definitions, defines it thus:

‘The dictionary meaning of ḥāl is the end of the past and the beginning of the future (in other words, it is the present moment). But among the people of God (i.e. the Ṣūfis), it is an experience of the soul (or heart), not artificially produced, not induced or acquired, of joy or sorrow, contraction or expansion, and so on. It passes away on the emergence of the attributes of the self. If it lasts and becomes a habitus, or fixed quality, it is called a maqām.1

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