[p. 1]
[p. 2]
The references in square brackets are to the pages of the Cairo Arabic edition, and to the present English translation.
THE MISHKÂT AL-ANWAR[1] is a work of extreme interest from the viewpoint of al-Ghazzâlî’s[2] inner life and esoteric thought. The glimpses it gives of that life and thought are remarkably, perhaps uniquely, intimate. It begins where his autobiographical Al-Munqidh min al-Dalâl leaves off. Its esotericism excited the curiosity and even the suspicion of Muslim thinkers from the first, and we have deeply interesting allusions to it in Ibn Tufaill and Ibn Rushd,[3] the celebrated philosophers of Western Islam, who flourished within the century after al-Ghazzâlî’s death in 1111 (A.H. 505)—a fact which, again, increases its importance and interest for us.
[p. 2]
There is no way of fixing the Precise date of this treatise; but it falls among his later ones, perhaps among the latest; the most important hint we get from Ghazzâlî himself being that the book was written after his Magnum opus, the Ihyâ’al Ulûm (p. 9). Other works of Ghazzâlî mentioned by him in this treatise are the Mi`âr al-`Ilm, Mahakk al-Nazar, and al-Maqsad al-Asnâ.
The object of the opuscule is to expound a certain Koran verse and a certain Tradition. The former is the celebrated Light-Verse (S. 24, 35) and the latter the Veils-Tradition. It is divided into three sections, of which the first is considerably the longest.
In this first section he considers the word “light” itself, and its plural “lights,” as applied to physical light and lights; to the eye; to the intelligence (i.e. intellect or reason); to prophets; to supernal beings; and finally to Allah himself, who is shown to be not the only source of light and of these lights, but also the only real actual light in all existence.
[p. 3]
In the second section we have some most interesting prolegomena to the whole subject of symbolic language in the Koran and Traditions, and its interpretation. Symbols are shown to be no mere metaphors. There is a real mystical nexus between symbol and symbolized, type and antitype, outer and inner. The symbols are infinitely numerous, very much more numerous than those mentioned in Koran, or Traditions. Every object on earth “perhaps” has its correlative in the unseen, spiritual world. This doctrine of symbols reminds us of the Platonic “ideas” and their earthly copies, and of the “patterns of things in the heavens” and “the example and shadow [on earth] of heavenly things” in the Epistle to the Hebrews. A notable deduction is made from this doctrine, namely, the equal incumbency of keeping the outward letter (zâhir) of the Law as well as its inner meaning (bâtin). Nearly all the most advanced Sûfis were zealous and Minutely scrupulous keepers of the ritual, ceremonial, and other prescriptions of the Sunna law, and Ghazzâlî here supplies a quasi-philosophical basis for this fidelity—a fidelity which some of the bolder and more extreme [p. 4] mystics found illogical and “unspiritual”.
In the third section the results of this symbology are applied to the Verse and Tradition in question. In the former the beautiful, and undeniably intriguing expressions of the Koran—the Light, the Niche, the Glass, the Oil, Tree, the East and the West—are explained both on psychological and religio-metaphysical lines; and a similar exegesis is applied to the tradition of the Seventy Thousand Veils.
In the course of all this Ghazzâlî gives us, incidentally, much that excites our curiosity to the highest degree; though always, when we get to the crucial point, we meet a “perhaps,” or a patronizing allusion to the immaturity of his less-initiated reader. (Ghazzâlî’s hesitations—“it may be,” “perhaps”, etc.—are worthy of study in this treatise. They do not so much have the impression of hesitancy in his own mind, as of a desire to “fence” a little with his reader.) He himself writes “incommunicable mystery” across a number of these passages. Thus, the nature of the human intelligence [p. 5] and its peculiar affinity to the divine (pp. 16, 71); the mystic “state” of al-Hallâj, and other “inebriates,” and the expressions they emit in their mystic intoxication (p. 20) —“behind which truths,” says Ghazzâlî, “also lie secrets which it is not lawful to enter upon”; the astounding passage (p. 24) in which to the supreme Adept of the mystical Union with deity are ascribed features and functions of very deity; the real explanation of the word tawhîd, involving as it does the question of the reality of the universe and the nature of the soul’s union or identification with deity; the nature of the Commander (al-Mutâ`) of the universe, and whether he be Allah or an ineffable supreme Vicegerent; who that Vicegerent is, and why it must be he and not Allâh who performs the prime function of the cosmos-ruler, viz. the issue of the command for the moving of the primum mobile, whereby all the motions of the Heavenly (and the Sublunary) spheres are set a-going; and the final mystery of Allah-an-sich, a Noumenal Deity, in whose case transcendence is to be carried to such a pitch that gnosticism and agnosticism meet, [p. 6] and the validity of every possible or conceivable predication is denied, whether of act or attribute (see p. 55)—all these things are incommunicable mysteries, secrets, from the revealing of which our author turns away at the exact moment when we expect the denouement. The art is supreme—but something more than tantalizing. Who were the adepts to whom he did communicate these thrilling secrets? Were these communications ever written down for or by his brother initiates? Or did he ever communicate them? Was there really anything to communicate? If so, what?
On the whole it is the final section on the Veils-Tradition which, though really of the nature of an appendix, contains the most numerous and the most interesting problems for the study of Ghazzâlî’s inner life, thought, and convictions. This tradition speaks of “Seventy Thousand Veils of Light and Darkness” which veil pure Godhead from the human soul. The origin of the tradition is, it is safe to hazard, Neoplatonic, and it therefore lent itself completely to the gnostic and theosophical mode of [p. 7] thought which so soon invaded Muslim Sûfism after its less successful effort to capture orthodox Christianity. Accordingly Muslim mystics seem to have seized upon the tradition with avidity, though they interpret it variously. For an entirely Neoplatonic, theosophical interpretation, as expounded by Rifâ`i dervishes, the translator’s “‘Way’ of a Mohammedan Mystic” may be consulted.[4] According to this version, the soul, in its upward Seven-fold Way to Union with pure Deity, is at every stage stripped of 10,000 of these Veils, the dark ones first and then the bright. After that the naked soul stands face to face with naked Deity, with Absolute Being, with an unveiled Sun, with unadulterated Light. Ghazzâlî’s treatment is different. According to him, these Veils are various according to the varieties of the natures which they veil from the One Real. And it is the classification of these natures, which is thus involved, that supplies rich material for an unusually inside view of Ghazzâlî’s real views concerning men, doctrines, religions, and sects. It [p. 8] is not the orthodox schoolman, the fierce dogmatist, the rigid mutakallim, who is now speaking. We have the sensation of overhearing Ghazzâlî as he speaks aloud to his own soul, or to a circle of initiates. It is hardly less than an outline of a philosophy of religion with which we have to do. He divides mankind into four classes: those veiled with veils of pure darkness; those veiled with veils of mixed darkness and light; those veiled with veils of pure light; and those who attain to the vision of the Unveiled. Every line of this part of the work merits and requires the closest study. It is not possible to give this detailed study here—it has been given elsewhere, and to that the reader must be referred.[5] But a summary of Ghazzâlî’s classification of souls and creeds may be given here, for thus, even more effectively than by an extended study, may a vivid preliminary appreciation be gained of the importance of this section for students of the Ghazzâlî problem. He begins at the bottom and works up the light-ladder, rung by rung, to the very top, thus giving a gradation of [p. 9] human natures and human creeds in respect of their approach to absolute truth. Sometimes the grades are definitely identified by the author. In other cases they may be certainly, or nearly certainly, identified from the description he gives. In the following summary Ghazzâlî’s own identifications are given between round brackets; inferred identifications certain or nearly certain, between square brackets.
Class I.—Those veiled with Veils of pure Darkness
Atheists—
Class II.—Those veiled with Veils of mixed Darkness and Light
[p. 10]
A. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE SENSES
B. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE IMAGINATION
(who worship a One Being, sitting [spatially] on his throne).
C. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE [DISCURSIVE][8] INTELLIGENCE
[Various sorts of Mutakallimîn]
[Later Ash`arites.]
Class III.—Those veiled by pure Light
[i.e. purged of all anthropomorphism (tashbîh)]
(1) Those whose views about the Attributes were sound, but who refused to define Allah by means of them: replying to the question “What is the Lord of the World?” by saying, “The Lord, who transcends the ideas of those attributes; He, the Mover and Orderer of the Heavens.”
[Hasan al-Basrî, al-Shâfi`î, and others of the bilâ kaifa school.]
(2) Those who mounted higher than the preceding, in declaring that Allah is the mover of only the primum mobile (the Ninth and outermost Heaven), which causes the movement of the other Eight, mediated by their respective Angels.
[Sûfî philosophers. (?) Al-Fârâbî.]
(3) Those who mount higher than these [p. 13] again, in putting a supreme Angel in place of Allah, Who now moves the heavens by commanding this supreme Angel, but not immediately by direct action.
[Sûfî philosophers. Al-Ghazzâlî himself when coram populo (Munqidh, p 11)!]
Class IV.—The Unveiled who Attain
Those who will predicate nothing whatsoever of Allah, and refuse to allow that He even issues the order for the moving of the primum mobile. This Commander (Mutâ`) is now a Vicegerent, who is related to the Absolute Being as the sun to Essential Light or live coal to the Element of Fire.
(1) Adepts who preserve self-consciousness in their absorption in this Absolute, all else being effaced.
(2) Adepts whose self-consciousness is also effaced (“the Fewest of the Few”) [al-Hallâj and the extreme Mystics],
(a) who attain to this State with a single leap—as Abraham “al-Khalîl” did, [p. 14]
(b) who attain to it by stages,—as Mohammed “al-Habîb” did [at the Mi`râj].
The mere perusal of this graded scale of systems and of souls shows at once its extraordinary interest because of its revelation of Ghazzâlî’s innermost thought about these things, and because of the piquancy and difficulty of some of the problems raised. In the discussion of the whole subject the reader is referred to, the monograph upon the Mishkât to which allusion has been made. The problems may be indicated here in the form of questions, for the sake of defining them as particularly as possible:—
(1) How is it that some reputable Moslems are grouped with Idolators and Dualists in the second division (“mixed light and dark”)?
(2) How is it that Jews and Christians are neither mentioned nor alluded to in this rather full sketch for a philosophy of religion? And where could they have been fitted in if they had been mentioned?
[p. 15]
(3) How is it that the later Ash`arites, the standard orthodox Theologians, are placed so low, viz. in the division where there are still veils of darkness?
(4) How is that the Mu`tazilites are neither mentioned nor alluded to; and that, according. to the differentia of the highest section of the second division, it would be inevitable to place them above the orthodox Ash`arites?
(5) How is it that the most pious believers of the earliest and most venerated type come no higher than the lowest section of the third division?
(6) How is it that to such men is ascribed any special concern about Allah as “mover of the Heavens”[9]
(7) How is it that the various doctrines about the mode of this Moving of the Heavens is made the main if not the sole differentia of the (ascending) grades of this division, though in other works Ghazzâlî treats this very matter with marked coolness[10]? How is it that on this [p. 16] is explicitly said to turn the superiority of the schools of Sûfî’s over the pious Believers, and the superiority of one school of Sûfî’s over another?
(8) How is it that this matter of Moving the Heavens is considered so particularly to threaten the Unity of Allah, and that that Unity is only saved when He is relieved from even the function of Commanding the (outermost) Heaven to be moved?
(9) And who is this Commander who thus commands, and who orders all things, and who is related to pure Being as the Sun to Elemental Light? And what was “the mystery (in this affair), the disclosure of which this book does not admit of”?
(10) What becomes of a Deity of whom nothing whatsoever can even be said or predicated? And how, then, can a “relation” between Him and His Vicegerent be asserted, still more described as above? And how can this Unknowable, Unimaginable and Inconceivable be nevertheless “reached” by mystic souls?
(11) What was “the book” into which Ghazzâlî himself says he put all his esoteric [p. 17] teaching (Jawâhir, p. 31); which he implores any into whose hands it may fall not to publish; which Ibn Tufail denies could have been this Mishkât (Hayy, ed. Gautier, pp. 13-15, trans. Gautier. pp. 12-14), nor any other of the supposed esoteric books that “had come to Andalus”?
After this it will cause no surprise that it is this figure of the Vicegerent (al-Mutâ` . . . alladhî amara bi tahrîk il-samâwât) who excited the curiosity and suspicion of thinkers in the century after Ghazzâlî’s death. The passage is at least twice singled out, once by Ibn Rushd in the treatise already cited, and once by Ibn Tufail in his Hayy ibn Yaqzân.
(1) Ibn Rushd uses the passage to level at Ghazzâlî a direct accusation of gravest hypocritical insincerity over a matter which Ghazzâlî had ostentatiously singled out as the prime test of orthodoxy, namely… the doctrine of emanation. According to Ibn Rushd the passage about the Vicegerent was the explicit teaching of this doctrine of the Philosophers, for which, [p. 18] elsewhere, Ghazzâlî can find no words strong enough to express his censure and contempt. The words of Ibn Rushd are as follows:
“Then he comes on with his book known as Mishkât al-Anwâr, and mentions therein all the grades of the Knowers of Allah; and says that all of them are veiled save those who believe that Allah is not the mover of the First Heaven, He being the One from Whom this mover of the First Heaven emanated: which is an open declaration on his part of the tenet of the philosophers’ schools in the science of theology; though he has said in several places that their science of theology (as distinct from their other sciences) is a set of conjectures.”[11]
It is not within the scope of this Introduction to follow in detail the evidence for and against the truth of this radical accusation. This has been done at length and with considerable minuteness in the monograph in Der Islâm, which has already been cited (pp. 133-145). The [p. 19] reader must be referred to that; and it must suffice here to say that after the full consideration of all the evidence the verdict given there. is Not Guilty. On the other hand, the existence of an esoteric doctrine in regard to this Vicegerent and his function is undeniable (and undenied); and it is clear, from the comparison of the Mishkât itself with the Munqidh, that that doctrine differed vitally from the one professed by Ghazzâlî exoterically (Munqidh, p. 11). Ghazzâlî himself, in a passage of remarkable candour,[12] admits that every “Perfect” man has three sets of opinions (madhâhib), (a) those of his own environment, (b) those he teaches to inquirers according as they are able to receive them, and © those which he believes in secret between himself and Allah, and never mentions except to an inner circle of friends or students.
Ibn Rushd’s accusation was an attempt to identify the figure of the Vicegerent, al-Mutâ` with that of Al Ma`lûl al Awwal, the First Caused, in the emanational scheme of the Neoplatonizing[13] philosophers of Islâm, with [p. 20] al-Fârâbi and Ibn Sinâ at their head. This was the Demiurge, the Being who first emanates from the Absolute Being, and mediates between It and all the lower stages or relational existence, with their increasing limitedness and grossness, thus relieving the predicateless Absolute from all part in the creation or administration of the universe.
There can be no doubt that whatever Ghazzâlî’s doctrine of the Vicegerent was, and whatever else his esoteric doctrine contained, the emanational theory formed no part of that doctrine. For this particular piece of pseudo-metaphysics he appears to have had a very particular dislike and contempt; and if Ibn Rushd was really serious in levelling his accusation he can hardly be acquitted of being blinded by his bitter prejudice against “Abû Hâmid”. The only possible ground for Ibn Rushd’s accusation which I have been able to discover is as follows:—it is a fact that the extreme (ghulât) Imâmites did identify al-Rûh “The Spirit of [p. 21] Allah” with the First Emanation[14]. If, as is contended hereafter, Ghazzâlî identified al-Mutâ` with Al-Rûh, and Ibn Rushd was aware of this, he may have thought, or been pleased to think, that Ghazzâlî therefore thought that al-Mutâ` was the First Emanation. This would be an indirect confirmation of the identification which it is attempted presently to prove, namely, al-Mutâ` = al-Rûh.
(2) We now pass to the other criticism of the passage, by Ibn Rushd’s contemporary Ibn Tufail, in the introduction to his philosophical romance entitled Hayy Ibn Yaqzân.[15]
Ibn Tufâil’s allusion to this perplexing passage is as follows:—
“Some later writers[16] have fancied they have found something tremendous in that passage of his that occurs at the end of al-Mishkât, which (they think) impales Ghazzâlî on a dilemma from which there is no escape. I mean where, after speaking of the various degrees of the [p. 22] Light-Veiled, and then going on to speak of the true Attainers, he tells us that these Attainers have discovered that this Existing One possesses an attribute which negates unmitigated Unity; insisting that it necessarily follows from this that Ghazzâlî believed that the Absolute Being has within His Essence some sort of plurality: which God forbid!”
The excursus on this passage in the article cited from Der Islâm (pp. 145-151) can only be summarized here. It seems to have escaped the critics quoted by Ibn Tufail, that the Unveiled, according to Ghazzâlî himself, abandoned the position of the last of the Light-Veiled just because of this dread, viz. that the identification of al-Mutâ` with Allah would endanger “the unmitigated Unity” of Deity. Ibn Tufail himself, though he admits the serious contradictions which appear in Ghazzâlî’s books, flatly refuses to see in this passage anything so monstrous, or anything sinister at all.
Unfortunately he does not give us his own exegesis of the passage; but it may perhaps be inferred from his own schematization of the [p. 23] grades of being. In this he makes elaborate use of the schema of reflectors, and reflectors of reflectors, which Ghazzâlî has already suggested in this book (pp. [15, 16]). “The essences of the Intelligences of the Spheres” are represented as successive, graded reflections of the Divine Essence. The highest of them is not the essence of the One Real nor is he the Sphere itself, nor is he other than both. He is, as it were, the image of the sun which appears in a polished mirror; for that image is neither the sun, nor the mirror, nor other than them both.” It is probable that Ibn Tufail, who professed to have won through to his position after studying al-Ghazzâlî and Ibn Sînâ (the juxtaposition is singular!), would have more or less equated this conception of the highest Essence of the Intelligences of the Spheres with the conception of al-Mutâ` in the Mishkât, though he says nothing about the business of Heaven-moving in relation to this Being. It need not follow that al-Ghazzâlî would have accepted this explanation[17]; though both men were evidently striving equally to avoid a total pantheism, and both [p. 24] disbelieved in the emanational theory as taught by al-Fârâbî and Ibn Sinâ.
In the absence of “the book” into which Ghazzâlî put these secret opinions, or inconceivable mysteries, including, we may suppose, the secret of this mysterious Vicegerent, we are not likely to reach any authoritative settlement of the question: nor, even if we be put on the right track, clear up the whole of the mystery. For want of direct help from our author, therefore, the only thing to be done is to examine minutely al-Mishkât itself, to see if it yields any indirect help. It would seem that from this examination two possible solutions emerge. In this section the first of these will be discussed.
This solution, which was first suggested to the writer by the distinguished French Orientalist, M. Louis Massignon, identifies the mysterious figure of this Vicegerent, al-Mutâ`, with the Qutb (“Axis”) or some other Supreme Adept. According to the developed doctrine, this Qutb was an earthly Mystic of supremest attainment, who during his lifetime administered [p. 25] the affairs of the heavens and the earth. There was nothing about him, during his lifetime, to suggest to any observer that he was, engaged in so stupendous a task, and it was not known till after his death that he had been “the Axis of his time” (qutbu zamânihi).
The beginnings of this doctrine go back far beyond al-Ghazzâlî—a rudimentary form of it was held by even the ultra-orthodox Hanbalites,[18] and a developed form of the conception is expressed quite definitely in al-Hujwîrî’s Kashf al-Mahjûb,[19] and must have been widely held, in orthodox circles too, in the fifth century, at the close of which our treatise was written.
Moreover, at least from the time of al-Hallâj, to whom, as we shall see, our author in. this treatise refers in terms by no means of repudiation, the very word under discussion, al-Mutâ` or some other form of the same verb, occurs in significant connexion with supreme sainthood. One of the accusations levelled against al-Hallâj was that he taught that “having [p. 26] attained to sainthood the Adept becomes al-Mutâ` he who says to a thing ‘Be!’ and it becomes”.[20] It sounds startling enough, but it was a true accusation, though it has to be taken in connexion with the whole of Hallâj’s philosophy of mystical union with the Divine. For he did definitely adopt from a predecessor, Ibn `Iyâd, the aphorism “Man atâ`a Allaha atâ`ahu kullu shay’”,[21] an aphorism which received a later redaction (quite in the spirit of Hallâj, as has been shown), “man hudhdhiba … fa yasîru mutâ`an, yaqûlu lish shay’i `Kun’ fa yakûn,” “He who has passed through the mystic askesis becomes Obeyed; he says to this or that, ‘Be!’ and it is.”[22]
Since then al-Hallâj did so teach, and did use this very word, and since al-Ghazzâlî in this treatise betrays a very considerable admiration of al-Hallâj, and a sort of tremulous half-assent to his wildest utterances, including the notorious [p. 27] “Ana-l Haqq” itself, it would seem that a strong prima-facie case has been made out for identifying the Mutâ` of our treatise, in spite of the cosmic nature of his functions, with some supreme Adept. But only a prima-facie case. To make out the thesis itself, the treatise itself must be interrogated; for it by no means follows that because a Hallâj held an opinion a Ghazzâlî adopted it.
There are, certainly, some passages that do suggest that the solution is along this line.
(1) The description of the adventures of a soul in highest state of Union (Mish., p. 24) tends to bear out the Identification, or the general idea underlying it. The person there described is a supreme Adept, and in particular al-Hallâj himself. Having reached Union with the One divine Real, he ascends in and with Him “to the throne of the Divine Unity and from thenceforth administers the Command throughout His (or ‘his,’ for in this extraordinary passage the pronouns remain the same throughout) storied Heavens.” The words translated “administers the Command”, yudabbîru-l amr, are remarkable, for they contain an Arabic [p. 28] word (amr) which, as we shall see presently, is to the last degree significant, being the very word used in the Mutâ` passage (p. 55), where Ghazzâlî confesses it is an obscure mystery. The Mutâ` (Commander) is said to move the outermost Heaven by precisely the amr (command). The words yudabbîru-l amr could no doubt be translated in a less significant way, owing to the troublesome double meaning of amr, (“affair,” “command”), namely, “he disposes things.” But in view of the fact that this amr was a notable Sûfî term, and a mysterious problem alluded to by Ghazzâlî in this very treatise, it seems inevitable to take it as “command” here. And a “Command” necessitates an “Obeyed”.
(2) On p. 23, where the reference throughout is purely general, and presumably applies to anyone who has the necessary qualifications and attains this supreme mystical “state”, Ghazzâlî says that when the mystic Ascent is complete, “if there be indeed any change, it is by way of ‘the Descent into the Lowest Heaven’, the radiation from above downwards.” This also suggests supreme divine activity in the Universe [p. 29] below, especially if the word ishrâq refers, as it probably does, to causative activity.
(3) On pp. [ 13, 14] occurs another passage which strongly supports the general identification, though it leaves its particular and personal reference still obscure. In this the adepts, who in their mystical Ascent (mi`râj) “attained to that supreme attainment”, are said to be “the Prophets”, who “from thence looked down upon the entire World Invisible [precisely the world of the Heavens]; for he who is in the world of the Realm Supernal is which Allah, and hath the keys of the Unseen. I mean that from where he is descend the causes of existing things; for the world of sense is one of the effects of yonder-world of causes”, etc. This looks almost like a reasoned, philosophic doctrine behind the mystical one, that to attain to the world of Reality is ipso facto to attain to the fount of causation; which involves the ability to direct the Causes which control all the Effects in the Heavens below and the Earth beneath. The Vicegerent does no more than this.
A close scrutiny of these passages leaves, one, nevertheless, with thc impression that the [p. 30] Adepts whose celestial adventures are there described are too generalized, or perhaps one should say too pluralized, to be identifiable with this single, solitary figure of al-Mutâ` as he is presented in our passage. As far as these three passages go, this assumption of the reins of the Universe is only granted to Adepts in their mystic “States”, to Prophets in their highly exceptional “Ascent”. There is nothing to show that two or more such Attainers might not exist at one time, or that even one must always be existing; in other words, there is no trace of the complete and fully developed Qutb doctrine in this treatise. But these considerations make it impossible to identify any one of these Adepts, or all of them together, with the cosmic al-Mutâ`, whose function, related as it is to the very mechanism of the Heavens, is ceaseless, and coextensive with Time itself. And these last four words suggest a further consideration which in itself seems fatal to the proposed identification; namely, that al-Mutâ` was Vicegerent from the very foundation of the world; he is the one “who commanded the Heavens to be moved” (p. [55, 1. 12]). No [p. 31] Hallâj, no Adept, no Qutb, no Prophet even, ever claimed, or had claimed for him, such priority as this,[23] or even priority at all. But if not, none of them—and, if so, no terrestrial being at all—can claim to fill the role of this Vicegerent. The three passages were probably intended only to assert and account for the karâmât of the Saints in their wonder-working which was parallel to that of the Koranic Jesus.
The a-priori question of our author’s attitude to the Qutb doctrine—whether, consistently with his published writings, he could have sustained such a doctrine in this work—is one which can only be indicated here. Professors R. Nicholson and D.S. Macdonald have both communicated to the writer, in reference to the passage under discussion, their opinion that there is an a-priori impossibility. To al-Ghazzâlî the doctrine was tainted with Imâmism, his special bete noire (see his attack on the Ta`lîmites in his Munqidh;[24] that since an omnipotent.
[p. 32]
Administrator must also be an infallible Guide (whom Ghazzâlî would not have at any price), there is no room for the former in Ghazzâlî’s thought (thus Professor Macdonald). If the Mutâ` is not Mohammed, he is certainly no Saint (thus Professor Nicholson).
Be this as it may, the above considerations, drawn from the study of the text itself, and from the passages which prima facie seemed to point to the Qutb-Mutâ` identification, seem finally, when more closely examined, to rule that identification out.
But there are other passages in our treatise which, when carefully studied, lead to the belief that in Ghazzâlî’s own mind—though the identification is nowhere explicitly stated or significantly hinted—the Mutâ` is none than al-Rûh, THE SPIRIT OF ALLAH.[25]
In S. 17, 87, Mohammed himself had left this enigmatic entity as a divinely uncommunicated, [p. 33] and therefore incommunicable, mystery. The passage runs as follows: “They ask thee of The Spirit: say, The Spirit pertains to my Lord’s Word-of-Command, and ye have not been communicated knowledge [of It] save a little.” The Arabic of the words italicized is min amri rabbî; and we are again faced, at the outset, with the troublesome double meaning of the word amr. The phrase min amr might merely mean—perhaps did only mean—“a matter of”[26] (my Lord’s), a vague phrase, common in Arabic, meaning “something that pertains to” so and so. But in a case like this, we are not concerned with what Mohammed may originally have meant, but what mystic writers have taken him to mean. And enormously though this verse attracted puzzled, and baffled commentators and mystics of all ages, the latter seem to have taken the word amr, with practical unanimity, in the far more significant sense of “Command”. The Hebrew root means “speak”, and this meaning is implicit in the Arabic root also, which signifies spoken command. And [p. 34] just as later Jewish writers made out of a derivative of this root a Logos doctrine (Memra), so the Mohammedan mystics came near to making a Logos doctrine out of the word amr, taking their start from this very text.
A mystery having been definitely started by this text, a haze of mystification was thrown over the entire subject of “spirit”: over angels as “spirits”, over the human “spirit”, the prophetic “spirit”; the interrelation between these, and the relation of all to “the Spirit”; finally Its relation to Allah. In our treatise there is a full measure of this mystification.
“The Spirit” is ar-Rûh. With this may be absolutely identified Rûh Allah “The Spirit of God”; Rûhuhu “His Spirit”; and al-Rûhu-l Qudsî[27] (or Rûhu-l Qudsî) “The Transcendent Spirit”—all Koranic expressions.
What then are the considerations which suggest that we have in this Figure of Mystery [p. 35] the key to the mystery of the Vicegerent? On this supposition there would be no wonder that Ghazzâlî left the figure of the latter a mystery, and declined to divulge the secret of it (p. 55). He could not divulge the whole secret, because by the decree of Allah and the Book, he could not know it himself—“save a little.” And, there is no wonder he declined to discuss it, considering the interminable complexities and baffling obscurities of the recorded musings of Sûfî doctors on the theme.
At the very outset we are struck by the fact that the word Mutâ` occurs in the Koran (S. 81, 23), and not only so, but it occurs as an attribute of the mysterious Agent of Revelation, the vision of whom Mohammed saw at the. first (S. 53, 5-16). The text 87, 23, is not definitely cited in Mishkât; and in later Islâm the commentators, with their arid tameness, made a stereotyped identification of this Figure with the Angel Gabriel. But the Koran gives no warrant for this; and there is nothing in the Mishkât to show that Ghazzâlî thus taught. On the contrary, Gabriel is assigned a low place [p. 36] in the angelic hierarchy. No one can read those two Koranic passages (in S. 87 and S. 53) without feeling that Mohammed’s awful visitant on those two occasions was the One of absolute supreme rank in the heavenlies: not a spirit but the Spirit. And It was mutâ`—“one who is obeyed.” Is it not but a very short step from this to al-Mutâ`, The Obeyed-One?
The identification, however attractive, would nevertheless be precarious if there was not so much in the Mishkât itself that supports this identification.
(1) On p. 15 the ultimate kindling-place of the graded Lights, of which the Prophets occupy the lower and terrestrial ranks and the Angelic Beings the higher and celestial, is the theme of discussion. Both these ranks of beings are compared to “lights” and all of them are contrasted with the Highest of all, who is compared to “fire”, from whose flame these graded lights are successively lit, from top to bottom. Who and what is this Highest of all next to Allah? He is said to be an Angel with countenances seventy thousand. . . [p. 37] This is he who is contrasted with all the angelic host, in the words: ‘On that day whereon THE SPIRIT ariseth, and the Angels, rank on rank.’ It is thus explicitly clear that this Being is the highest of all possible beings in heaven or earth next to Allah; and so, if the Vicegerent of p. 55 is also the highest of all, it would seem inevitable to equate them.
(2) In the very next page, p. 16, Ghazzâlî schematizes this conception, and, comparing Allah with the Sun (the source of light in the terrestrial system), he compares the highest of the ministrant lights to the Moon (all others being reflections, or reflections-of-reflections, of it). This “Highest is the one who is nearest to the Ultimate Light: . . . that Nighest to Allah, he whose rank comes nighest to the Presence Dominical, which is the Fountainhead of all these Lights” This “Nighest” and “Highest” cannot be other than THE SPIRIT spoken of in the preceding page. And on p. 31—unless Ghazzâlî has suddenly changed all the symbols—the Sun is said to be the Sovereign, while “the antitype of the Moon will be that Sovereign’s Minister (wakîl), for it is through [p. 38] the moon that the sun sheds his light on the world in its own absence, and even so it is through his own wakîl that the Sovereign makes his influence felt by subject who never beheld the royal person”. Does not this wakîl who stands “highest and nighest” to his Liege-Lord, and who makes himself obeyed by all that Lord’s subjects, strongly suggest “the Obeyed One”, al-Mutâ`, the Vicegerent of the conclusion, whose function is, precisely, this?
(3) But what perhaps clinches the matter is the tell-tale word amr in that passage about al-Mutâ` himself on p. 55. Those who stopped short of complete illumination, he says, identified al-Mutâ` with Allah just because he moves the primum mobile (and so all things) “with his Word of Command” (amr). “The explication of which amr (he continues), and what it really is, contains much that is obscure, and too difficult for most minds, besides going beyond the scope of this book.” And then he says that the perfect Illuminati perceived that, al-Mutâ` the Obeyed One is not more than the Highest—other-than-Absolute-Deity, and is related to Him as the sun to Essential Light [p. 39] (mysterious enough this!) or as a glowing coal to the Elemental Fire: and therefore they turned their faces from that Being “who commanded (amara) the moving of the Heavens” to the One Existent, Transcendent, Incomparable, Predicateless.
With this word amr thus impressed on us with such penetrating significance we turn back to the Koran text: “The Spirit pertains to my Lord’s Word of Command (amr) . . .” Unless the word min introduces a quite upsetting element, the identification between this SPIRIT and the Commander who is Obeyed seems complete.
But the history of the Sûfî teaching on the text shows that min need introduce no such upsetting element, and that the practical identification of Amr with Rûh, of The Word of Command with The Spirit, was with the Mystics a familiar idea. It was the explicit teaching of al-Hallâj[28] and the typical “word of command” which this Divine Spirit gave was the fiat “Kun!”
[p. 40] “Be!”[29] We have seen the fascination which this treatise shows al-Hallâj had for al-Ghazzâlî. Does it not seem likely, nay almost certain, that in his meditation on the inscrutable text he followed al-Hallâj in this equation, with whatever mental reserve regarding the Spirit itself—whether divine or creaturely, eternal or originate? Not that it was only Imâmites or extreme Sûfî Sunnites like al-Hallâj who asserted the divinity of The Spirit. The ultra-orthodox Hanbalites “admitted in some manner the eternity of the Rûh Allah”.[30] Ibn Hanbal himself had given them the lead with a characteristic hedging aphorism (which reminds us of similar remarks on the Sifat, the Kalâm Allah, and the Qur’ân) “Whoever says that al-Rûh is created, (makhlûq) is a heretic: whoever says that It is eternal (qadîm) is an infidel.”[31] His followers held fast on to “uncreate”, and it was hard to keep “eternal” from following. No wonder al-Ghazzâlî [p. 41] gave a unique and mysterious tinge to his similitude for “The Obeyed”, and that It figures, virtually, as an Arian Logos. Th more one reflects on what is said about the function of this Being in M., p. 55, and especially Its comparison with the Sun (Allah being Essential Light), or with glowing coal (Allah being Elemental Fire), the more unique It appears, and: the more mysterious our author’s thought about It becomes. For such functions, and such a relation to Absolute Deity, are in very truth entirely unique, in kind as well as degree; and, thus described, the Vicegerent becomes, in a secondary way, as unique a Figure as is Deity Itself. No wonder the passage raised doubts as to the soundness of our author’s monotheism! No wonder he was not anxious to go more deeply into the matter, out of consideration for the limited spiritual capacities of his readers! Perhaps, to preserve his own faith in the Unity, Indivisibility, and absolute Uniqueness of Allah,. he was glad to leave the dark problem of the Vicegerent where Allah Himself had left that of—the Spirit—an uncommunicated and incommunicable mystery, which now he only knew in [p. 42] part, and only saw as in a glass, darkly.
It remains to consider whether there is any evidence that Ghazzâlî extended the equation Mutâ` = Amr = Rûh to include the Nûr Muhammadî (as suggested tentatively by Professor R. Nicholson in his lectures on “The Idea of Personality in Sûfism”), the archetypal spirit of Mohammed, the Heavenly Man created in the image of God, and regarded as a Cosmic Power on whom depends the order and preservation of the universe. If this could be sustained it would to some extent modify the conclusion reached before that al-Mutâ` had nothing to do with any human being, idealized or not, whether a Prophet or even Mohammed; though even so, there would be a vast difference between this archetypal Spirit and the historical Prophet.
While the germs of this idea, as of every other one, may be found much earlier than Ghazzâlî’s century (the fifth), the study of the sketch which M. Massignon gives of the history of the doctrine (Hallâj, pp. 830 seqq.) does not create the impression that it was developed or [p. 43] received in orthodox circles[32] up to Ghazzâlî’s time. Professor Nicholson does not find it in an orthodox Sûfî writer earlier than `Abdu-l Qâdir al-Jîlânî (b. 571, d. 561), in the generation immediately succeeding that of Ghazzâlî.[33] After which the doctrine developed and spread amazingly, reaching its height with Ibn al-`Arabî al-Jîlî several centuries later.[34]
Thus the a-priori evidence is this time decidedly against Ghazzâlî’s having anything to do with this doctrine. Unless, therefore, very clear actual evidence were found in his writings, it would be surely justifiable to assert definitely that it is not Ghazzâlîan. It appears not to be found in his works other than al-Mishkât. If this is so, it may be further asserted with confidence that it is not found in al-Mishkât either.
On the contrary, there is much there that shows a relatively simple, primeval conception of Mohammed on the part of Ghazzâlî. For him the archetypal man is Adam, as in the Koran, [p. 44] not Mohammed.[35] An examination of the passage[36] in which the idea of the “Khalîfa” appears shows that here also his thought was not esoteric, and that Mohammed was not in his mind: he is thinking of the whole human race, or of Adam himself, the first and representative human being, the only “Khalîfa” particularized by the Koran. And the one passage in the Mishkât which at first sight does look as if it contained a “high doctrine of the person” of Mohammed, turns out on closer inspection to, prove the exact reverse, viz. that essentially be belonged to this world and to the time-order—to the prophets, above whom are ranked the celestial “Lights” culminating, as we have. seen, in the Supreme Angelical, The Spirit. This passage is on pp. [14, 15]. Here we have the Transcendent Spirit Prophetical (al-Rûh al-qudus al-nabawî) attributed to Mohammed as prophet, by reason of which he is called a Luminous Lamp (sirâj munîr). If this stood by itself we might be suspicious of something esoteric. But immediately after this the other prophets, and even saints, are said to be [p. 45] “Lamps”, and to possess, as Its name implies this Spirit Prophetical. The sequel shows that this Spirit is the Fire from which all the Angelical lights above and the Prophetical lights beneath are lit, and that this Spirit is the Supreme Angelical, “The Spirit,” as in the passage already discussed.[37]
To sum up the conclusion to which I have been led by a consideration of the evidence of the Mishkât itself, top-ether with the a-priori evidence which supplements it and is checked by it,—the heavenly Vicegerent is the Spirit of Allah, the Transcendent Spirit of Prophecy, the divine Word-of-Command; he is not a Qutb or any Adept; he is not Mohammed nor the archetypal spirit of Mohammed.
Whether this mystery of the Vicegerent was connected in our author’s mind with that of the divine-human, archetypal Sûra, as developed by al Hallâj and other advanced Mystics, will be discussed later.
[p. 46]
The Seven Planetary Heavens played a great part in Platonic,[38] Neoplatonic, and Gnostic-theosophical schemes. The naive adoption by Mohammed (in the Koran) of the Ptolemaic celestial construction was one of the things which added picturesqueness to early Mohammedan tradition and theology; caused endless trouble to generations of later theologians; made it easier for Neoplatonic ideas to graft themselves on to Islam; gave to the raptures of the Mystics sensuous form and greater definition; and afforded to the Philosophers a line of defence, and even of attack, in their war with the Theologians.[39] And the allusions of the Koran were heavily reinforced by the legend of the Mirâj, the exact origin of which is obscure, but which appears in a highly developed form almost from the first. The influences of the Mi`râj are indeed evident in page after page of the Mishkât.
Al-Ghazzâlî’s sympathies in regard to this subject were divided. He disliked the Philosophers, [p. 47] and this made him displeased with their confident assertions about the Heavens, while he detested the “philosophical” profit to which they put them. On the other hand, he was a Sûfî and thus in closest touch with persons who made very similar assertions about the Heavens, and also put them to profit in their own way. Finally, he was an Ash`arite Theologian, belonging to a school which had recently, after much trouble, eliminated from theology the dangerous ideas to which Mohammed’s naive attitude to the Heavens, had given rise.
This uncertainty of touch comes out, as, might be expected, in a treatise like al-Mishkât with its blend of scholasticism and Neoplatonically-tinctured mysticism. The Heavens figure continually in its pages. They seem to play a most important part both in thought and in experience—towards the close of the book a determining part. Yet it is impossible to make. out exactly what that part was, in the mind of al-Ghazzâlî himself.
On p. 23 we have a correlation of the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the [p. 48] celestial realm, Ptolemaically construed, in describing the Ascension of a God-united soul. The, adept’s body-and-soul structure is conceived of as subsisting in three planes or Spheres, which are correlated with the three lower spheres of the Seven Planetary Heavens. From the highest of these (the Intelligence) the soul takes its departure and ascends through the four upper Heavens (ila saba`i tabaqât) to the Throne [beyond the outermost Heaven]. Thus he “fills all things” by his upward Ascent just as Allâh did by His downward Descent (nuzûl). In all this the pronoun “he” stands for the soul who is now Allâh-possessed and united, as described in what immediately precedes. It is the upward ascent of Allah (corresponding to His nuzûl illa-l samâ’i-l dunyâ), and not of the Adept only.
On the other hand, in p. 29, this Ascent is described in purely psychological terms, without this schema of the Heavens. And on p. 13 we have the following: “Do not imagine that I mean by the World Supernal the World of the [Seven] Heavens, though they are ‘above’ in respect of part of our world of sense-perception. [p. 49] These Heavens are equally present to our apprehension and that of the lower animals. But a man finds the doors of the Realm Celestial closed to him, neither does be become of or belonging to that Realm (mala-kûtî), unless this earth to him ‘be changed into that which is not earth; and likewise the heavens;’[40] . . . and his ‘heaven’ come to be all that transcends his sense. This is the first Ascension for every Pilgrim who has set out on his Progress to the nearness of the Presence Dominical.” And he continues: “The Angels … are part of the World of the Realm Celestial, floating even in the Presence of the Transcendence, whence they gaze down upon our world inferior.
The last lines hardly give us the same ultra-spiritualizing impression which is conveyed by their predecessors. And, as we have already seen (Introduction, pp. 12-17), the part played by the Spheres with their Angels in the last section of the book is decisive, and there does not seem to be there any spiritualizing whatever.
[p. 50]
How far, therefore, these passages are mere word-play, pious picturesqueness, or how far they represent speculation of a rather far-reaching character, is one of the puzzles of the book. In the Tahâfut, demolishing the arrogant claim of the Philosophers to prove their doctrine of the Spheres by syllogistic demonstration (burhân), he said: “The secrets of The Kingdom are not to be scanned by means of such fantastic imaginations as these; Allâh gives none but His Prophets and Saints (anbiyâ’ and awliyâ’) to scan them, and that by inspiration, not by demonstration.”[41] So then there were mysteries and secrets in regard to the Spheres. In the Mishkât we are able to see pretty clearly that Ghazzâlî had his; but we are not able to see just what they were. He has kept this secret well.
The doctrine of mukhâlafa—that the divine essence and characteristics wholly and entirely “differ from” the human-appears to be [p. 51] assorted, as this treatise’s last word, in its most extreme and intransigent form. For the conclusion of the whole matter, the end of the quest for truth for those who “Arrive”, is “an Existent who transcends ALL that is comprehensible by human Insight . . . transcendent of and separate from every characterization that in the foregoing we have made.”[42]
Nevertheless, the Mishkât itself seems to be one long attempt to modify or even negate this its own bankrupt conclusion. Indeed, it goes unusual lengths in asserting a certain ineffable likeness between Allâh and man. It is true that the usual anthropomorphic expressions—the Hand, the Sessions on the Throne, the Descent to the Lowest Sphere, etc., those [p. 52] perennial sources for Mohammedan theologizing-are used and are discounted in the usual way. But they are, in reality, only discounted by being replaced by a Sûfî system of theomorphism. This has three main aspects—
(1) a quasi-Platonic doctrine of terrestrial type and celestial antitype;
(2) the relation of the divine and human rûh (spirit);
(3) the relation of the divine and human sûra (“image,” “form”).
(1) The whole of the first two parts of the treatise are practically an exposition of an Islamico-Platonic typology. It is not explicitly said that earthly things are more or less faint copies of “the patterns of things in the heavens,” though this is probably implicit in what is said, namely, that the heavenly realities (haqâ’iq), (ma`ânî), all have their symbols on earth. These symbols or types, as their Arabic term itself suggests (amthâl), do possess a “resemblance” to their celestial antitypes, for, as al Ghazzâlî remarks, “the thing compared (al-mushabbah, the antitype) is in some sort parallel, and bears resemblance, to the thing compared therewith (al-mushabbah bihi, the type [p. 53] or symbol), whether that resemblance be remote or near; a matter again which is unfathomably deep.”[43] Ghazzâlî. can hardly be allowed to elude the application of this true principle to Allâh Himself, considering that this very Koran-verse which it is the object of the entire treatise to expound begins with a simile. “Light” is the chosen, or rather the God-given symbol, wherewith Allah is “compared”, and which therefore He must “in some sort resemble”. This analogy of light floods the whole book. Now Allah is the Sun: now the Light of lights: and at the end, in the same breath in which Abu Hâmid, with the incorrigible inconsistency which so angered Averroes, denied the validity of the similitude, description, relation, or even predication in regard to Allâh, we are told that He stands in relation to His Vicegerent (or “wakeel” in a parallel passage) as the pure Light-essence to the sun, or as the Elemental Fire to a glowing coal. Theomorphism has “in some sort” been admitted.
(2) In the Ihyâ’ al `Ulûm Ghazzâlî speaks of the human rûh as amr rabbâni “a divine [p. 54] affair” (amr must surely bear here its other meaning); and he is there very anxious, not to say agitated, over the esoteric character of the doctrine; it must be kept a dead secret from the Many! it must not be set forth in a book![44] “The specific characteristic which differentiates humanity [from the lower creation] is something which it is not lawful to indite in a book.”[45] The thing that agitates him is the relation of this human rûh to the Spirit of God, rûh Allâh, and its relation to Allâh. The matter is esoteric—it is to be “grudged” to the “commons”—because it is dangerous ground. It is dangerous ground because one has to talk warily in order to avoid a violation of the uniqueness of Allâh, which would involve confusing Creator with created, and so passing gradually to ishrâk, which is the worst “infidelity.”
This particular anxiety is not reflected in the present treatise; it is strange that the mystery of rûh does not figure in the list (see above, p. 5) over which the author’s favete linquis! is [p. 55] inscribed.[46] He is mainly occupied with working out what the New Testament calls the “operations”, rather than the nature of the spirit. In so doing the singular “spirit” becomes plural “spirits”, arwâh, which, as already observed, happens also in the Book of the Revelation. Ghazzâlî works out the theory of the several “spirits” of the human psychology; then the graded “spirits” of the heavenly hosts; and then the Neoplatonic or theosophic idea of the gradation of all these (in maqâmât), and the way in which they are “lit” (muqtabasa) from each other in order: we must not say “derived”, for that would involve him in the emanationism be was ever anathematizing yet, for ever incurring the suspicion of.[47] In all this his tone is open, easy, confident. The special mystery of The Spirit had been already discounted in the Koran, so that was harmless. As for the identification of Rûh Mutâ`, if our theory is correct, that was a grand secret. But that secret he never intended even to hint at, and it would really seem as if we had surprised and betrayed a sirr maknûn!
[p. 56]
(3) It was the sûra tradition,[48] “ALLAH CREATED ADAM AFTER HIS IMAGE,” that above all else led Moslem thinkers into temptation—the temptation of trenching on the uniqueness of Allâh. Its very riskiness seems, however, to have fascinated them supremely from the very outset. Not one of them could let it alone. In this very treatise Ghazzâlî returns to it again and again. Perhaps it would accord with inner truth to say rather that both he and others returned to that tradition not so much as moths fascinated by a dangerous glare, but as those who are feeling cold return for warmth and cheer to even an alien fire. The aphorism, sacred as a Koran text, was the assertion and pledge that man somehow is, or may become, “like God.” The word sûra became the symbol and the guarantee of theomorphism.
In the first allusion in the Mishkât to this tradition (p. 9), the point of the similarity is the human intelligence (`aql). In virtue of his intelligence, Ghazzâlî hints, man is “after the image of Allâh.” The `aql is “Allâh’s balance-scale [p. 57] upon earth.”[49] In its own sphere it is infallible.[50] From the `aql, as from a firm “taking-off” place, souls make their mystic Ascension to the heavenlies.[51] It is because it is thus the specifically human faculty that it is a determinative element in the human sûra.[52]
The second allusion (M., p. 23) carries us very much further—even to that verge from which Moslem mystics so often looked dizzily down, but from which they so seldom fell, into the pantheistic abyss. Behold a human soul in completest Union (jam`) with Deity, sitting on The Throne, and administering all things in heaven and earth! “Well might one,” says our author, “in looking upon such an one,” get a new view of this tradition. Is not such a uniate, indeed, “after the image of Allâh”? But, he continues[53], “after contemplating that word more deeply one becomes aware that it has an interpretation like [al-Hallâj’s] ‘I am the One Real.’”[53:1] Unfortunately he has omitted to [p. 58] indicate what precisely that interpretation is. We have a tantalizing author to deal with.
What was that interpretation?
Probably we do not find it in the third passage (pp. [34, 35]), though it is deeply influenced by Hallâjian thought. There is in the celestial world something which “developpe, modalise, et concerte entre elles les creations divines … une certaine structure interne particuliere a l’acte createur”.[54] This living order, this organised “Presence” (hadar), is symbolized by the word Image, or Form. And this macrocosmic hadra has its earthly counterpart in an analogous human form, or sûra, which has the same “structure interne particuliere” (it is alluded to on p. [22, l. 1], and p. [34, 1. 3], and described in detail on pp. [39-41]). Therefore, man, formed in this Form, is “after the Form, the Image, of this Merciful One (al Rahmân)”. Ghazzâlî’s explanation of his preference for this variation of the tradition, to which, however, he by no means always adheres, is difficult to follow.
[p. 59] But the general idea clearly is that “but for this ‘mercy’ [i.e. of these two correlative and coincident Forms] every son of Adam would have been powerless to know his Lord, for 'only he who knows himself knows his Lord”. The wheel has, indeed, brought us round a strange circle! Through the eternal grace of theomorphism we win back to a higher anthropomorphism, so that the proper study of God is—man! And this from the writer whose last word is that Allah must not have so much as an attribute predicated of Him, or the divine uniqueness will be violated! Truly, thus the whirligig of thought brings in his revenges.
We have already seen many indications that before he wrote this treatise Ghazzâlî must have been deep in the study of al-Hallâj; and the passage we have just been considering may be added to these indications. Yet there is no overt trace in it, or elsewhere in the Mishkât, of al-Hallâj’s profoundest thought on this matter of the Divine-Adamic; no trace of that strange Figure—that Epiphany of humanized Deity, or Apotheosis of ideal-Humanity—which was presented by Allah to the angels for worship [p. 60] or ever the first man was created, and in which He Himself, on behalf of the human race, swore unto Himself the Covenant (mîthâq) of allegiance. For this conception, which has the closest interrelations with all the moments of the above discussion—rûh, amr, sûra, nûr-Muhammadî—the reader must be referred to the grand work which has brought to light so many hidden things, A Louis Massignon’s La Passion d’ Al Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Hallaj.[55] Ghazzâlî’s silence on this so remarkable development of the Sûra tradition would suggest that it was precisely here that he felt it dangerous to follow al-Hallâj. What was possible for the seer might send the theologian over the line where Islam ends and pantheism begins. On the other hand, is it possible that here we have the explanation of our author’s embarrassed words on p. 55 “on account of a Mystery which it is not in the competence of this book to reveal”? His inmost [p. 61] thought may have been, “Perhaps al-Hallâj has penetrated here to something of what the Koran itself [in the Spirit-Verse] left obscure. I neither assert, nor deny. Allâhu a`lam!”
Thus we come to the ultimate question—the ultimate question with every Sûfî writer and book—does he and it escape pantheism? What light comes from this “Niche for Lights” upon this obscure question?
The root question in regard to al-Ghazzâlî, and every other advanced mystic and adept in Islâm, is the question of Pantheism: did he succeed in balancing himself upon the edge of the pantheistic abyss, and finding some foothold for his creationist theism, some position that cleared his conscience towards his orthodox co-religionists? Or did he fail in this? The Mishkât contains a good deal that is relevant to this final issue.
It contains much, in the first place, which on the face of it reads like naked pantheism; and in particular the whole passage on [p. 62] pp. [19, 201] and [22-4], where not only is the most extreme language of the extreme wing of Sûfism (Ana-l Haqq[56] and the rest) quoted with guarded approval, but there is open eulogy of the formula lâ huwa illâ Huwa “there is no it but HE”, which is declared to be more expressive of real, absolute truth than the Mohammedan creed itself lâ ilâha ill-Allâh “there is no god but God”. This would seem to be as unreserved an assertion of flat pantheism as could be found in philosophic Hinduism itself. Equally worthy of philosophic Hinduism is Ghazzâlî’s “He is everything: He is that He is: none but He has ipseity or heity at all . .”[9](p. 22). And then gain the experience of the advanced Initiates and Adepts is described in terms of thorough pantheism: to them “the plurality of things fell away in its entirety. They were drowned in the absolute Unitude[5] and their intelligences were lost in its abyss” (p. 19); and when they return to earthly illusions again from that world of reality they “confess with one voice that they had seen nought existent there save the One Real [p. 63] (Allâh)”. Existent! Do words mean what they say?
No, not precisely! with a Ghazzâlî, and with Mohammedan mystics, clinging desperately to orthodoxy! The matter, in fact, turns precisely on this word “existent”. What is existence? What is non-existence? It was Ghazzâlî’s ontological philosophy that seems to have yielded him a fulcrum on which he could precariously balance the pantheistic and the deistic moments of his religious thought.
This philosophy is poetically stated in our treatise, but in spite of the poetic, imaginative diction it can be recognized as identical with his usual doctrine.[57] It will be found on pp. [17-19, 21, 22]. We have there a picturesque representation of a doctrine well known to the schoolmen of Islâm, that Not-Being is a sort of dark limbo in which the Contingent awaits the creative word Kun “Be!”—compared in this “Light” treatise to a ray of light from the One Self-existing Being. Neither the Greeks nor the schoolmen could [p. 64] ever quite get over the feeling that, in predicating anything of Not-being or a Nonentity, in using the word “is” in a sentence with Not-being or a Nonentity as its subject, you have in some way ascribed, not existence, but a sort of quasi-being, to that subject. Hegel’s solution was so to evacuate the category of mere, bare “Being” of all content, and to demonstrate its consequent total impoverishment and inanity, that it could be seen to be, the equivalent of Not-being. This was impossible for the schoolmen, above all for Oriental schoolmen, even of the most contradictory schools, who regarded the category of “pure” being (they would never have said “mere”) as the sublimest and most radiant of all the categories, and the very object of the whole quest of life. But the obverse of the Hegelian paradox may nevertheless be seen in their ascription to contingent not-yet-being a sort of quasi-existence. The effect of the creative word was simply to turn this potential into actual being. Thus the universe, always contingent, indeed but formerly potential-contingent, now became actual-contingent.
[p. 65]
All this is schematized in al-Mishkât. The limbo becomes Darkness (p. 30); the potential-contingent, Dark Things;[58] the divine creator, the Sun; the creative act, a Ray from His real being, whereby a dark Nonentity flashes into being and becomes an Entity, but an Entity that depends continuously on the permanent illumination of that ray, for in the Mohammedan creational scheme, at any rate, Creator is equally capable of being Annihilator.
At this point Ghazzâlî’s tortured thought is greatly helped out by the ambiguous word [p. 66] wajh, which has two senses, or rather three, Face, Side, Aspect (logical). This gave him a formula: it was not the first time, nor the last, that the ambiguity of the chief word in a theological formula has been welcome to all concerned. He could take the Koran texts “the Wajh of everything faces (muwajjah) to Him and is turned in His direction,” and “Whithersoever they turn themselves, there is the Wajh of Allâh;” and the hadîth qudsî, “Everything is a perishing thing except His Wajh;” and could then play on the word. In ancient and mediaeval times the merest plays on words were not considered figures of speech but profundities of thought. Quibbles masqueraded as discoveries. And so this word (a) enabled Ghazzâlî to keep his hold on creationism on the one hand, for these were “things” sure enough, all turned towards the central Sun and dependent for their existence on its creative light; and there was also the sound logical position, that under this aspect (wajh) of relatedness these things have actual being (p. 18). So the actuality of the universe is saved, and the abyss of pantheism is avoided. And (b), on the other hand, he could say to the [p. 67] pantheistic Sûfî (and to himself in that mood), that equally under this “aspect” of relatedness things, if and when considered an sich, had no existence, were not existent at all. The only Existent was the Wajh Allâh (p. 22) that is, Allâh Himself, for, as he carefully informs us i (p. 19), Allah cannot possibly be said to be greater” (akbar) than His own wajh; and I must, therefore, be identical therewith. And thus the out-and-out pantheist might well feel his case complete; the last vestige of dualism disappears; Allah is All, and All is Allah, lâ mawjûda ill-Allâh (M. p. 18)! As Ghazzâlî himself put it, Allah is the Sun and besides the sun there is only the sun’s light. Quid plura?
Nevertheless, it may be believed that Ghazzâlî himself contrived to use this ontology so as to keep, not lose, his hold on the reality[59] and actuality of things, and that early training, central theological orthodoxy, and strong commonsense proved by its help too strong for the pull towards pantheism, with which his late [p. 68] Sûfism with its Neoplatonic atmosphere and sensational ecstasies undoubtedly did pull him—as Sûfism pulled every Mohammedan mystical devotee. Is it not notable that even in the lyrical passages in this treatise, in which he describes (with a rather scared unction) the Mystics’ intoxication and the verbal blasphemies which that state so happily permitted, and which were permitted to that state, Ghazzâlî keeps his head, and preserves the same cautious balance as he does in the ontological sections (see pp. [19, 20])? When these inebriates, he says, became sober again, “and they came under the sway of the intelligence they knew that that had not been actual Identity, but only something resembling Identity” (not homoousion but homoiousion!). If we correctly translate ittihâd[60] thus, the remark is of crucial importance; for the ultimate test of a complete Pantheism is whether things are identical with God, or only united with Him. All classes of mystics without exception assert at least the latter—it is the “Union” of the Christian, as of the Muslim, Catholic; but only [p. 69] those who have actually surrendered their balance and toppled over into the pantheistic abyss assert the former. And Ghazzâlî did not do so. He goes on to quote yet another “drunken” cry of a soul in Union, “I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I,” and shows how even here a distinction is preserved. And then that other, who likened the Union to a transparent Glass filled with red Wine—
“The glass is thin, the wine is clear.
The twain are alike, the matter is perplexed
For 'tis as though there were wine and no wineglass there,
Or as though there were wine-glass and nought of wine.”
And thus comments: “Here there is a difference between saying ‘The wine is the wineglass’ and ‘tis as though it were the wineglass’.” The former, he tells us, is Identity (tawhîd), the latter Unification (tawhîd), not in the commonalty’s meaning of tawhîd, he honestly says (p. 20), for them this is one of ”the mysteries which we are not at liberty to discuss“—but at the same time not inconsistent With that meaning. What he had in mind was, [p. 70] perhaps, something like this: ”I reject the herd’s interpretation of tawhîd, the mere declaration-of-the-oneness of Allâh, as a bare truism, miserable in its inadequacy. I likewise reject the other extreme, the pantheist’s interpretation of the word as an absolute denial of the actuality of things, or an assertion that things are Allâh. Against them both I assert that Allâh and the Universe constitute a UNITY, but one wherein the Universe is wholly relative to and dependent on Allâh, for existence or nonexistence; preservation or annihilation. All existing things are and must be ‘united’ to Allâh. But even this must not be declare, openly, for, then, what about Iblîs, Hell, and the Damned? I must not seem to teach ‘universalism’ any more than pantheism. Allâhu a’lam! ”
It therefore seems to the writer that Ghazzâlî’s position, which he tortured rather than explained when he tried to describe and illlustrate it, really amounted to nothing more than the inevitable distinction between absolute and relative being; between things when viewed relationally, in their relation to their [p. 71] Author, and things viewed apart from that relation. Neither Author nor Things were to be denied actuality, or reality, as we understand the latter term. As between Allâh and human intelligences he even goes great lengths (in this very treatise of all others) in asserting parallelism and comparability, similarity therefore[61]; but between Allâh and all else ONE fundamental all-sufficient difference had to be asserted; namely, ALLAH is self-subsistent, qayyûm; things are not so. This distinction was the minimum one; yet also the maximum, for it preserved at once Creator and created, and gave actuality to each. There is, in truth, a good deal of wilful paradox in the Mishkât, of Oriental hyperbole, of pious highfalutin[62] intended perhaps to scare the “unco” orthodox of the day, to make their flesh creep a little for their health’s sake, and to “wake them out of their dogmatic slumbers”. For it is in the Mishkât that we find the following words, too, [p. 72] which seem plain and harmless enough: “Being is itself divided into that which has being-in-itself, and that which derives its being from not-itself. The being of this latter is borrowed, having no existence by itself. Nay, if it is regarded in and by itself it is pure not-being. Whatever being it has is due to its relation to not-itself, which is not real being at all . . .” In other words, it is by a purely arbitrary mental abstraction that we “regard derived being in and by itself”. The impossibility of really effecting this abstraction is precisely what preserves to derived being its measure of actuality —“whatever being it has . . .”[63] To us these last words are a clear concession of reality to conditioned being. It is true Ghazzâlî denies reality to it in the next sentence. But this only shows that when an Oriental talks of “Real” he means what we mean by “Unconditioned”, and that when he is thinking of “Conditioned or Relative” he says “Unreal.” The matter has become one of terms.
[p. 73]
It is impossible to demand more than this from Ghazzâlî as philosopher-theologian. He was, perhaps, not more successful than other eastern theologians in finding a place for the universe, philosophically, with or in Allâh. But has western philosophy been any more successful in finding a place for Allâh, philosophically, with or in the universe?
The Mishkât al-Anwâr is numbered No. 34 in Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (vol. i, p. 423). It was printed in Cairo (matba`at as Sidq, A. H. 1322), to which edition the references in the present work are made. There is another edition in a collection of five opuscules of Ghazzâlî under the title of the first of the five, Faisal al-Tafriqa. ↩︎
The Algazal of the Schoolmen. ↩︎
The Averroes of the Schoolmen. ↩︎
The Moslem World, year 1912, pp. 171 seqq., 245 seqq.; as separatum, Otto Harrassowitz, pp. 9, 10. ↩︎
Der Islam, year 1914, in Nos. 2 and 3: by the present writer. ↩︎
Faisal al-Tafriqa, p. 10. ↩︎
Averroes adds to these (with justice) the Koran; Mohammed himself; the “Early Fathers”; al-Ash’ari; and the early Ash`arites—before the time of Abul Ma’âli,” says Averroes, loc. cit. i.e. of al-Juwainî, The Imâm al-Haramain, our author’s Shaikh, d. 478 (see his al-Kashf ‘an manâhij al-adillâ’, ed. Müller, p. 65, Cairo ed., p. 54.) ↩︎
For according to Ghazzâlî the genuine axiomata of the pure intelligence are infallible. See p. 10, and an important autobiographical passage near the beginning of the Munqidh. ↩︎
This is all the more marked because the words are Ghazzâlî’s own gloss on a quotation from the Koran; see below. ↩︎
E.g. Tahâfut, pp. 57, 60. ↩︎
Op. cit., ed. Müller, p. 21, Cairo edition, p. 59. The treatise was written before A.H. 575; date of Mishkât c. 500. ↩︎
Mîzân al `Amal, p. 214. ↩︎
The unquestionable Neoplatonism of much of the forms and expression of Ghazzâlî’s thought, if not of the thought itself {footnote p. 20} Contd. (see especially pp. 15, 16. 29, 47 seq.]), exposed him in a very special way to this charge of emanational pantheism. And it cannot have made it easier for him to steer clear of such dangers in fact. ↩︎
Massignon, Hallâj, p. 661. ↩︎
Ed. Gautier, pp. 14-15, transl. 12-14. ↩︎
Or “a later writer” presumably Ibn Rushd himself, in the passage already cited and discussed. ↩︎
Though his “mirror” schema in Mishkât, p. 15, is near Ibn Tufâil’s meaning. ↩︎
Massignon, Passion d’ al-Hallâj, p. 754. ↩︎
p. 214 of trans. ↩︎
Massignon, op. cit., p. 791; ib., p. 472. ↩︎
Op. cit., p. 472. ↩︎
Al-Avnî on al-Istakhrî., quoted in a letter by M. Massignon to the writer. ↩︎
The question of the priority claimed by a certain school for Mohammed, and of the nûr Muhammadi, will be considered, later. ↩︎
See Nicholson, The Idea of Personality in Sûfism, p. 46 ↩︎
Nicholson. The Idea of Personality in Sûfism, pp. 44, 45. The identification had occurred independently to the present writer before appearance of Professor Nicholson’s work. It had also occurred independently to Professor D. B. Macdonald. ↩︎
The word min is itself tantalizingly ambiguous. It might mean “(derived) from” or “(part) of” or “pertaining to.” Under such circumstances one looks round for the vaguest possible phrase to render the preposition. ↩︎
This is the Arabic for the Christian “The Holy Spirit”. But in Arabic as in early Hebrew the word emphasized the idea of separation or transcendence rather than of righteousness or holiness. ↩︎
Massignon, op. cit., pp. 519-21. ↩︎
This mediation of the creative function would carry with it the mediation of the administrative. In this connexion use would unquestionably be made of S. 7, 53, “the sun, the moon, and the stars are compelled-to-work by His amr—His Word-of-Command—His Spirit—exactly the function of al-Mutâ`. ↩︎
Massignon, op. cit., p. 664. ↩︎
Ib., p. 661. ↩︎
It was at first prevalently Imâmite and Shî`ite (Nicholson, Idea of Personality in Sûfism, p. 58). ↩︎
He described Muhammed as al-rûh al-qudus and rûh jasad al-wajûd “the Transcendent Spirit, the Spirit of the body of the Universe.” ↩︎
Nicholson, op. cit., p. 59. ↩︎
See above, pp. 36-37 The only thing that puzzles is that Ghazzâlî sometimes distributes and pluralizes the Spirit, see p. [15, l. 4] and p. [22. l. 8]. In each case the regulative singular, however, is close by. This reminds one of Rev. iv, 5 and v. 6, compared with Rev. ii. 7. ↩︎ ↩︎
See the Vision of Er in the Republic, bk. X. ↩︎
See Averroes’ Ki tab al Kashf an manâhij al adillâ, quoted above on p. 11, note 2. ↩︎
S. 14, 48. ↩︎
Tah., p. 60. Quoted in the writer’s article in Der Islâm, see pp. 134-6, 151, 152, where parts of the subject are gone into in greater detail. ↩︎
In Ghazzâlî the most extreme Agnosticism and the most extreme Gnosticism meet, and meet at this point; for, as he says (p 25), things that go beyond one extreme pass over to the extreme opposite. For him “Creed because Incredible” becomes “Gnosis because Agnoston”. What saved the Universe for him from his nihilistic theologizing was his ontology (see below, pp. 108 seqq.). What saved God for him from his obliterating agnosticism was the experience of the mystic leap, his own personal mi`râj. This may have been non-rational, but it was to him experience. Even those who regard the sensational experience of Sûfism as having been pure self-hypnotism cannot condemn them and the sense of reality they brought, in relation to the man who had thought his way out of both atheism and pantheism, and yet would nave been left at the end of the quest, by his thinking alone, with an Unknown and Unknowable Absolute. ↩︎
See Mizân, p. 214, quoted above. ↩︎
Ihyâ, iv, p. 294, quoted in a letter to the writer from Professor R. Nicholson. ↩︎
The human 'aql does figure on that list, pp. [6, 7]. ↩︎
See the writer’s op. cit. in Der Islâm, pp. 138-141. ↩︎
Gen. i. 27, though Islâm ignores the parentage. ↩︎
How {to} translate this “Ana-l-Haqq”? Not by Jesus, “I am the Truth”, tempting though this is. “I am the Absolute” would be a parallel rendering in modern philosophic parlance. Professor Nicholson’s “I am God” is startling, but illuminating because perfectly justifiable: for al-Haqq and Allâh are mutually and exclusively convertible. ↩︎ ↩︎
Massignon, op. cit., p, 519, describing Hallâj’s doctrine of the divine rûh, and exactly hitting off Ghazzâlî’s difficult thought on p. [24, ll. 2, 3], (cf. p, [22, l. 2]). But from this point of view rûh and sûra merge into each other, as a careful comparison of the two Mishkât passages just cited shows. ↩︎
Pages 485, 599-602. In a note Massignon hazards the tentative suggestion that this epiphanized God (called by al-Hallâj al-Nâsût) in contra-distinction from the unknowable al-Lâhût) is analogical to, or suggestive of Ghazzâlî’s Vicegerent (p. 601, n. 5). The suggestion is thrilling, as we see. It must be repeated that there is no overt trace of the doctrine in M. ↩︎
Which, it must be remembered, might not unfairly be translated -I am God—; see footnote above. ↩︎
See, for example, Minqiah and the Lesser Madnûn (if that is Ghazzâlî’s). ↩︎
It is just here that, as it seems to the writer, the Philosophers with their Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity, the formless substrate of things—might well have forced a place for their thought, in spite of the Ghazzâlian wrath against them and it. For when the dark “self-aspect” of these contingencies of the Theologians is considered, prior to their “existence” (p. 59), is there much to choose between the eternal potentiality asserted of them by Ghazzâlî, and the eternity asserted for hyle by the Philosophers? Ghazzâlî himself quotes a saying of Mohammed (p. 13), on to which these Philosophers would eagerly have seized proving the point: “Allâh created the creation in darkness, then sent an effusion of His light upon it,” For a man who was using this divine light-emanation to typify the act of creation, of Calling out of non-being to being it was dangerous surely to give, apparently so powerful an indication as this of a previous creation in “darkness” (= not being in Ghazzâlî’s chosen symbology). It might very well have been claimed by the Philosophers that this creation-in-darkness is precisely their formless, chaotic hyle, eternal as darkness is eternal before the light shines. The Philosophers did pretend to prove their thesis from the Koran; see Averroes’ Manâhij, ed. Müller, p. 13 (=Cairo ed. Faisafat Ibn Rushd, p. 12), where the following texts are cited in support, S. 11, 9; 14, 49; 41, 10. ↩︎
I.e. in the modern or western sense of the word, = “objectivity” To the mediaeval eastern thinker the Arabic the word meant rather “ideality.” It is a case of the difference between phenomenal and transcendental reality. ↩︎
Professor Macdonald prefers “identification,” to bring out the verb-aspect of the masdar more clearly. ↩︎
And to assert similarity between two things is at once to have asserted two, and a distinction between them. See M, p. 7. ↩︎
Is not this true for all Sûfî writers? Do we not take their language too seriously? It parades as scientific; it is really poetico-rhetorical. ↩︎
Gh. has no more use for the Noumenon, for the Ding an sich, than had the post-Kantians; though for how different reasons. ↩︎