This last volume of The Heritage of Sufism is devoted to the examination and celebration of the artistic, literary and mystical culture and the intellectual life of Safavid Iran and Mughal India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the first half of the eighteenth century. Containing essays by some twenty-four specialists and scholars, many of international repute, it features a worldwide roster of contributors of diverse provenance, hailing from Iran, Europe and the United States.

Although during the three centuries under review here, the cultural forms associated with the Persian language, notably in poetry, culminated in the charming -- if convoluted -- `Indian style', generating what has been appropriately called by Marshall Hodgson a ``Persianate flowering'', the greatness of the epoch still remains concealed under its baroque extravagance and ornateness. However, as all the chapters below illustrate, throughout these developments, whether in the spheres of literature, politics, philosophy or art, Sufi mysticism played a central role. Although in Safavid Iran (1501--1722) most of the Sufi orders were ruthlessly suppressed, in the subcontinent the situation was quite the opposite. Here, under the Mughals (c.1526--1720), Islamic religious culture was largely dominated and influenced by the presence of Sufi orders of Persian origin, Persian being the dominant literary medium among the Indian Sufis.

Sufi teachings did continue to flourish, despite the suppression of the orders in Safavid Iran, in the notable form of the famous school of Illuminationists in Isfahan, which has been compared in certain respects with the Cambridge Platonists of England who were its contemporaries. This remarkable philosophical school, which combined Peripatetic, kalam theology and Illuminationist theosophy with the mystical Sufism of Ibn `Arabi to form a kind of humanistically universal Islamic philosophy, is given ample treatment in the first three chapters of this book. In Mughal India during this period, Ibn `Arabi's theories of the `Unity of Being' took root, leading many mystics to seek points of correspondence between Sufi thought and the Vedanta system of Hindu philosophy. Some Sufis wrote tracts on Yogic practices and many of the Sanskrit mystical classics in this field were translated into Persian (and thence into many European languages) during this period. William Chittick, Muhammad Juzi and Carl Ernst examine these themes in their contributions.

The great diplomatic and cultural unity which existed between the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires during this period is reflected in our concentration on the religious and literary culture and history of Indian and Persian Sufism. ``All the [three great] Muslim powers of the time formed a single far-flung diplomatic world'', Marshall Hodgson points out, ``though all the ruling families were Turkic, the language of diplomacy, of course, was Persian. . . . This world was a diplomatic unity because it remained, despite the tendency of each empire to develop a distinctive regional culture centred on the court, a cultural unity. In this unity, the Safavi empire doubtless held the central place; but India was close behind as a focus of cultural influence''. If the focus on Persianate Sufi literature and thought in India and Persia in this volume has not encompassed Ottoman culture and society in which the great international Sufi orders ``set the official tone of religion'', it does not, thereby, necessarily exclude it. It was inevitable that some limit had to be imposed on the volume's coverage; and it can be argued that because the varieties of social intercourse and cultural exchange between Persia under Safavid and India under Mughal rule were more continuous, and the antagonism in political relations and the opposition caused by the sectarian differences between Mughal India and Safavid Iran less severe than those that obtained between zealously Shi`ite Iran and staunchly Sunni Ottoman Turkey, it was reasonable to have excluded coverage of the `Persianate' Sufi cultural traditions which played a ``dominant'' role in Ottoman Turkey from this volume (unlike volume II of The Heritage of Sufism whose chronological framework, covering very different political conditions, did embrace Ottoman Anatolia).

In this volume, a host of issues are discussed, under seven headings, ranging from the ethereal metaphystics of Ishraqi and Akbarian theosophy and patterns of Sufi contemplative disciplines, to the heretofore unexplored relationship of Sufism to sectarian movements (such as the Isma`iliyya and Rawshaniyya), and the strife of clerics with mystics. Most of the essays furnish extended discussions of both the philosophical/ literary and the hagiographical/ historical contexts of Sufism, embracing mundane matters such as the historiography of Sufi histories and the impact of political circumstances on dervish institutions and society in India and Persia, as well as sublime and sophisticated esoteric issues. The latter include the significance of mystical diagrams in Indian Sufism, poetic symbolism in both the `high classical' and the `popular vernacular' Sufi Persianate literary traditions, and the fascinating blend of Platonic theosophy with Peripatetic ontology and metaphysics, capped by the quintessentially Islamic development of a dynamic unitarian doctrine.

In his foreword, Dr Nurbakhsh reminds us, with some fascinating quotations, of the classics and the classical period of early Sufism, which should always remain the focal concern of students of Sufism. This early classical period -- to which the first volume of The Heritage of Sufism was devoted -- is certainly always the fons et origo of all later manifestations of Sufism. His emphasis is thus especially appropriate in light of the fallacious tendency among many Islamicists to consider the medieval period of Islamic history, including the metahistory of its spirituality, to be an embarassing prelude to our modern `progressive' age.

Furthermore, the sense of decline, loss and disappearance of spirituality stressed by Dr Nurbakhsh at the end of his foreword is one of the eternal topoi of Persianate Sufi spirituality dealt with by several contributors to this volume. Although the twelfth- and thirteenth-century revival of Sufism, to which volume II of the present collection was devoted, no doubt constitutes the cultural zenith of Persian Sufism, the decline of Sufism has been lamented ever since its origin. A millennium ago, this sentiment was echoed by Abu'l-Hasan Pushangi, who wryly quipped: ``Why today it [Sufism] is but a name with no underlying reality apparent. At one time, it was a reality, but without a name.'' ``In the first century following the death of the Prophet,'' Abu Muhammad Jurayri (d. 311/ 923) observed:

spiritual conduct (mu`amalat) was based on religiousness (din). When the adepts of that century passed away, religion became decadent, so in the second century they based their spiritual practice on fidelity (wafa). As they passed on, fidelity perished with them. In the third century, they based their spiritual practice on chivalric humaneness (muruwwat), but after they passed away, neither chivalry or humaneness were left! They based their spiritual conduct on pious modesty (hiya) during the following century, but when they perished, all modest piety disappeared with them! So now, everyone must conduct themselves in utter fear (rahbat).

The centuries pass but the same cry of regret remains -- intensified perhaps. We hear Jurayri's lament echoed in Mongol Persia by the Kubrawi Shaykh Nur al-Din Isfarayini (639/1242--717/1317):

Today, it is impossible to find any masters of the Way (arbab-i tariqat). Even if one finds, off in the suburbs, one of them, he too is worthless! Alas! A thousand times over -- alas! The birds of this flock have quit the meadow; before the darkening tenebrity of their novices (mubtadi`an), they have withdrawn and lowered their crowns under domes of divine jealousy. . . . Yes, this is again the same thing which my Lord and Master, Shaykh Majd al-Din Baghdadi -- may God bless his dear spirit, and may the dust of my flesh be offering for his spilled blood! -- spoke when he said, `Soon this group [the Sufis] will be as rare as the philosopher's stone, and they will vanish from all corners of the world, and even if off in some distant province, a master be found, he would be considered of less value than earth [in mens' eyes].' Yes, my friend, one must deplore this age, that men can live as they do. Alas! Those masters who once shielded their disciples have taken away the shield; and even if one finds among their successors, however rarely, a follower of the Path according to tradition (sunna), adhering to the rule of his predecessors, on retiring he finds himself confronted by a host of adversaries. However, if a beginner, whether in the past or present, takes one step in proposing some heretical innovation (bid`at), he immediately gains himself a thousand disciples and lovers!

This same lament reverberates throughout the whole Safavid threnody of Sufism. Ibn Karbala'i (writing in 975/1567), in the course of a description of the dilapidated condition of a certain Sufi's khanaqah in Tabriz, bemoaned the fact that ``there are no dervishes there -- rather, nowhere are there any dervishes to be found [today] -- this age is under the aegis of the divine Name `the Inward' (al-batin)''. A dirge chanted in fortissimo tones over the decline in spiritual standards resounds during the last half of the Safavid mullocracy from within the tomes of Mulla Sadra and the poems and tracts of Fayd Kashani (d. 1091/1680), key members of what S.H. Nasr describes in his introduction as the ``school of Isfahan''. These Safavid theosophists vented their righteous fury at certain corrupt groups of Sufis who:

have drunk the cup of pride from Satan's hand, and in following their sensual appetites and passions, contented themselves with a few idle cries and exclamations. Those who actually worship God among this group are few and far between. Few are those who find the path to Him, and yet -- one must still irrigate a thousand thorns for the sake of a single rose.

Oftentimes in beggars' rags one finds enlightened men;

Draped in felt and sackcloth are hid the men of heart.

Amid the dervish crowd, one man alone is meant

But don't scorn the rest -- that they're ignorant.

And with the fall of the Safavid dynasty in 1722, the topos of the `decline of Sufism' is commemorated in the Dhahabi master Nayrizi's celebrated Arabic poem Fasl al-khitab, written circa 1720--30, attacking the corruption of the Safavid clerical establishment, cataloguing in detail the persecution endured by the Sufis and the destruction of their khanaqahs at the hands of the mullas. ``In every province of the entire country of Iran,'' we read in one verse, ``all cloisters, all khanaqahs of the dervishes (ahl al-faqr) lie destroyed.' The decadence of the times is bemoaned right down to early modern times. Writing in the early 1840s, we hear the renowned Ni`matu'llahi master Zayn al-`Abidin Shirvani (Mast `Ali Shah) replicating Nayrizi's lament in prose, in complaining that ``in the whole land of Iran there is neither abode nor site where a dervish can lay his head . . . In the rest of the inhabited quarters of the world, among all its different races and peoples, hospitals for the sick and khanaqahs for the dervishes are built -- except in Iran, where there is neither khanaqah nor hospital!''

Likewise, the topos of the ``decline of Sufism'' is also present in both Western orientalist writings and Persianate Sufi literature composed in India during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. In its Indian context, dealing with the spiritual and contemplative dimension of the subject, Marcia Hermansen and Carl Ernst examine this `paradigm of decline' in their essays, while Andrew Newman and Leonard Lewisohn adumbrate this topos as it interpenetrates political, theological and literary debates in Persia.

In his introduction, S.H. Nasr underlines the difficulty of exploring the mysticism of the Safavid period, owing to the special political conditions of the period, and proposes that Sufi spirituality of Safavid times be partially understood as a kind of intellectual esotericism, partaking of the amorphous pre-tariqa form of Islamic mysticism found prior to the twelfth century. His essay is devoted to the Safavid `school of Isfahan' (a term he coined with Henry Corbin in the 1960s), its unique synthesis of philosophy with speculative Sufism; he places this school at the heart of the intellectual life of Iran and India.

David Morgan opens part II with what he hopes will be a provocative article rethinking the conversion of the Safavids to Shi`ism and the nature of Shah Isma`il I's religious commitment. This is followed by Farhang Jahanpour's wide-ranging essay charting Western encounters with Persian Sufi literature. Jahanpour gives a compact historical overview of the subject, and a valuable account of many of the various correspondences and contacts between early Western orientalism and Persian Sufism. Examining the entire late classical period from the founding of the Sir Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic at Cambridge in 1632 through the pioneering translation works of orientalists such as Sir William Jones, the travel accounts of Jean Chardin, down to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the English Romantic poets, Jahanpour delineates the various cultural channels through which ``Sufism has already made its presence felt in the spiritual and intellectual life of the West''.

Part III, devoted to Sufism in Safavid Persia (1501--1722), is opened by Leonard Lewisohn's long essay on the place of Sufism in the thought of two of the foremost theosophists of the school of Isfahan: `Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji and Fayd-i Kashani. Focusing on the political underpinnings of the Safavid theocracy which arose ``in the milieu of Sufism and of extremism'', this essay takes a fresh look at the historical conflict between legalitarian clericalism and antinominian mysticism in Islamic culture, viewing it as an archetypal struggle between Eros and Nomos, tolerance and fundamentalism, charismatic inspirationalism and religious formalism: the same battle still being fought out in the political theatres of most modern Islamic countries. The next two essays trace the Ni`matu'llahi Order's legacy in Safavid Iran: Terry Graham provides the most substantial and comprehensive history available of this order in post-Timurid Iran and India, and Sholeh Quinn furnishes not only an excellent introduction to the historiography of Safavid chronicles, but an original survey of Ni`matu'llahi--Safavid family connections according to the primary sources.

Andrew Newman's essay, tracing the successive waves of anti-Sufi polemic in Safavid Iran and concentrating on the issue of singing (ghina') in the clerical assault on Sufi practices, concludes part III. Typical of the clerical viewpoint was the ascription of extreme behaviour, aberrant behaviour -- and even derogatory names -- to Sufi groups. The mullas' intention in their battle with Sufism was to destroy the venues of sama`, thus eradicating the centres where the Sufis' passion for poetry -- the supreme imaginative enterprise of the Persian psyche -- was enacted, entertained and sustained. The polemics of these puritan clerics against mystical song and dance, so meticulously annotated in this contribution, demonstrate not only the depths of Shi`ite pharisaical legalism, but exhibit the passion and paranoia of the lost world of religious war and struggle which characterizes the period.

Part IV, which is devoted to `Sufism and Ishraqi and Akbarian philosophy', opens with Ian Netton's study of the contribution of Mir Damad to the philosophy of time in Islamic thought in Safavid Persia, pointing out the many parallels between Damad's life and thought and that of Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi. William Chittick follows with an essay on the metaphysical teachings of Mahmud Khwush-Dahan (d. 1026/1617), a little-known Chishti master. ``One of the major reasons for the fact that most Sufi writing of India has remained unstudied'', Chittick notes, ``is that modern scholars have focused on social and political history and have had little interest in the goals and intentions of the Sufi authors themselves.'' In regard to Khwush-Dahan, Chittick rectifies this omission by giving the first systematic exposition of the doctrines contained in his seminal text Ma`rifat al-suluk (The True Knowledge of Wayfaring). Muhammad Reza Juzi concludes the chapter with an exploration of the relationship of the foremost Safavid-period philosopher Mulla Sadra (d. 1050/1640) to the thought of Ibn `Arabi, convincingly arguing that ``the whole body of Mulla Sadra's transcendental theosophy functions as the rational structure and logical articulation of Ibn `Arabi's teaching''.

Part V: ``Esoteric Movements and Contemplative Disciplines'', features four contributions. Farhad Daftary, in his ``Sufi--Isma`ili Relations in Early Post-Alamut and Safavid Persia'', discusses the complex interrelationship and interaction between Shi`ism, Sufism and Isma`ilism down to the end of the Safavid period. He points out that after 868/1463, when Mustansir bi'llah, the thirty-second Isma`ili Imam succeeded to the imamate, it became customary for the Nizari Isma`ili Imams to adopt Sufi names, adding terms such as Shah and `Ali to their names like Sufi masters, appearing as one Sufi order among others. Later on, during the Safavid period in Persia and under the Mughals in India, the Isma`ilis often observed taqiyya in the form of Twelver Shi`ism. Daftary's sectarian concerns are critically addressed in the Afghan context by Sergei Andreyev, who offers us the most comprehensive introduction available to the history and doctrine of the Rawshaniyya in his ``The Rawshaniyya: A Millenarian Sufi Movement in the Mughal Tribal Periphery''. This includes a comprehensive socio-biographical study of Bayazid Ansari (c. 927 or 931/1521 or 1552--1572 or 1575--980 or 983), the founder of this important proto-Sufi sect.

Re-examining the so-called `decline of Sufism' debate, Marcia Hermansen, in ``Contemplating Sacred History in Late Mughal Sufism: The Case of Shah Wali Allah'', explores the various notions of the `decline' proposed by Western scholars (Trimingham, Meier, Lapidus, etc.), noting that while ``the model of decline, so facilely applied to this period after the fact and in consonance with an overriding narrative of Muslim stagnation and European rise'', has been favoured by European scholars of Persianate Sufism, it was seldom in favour among Sufis themselves, who viewed their history in `a developmentally progressive way'. Noting that the eighteenth century ``is considered `baroque' in the sense of a flowering and confluence of a number of intellectual styles, but also the last gasp before the decline into popularization and saint cults'', she concludes that Sufis such as Shah Wali Allah understood ``the development of the Sufi tradition in the light of a broader framework of `Perfection history','' rather than decline. Following Hermansen, Carl Ernst, in ``Chishti Meditation Practices of the Late Mughal Period'' criticizes what he calls the ``the `golden age' syndrome'' favoured by orientalists, observing that:

The `classicism and decline' model has long since exercised a fascination over students of Islamic culture. It is especially odd to notice that the `decline' of Islamic civilization has been an unquestioned axiom accepted until recently by most orientalists, secular modernists and fundamentalists, but for different reasons. In all these cases, the colonization of much of the Muslim world and the consequent loss of political power by Muslims were interpreted moralistically as the judgement of either history or God upon a civilization that had become inadequate. The notion of the decline of Muslim nations was especially attractive to the self-image of Europeans in the colonial period, since it provided a noble justification for conquest and empire on the basis of the `civilizing mission' of the West (also known as `the white man's burden'). If, however, we do not intend to support any of these agendas, then the notion of `classicism and decline' is distinctly unhelpful in the study of a tradition such as Sufism.

Part VI, ``Persianate Sufism in India, Central Asia and China'', geographically speaking, contains the most wide-ranging contributions in the book, with essays devoted to Indian, Chinese and Central Asian Sufism. Opening the chapter, M.Z.A. Shakeb traces the political and socio-cultural history of Sufism in the Deccan from the early fifteenth to the late seventeenth century, highlighting the relations between Sunnism and Shi`ism. Despite the fact that ``it was against a background of clerical intimidation and Shi`ite fanaticism that the Sufis of the Deccan had to carry on their mission,'' Shakeb reveals that the Sufis ``generally kept aloof from the polemical debates raging in the Shi`ite literature of the period, whether it was produced in Iran or the Deccan.'' His essay illustrates the central role played by the Sufis in maintaining social stability in Indian society and their furtherance of the spirit of Islam together with respect for other faiths. Sachiko Murata presents the key study of Sufism in medieval China (the first such study, in fact, available in any language); pointing out that ``only four Islamic books are known for certain to have been rendered into Chinese before the present century, and all are well-known Persian Sufi texts'', she proceeds to examine the significance of these texts for the history of Chinese Islam.

In the final essay of Part VI Devin DeWeese examines the remarkable vitality and dynamism of Central Asian Sufism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on `Alim Shaykh of `Aliyabad, the dominant figure in the Yasavi order. While the Yasavi Sufis left their most substantial literary legacy almost entirely in Persian, their order being centred in traditionally Persophone regions of Central Asia, neither the history of the order nor its literary and hagiographical legacy during this period has received much scholarly attention. His study concludes that ``the lesson learned from a closer study of the Yasavi tradition during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is precisely the indivisible coherence of Central Asian civilization''.

Annemarie Schimmel's study, ``The Vernacular Tradition in Persianate Sufi Poetry'', underlining the central importance of the Persianate Sufi tradition and Indian Sufi saints in Indian culture, inaugurates the final section of the book, which is devoted entirely to literary themes. She reveals the profound impact of such Sufi poets as Qadi Qadan (d. 1551), Sultan Bahu (d. 1691), Shah `Abd al-Latif (1689--1752) and Bullhe Shah (d. 1754) on the development of literatures in the regional languages of India. Christopher Shackle follows her literary emphasis but with a slightly different flavour, covering the `high literary' ground of Indo-Persianate belles-lettres in his essay on the Narang-i `ishq (1685) of Ghanimat Kunjahi. Endeavouring to disentangle the relationships between Sufism and Sufi poetry and poetry which uses Sufi imagery, he concentrates on the Qadiriyya in the Punjab in Mughal times, highlighting the role of this order in the development of Sufi poetry written in Persian and successfully grappling with the Indian context of this poetry in which the distinction between `Persian' and `Persianate' is always worth attention. While his essay provides a good introduction to the poetic themes and theories of Ghanimat, it also gives an excellent overview of the contribution of the Qadiriyya to Persianate Sufi literature and Punjabi poetry in the subcontinent.

Simon Weightman's essay returns to the theme of vernacular literature, while remaining very much on `high literary' ground, as he elucidates the complex quasi-Sufi mystical theology of Manjhan, a respected teaching Shaykh of the Shattari order, whose Madhumalati best represents the genre of the Sufi premakhyan in Awadhi. His study reveals the predominance of Persianate Sufi motifs in this work, in which ``underneath the yogi there is the `ashiq and the salik, the lover and the traveller or Sufi''. His startlingly original analysis of the various levels of symbolism concealed within this great Sufi romance, which proves that well-established macro-compositional principles may well underlie many other mystical works of this nature, is of ground-breaking significance for our understanding of Muslim literary history in general and Persianate Sufi poetry in particular. Heideh Ghomi's highly original essay, ``The Imagery of Annihilation in Sa'ib Tabrizi'', one of the most capable Safavid poets of the `Indian style', concludes the volume.

The remarkable intensity and originality of the intellectual focus brought to bear by the volume's various contributors will, we hope, be apparent to the reader of the following pages. No doubt, the chronological breadth, intellectual diversity and historical scope of the present book also attests to the cultural achievements in the history, philosophy and poetry of Sufism in Persianate culture in Iran, Central Asia and India during the Safavid and Mughal period.

However, the discovery, presentation and elaboration of these wide-ranging themes are the product of many diverse factors and are indebted to the labours of a variety of persons. Throughout the preparation of this volume, the editors, as convenors of the conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 19--21 May 1997 on which it is based, have received much help, encouragement and support from various organizations and individuals. The conference was made possible by funding from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, the British Institute of Persian Studies, the British Academy and Curzon Press. We would like to express our gratitude to these institutions for their generous grants, without which the conference would have been impossible to arrange. We also thank Dr Javad Nurbakhsh and the Ni`matullahi Research Centre for sponsoring and organizing the concert of traditional Persian Sufi music on 20 May 1997, which, by using Persian poetry of the Safavid period as its basic repertoire, served to celebrate the mystical themes of the conference in the musical dimension.

We would like to thank Dr Charles Tripp, former head of the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, and Dr Tudor Parfitt, the present head, for their support. Our thanks go to Sara Stewart in particular and the staff of the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies in general for their sustained services in the preparation and production of the printed material involved in, and expert handling of, the conference organization, as well as their subsequent secretarial assistance in preparing the contributions to this collection. We would also like to acknowledge our gratitude to Dr Hossein Ilahi Ghomshei for gracing the chapter headings of this volume with his lovely illustrations in original Persian calligraphy of the poem by Shaykh Baha'i (translated by Leonard Lewisohn). We would also like to thank Heather Sacco for contributing her time and energy to editing many of the articles herein. The generosity of Dr Cary Stuart Welch and the Harvard University Art Museums for granting us permission to use the splendid Shaykh-zada miniature on the cover of this volume is also gratefully acknowledged.

In conclusion, if, as the Shaykh al-Ta'ifa Junayd was known to say, ``The furthest reach of divine Unity (tawhid) is the denial of Unity'', by extension, the ultimate degree of Sufism is the erasure of all trace of Sufism. On Junayd's maxim `Attar reflected that ``any knowledge one has of divine Unity is suspect, to be rejected in terms of its being still not yet [true] unity.'' So, at our book's beginning, it remains to deny that `Sufism' has been herein explained, yet to affirm that its elusive reality still remains.

D.M. & L.L.

The school (madhhab) of classical Sufism originated in Khurasan in northern Iran and from there was transmitted south-west to Baghdad. In the early days of Islam, the great representative masters of the Path in Khurasan included the likes of Abu'l-Fadl Qassab Amuli, Abu Sa`id ibn Abi'l-Khayr (d. 440/1049), Abu'l-Hasan Kharaqani (d. 426/1034) and Bayazid Bistami (d. 262/875).

The paradoxical sayings of Bayazid Bistami, even in his own day, gained a wide circulation in Iraq and soon exerted a captivating influence over the minds of students in search of the spiritual path of divine Unity and seekers who aspired to understand the meaning of the `Unity of Being'. In particular, his ideas deeply affected the thinking of Abu'l-Qasim Junayd (d. 295/910), Abu Nasr Sarraj al-Tusi (d. 378/988), Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri (d. 245/859) and many others, inspiring them to write extensive commentaries on his sayings.

Persian Sufism from the very beginning -- even prior to Junayd -- had a great effect on the Sufi masters of Baghdad, many of whom were also of Iranian descent. One may well speculate that Hasan al-Basri (d. 110/728), for instance, who fought with the Muslim armies in battles to subdue Khurasan in northern Iran, very likely associated with, and frequented the company of, the spiritual masters of this region during these campaigns. Amongst his sayings one finds the statement: `The lover is in a state of intoxication, from which he awakes only during contemplation of his Beloved.'

Malik reportedly asked Hasan al-Basri, ``Wherein does this world's chastisement lie?''

``In the heart's death,'' replied Hasan.

``What is the `heart's death'?'' asked Malik.

``Love of the world,'' he replied.

A century later, some of the finer points of Sufism appear expressed by the sayings of Ma`ruf Karkhi (d. 200/815), such as: ``The Sufi is but a guest here, for a guest to request anything of his host is discourtesy. A courteous guest waits with confidence, rather than pressing his petition.'' Ma`ruf Karkhi also is known for his statement that ``hroughout all being, naught but God exists.''

In the generation following Ma`ruf Karkhi, one finds some extraordinary sayings among the masters of the Baghdad school of Sufism. Junayd's master, Sari Saqati (d. 255/871), for instance, when asked to describe the Sufis, explained, ``The food they eat is like that eaten by the sick, and their sleep is like that of the drowned.'' Junayd reported that Sari once said, ``Love between two people is not equitable until the one says to the other, `O me . . .!' [instead of `O you . . .!']; that is to say, that there is no place for separate individual identity in love.'' Sari's lovely remarks about the `idolatry of beards' are worth quoting in this context:

There exist two types of idolatry in keeping a beard. Firstly, one must either comb it for the sake of people, or secondly, leave it to become matted so as to maintain an ascetic facade.

If a visitor to drop by to see me, and were I stroke and comb my beard with my hand to please him, in my own eyes, I'd be an idolater.

As if describing the passage of Sufism from Khurasan to Iraq outlined above, Sari also remarked, ``As long the science of Sufism was preserved in Khurasan, one found it (diffused) everywhere, but ever since it came to an end there, it cannot be found anywhere.''

However, by the time of Abu'l-Qasim Junayd (d. 295/910; born in Nahavand near Hamadan in western Persia), the school (madhhab) of classical Sufism had blossomed luxuriously and little by little acquired innumerable advocates, devoted followers and spiritual masters. As a matter of course, this excited the jealousy of the exoteric authorities. Particularly alarmed by the Sufi's popularity were those jurisprudents and judges who, in order to further their own dictatorial aims, wished to live freely off the state by collaboration with the caliphs. In an attempt to curb the rise and diffusion of Sufism, these authorities began to harass and issue fatwas for the death of some of the Sufis such as Hallaj and Ibn `Ata.

One reason for their animosity was that the school of divine Unity (tawhid) and Sufism in Islam is based on the principles of freedom, chivalry, altruism, service to all humanity and advocacy of human rights, the very principles which these exoteric judges and jurisprudents discerned -- quite correctly -- to be directed at neutralizing their own dogmatic control of Islamic thought. By way of allusion to these oppressive social conditions, Junayd said, ``For twenty years I have been discoursing only on marginal aspects of this science [of Sufism], but of what concerns its profoundest depths have not breathed a word, for tongues have been forbidden to utter that and hearts not permitted to apprehend it.'' One may also interpret Abu Bakr Shibli's (d. 334/945) remark, ``Now is a time of silence, of seclusion in houses and putting one's trust in God, the Everlasting'' in the same vein.

The school of Khurasan, which was also known as the school of intoxication (sukr), pertained to Bayazid Bistami and his followers. Since Khurasan was beyond the reach of the caliph and the theologians on his payroll, Bayazid was able to express his ideas more openly, with less inhibition and greater boldness, although some of his adages took the form of ecstatic sayings couched in symbolic paradoxical allusions (shath).

The school of sobriety (sahw) -- also known as the school of Baghdad -- which pertained to Junayd and his disciples, who maintained that there was a second sobriety which is higher than intoxication, was on the other hand, subjected to the powerful autocracy of state-controlled Islam, so that most of Junayd's sayings bear the influence of the oppressive political milieu in which he lived. Although `sobriety' literally denotes the state of temperate consciousness following drunkenness, the term also contains political overtones, implying: ``Put a halter on this spiritual drunkenness; be vigiliant lest the mullas declare you a heretic!''

Whereas the spiritual attitude of the school of intoxication in which the ideals of classical Persian Sufism are best represented, might be summed up by Kharaqani's maxim: ``Give bread to all those who enter the khanaqah, but do not interrogate visitors about their faith;'' the Baghdad school, based on temperance and sobriety, would have voiced the opposite sentiment: ``Interrogate all who enter the khanaqah about the probity of their faith, and only then, if acceptable, admit them.''

Therefore, one can say that up until the middle of the fourth Islamic/tenth Christian century, a trace of genuine Sufism was still left, although this gradually disappeared and became forgotten. After that date, however, despite appearances and the often great popularity and widespread following of significant figures in Sufism in the lands of Iran beyond the borders of the school of Baghdad -- in particular one should cite the names of Farid al-Din `Attar, `Ayn al-Qudat Hamadhani, Suhrawardi, Ghazali, Ruzbihan, Jalal al-Din Rumi, `Abdu'llah Ansari, Najm al-Din Kubra and Ibn `Arabi (albeit in Spain) -- most of these Sufis were either slain, exiled or subjected to severe pressures by the religious authorities of the state.

In a word, one may say that upon the death of Junayd in 295/910, the expanse of gnostic Sufism (tasawwuf-i `arifana) was folded up and came to an end, and with the death of Ruzbihan Baqli three hundred years later in 606/1210, the flame of Sufism based divine love (tasawwuf-i `ashiqana) was snuffed out. What is left of Sufism today can be summed up in the poet's verse:

So togged up

in gild and lacquer

you'd never recognize it

if you saw it.