to their subject matter but are undated. On the insistence of his spiritual
mentor (
pir)
, Shaykh AbdulWahab Qadri of Makkah (d. 1607) and of Shah
Abu’l-Ma‘ali Qadri (d. 1615) of Lahore, Shaykh Abdul Haqq Muhaddith
(1551-1642) of Delhi, also a Qadri, translated
Futuh al-Ghayb
into Persian
and wrote a commentary to it, so that the Shaykh’s views might be
disseminated better.
Fath al-rabbani
gives the substance
of the forty sermons the Shaykh
delivered in 1150. It represents a single year of the Shaykh’s assemblies.
Numerous commentaries and translations tried to fill up any gaps that make
the text obscure. Many abridgements, critical revisals and commentaries of
this as well as his other works have also appeared.
More than a hundred years after the saint’s death, his biography,
Bahjat
al-Asrar
(‘The Splendour of Secrets’)
,
was compiled by ‘Ali ibn Yusuf al-
Shattanawfi (d.1314).
The Teachings of the Shaykh
S
HAYKH
A
BDUL
Q
ADIR
’
S
spirituality was based on his personal realization
of God. For him God was an all-encompassing persona, forever immanent
in man’s moral, intellectual, and aesthetic awareness. He was neither a
deified legendary figure nor was He an abstract, rationalized concept of
oneness. The Shaykh felt as if he were always in His Presence. From his
sermons it was possible to judge the degree of his own understanding of
God’s Omnipresence.This consciousness of the Divine Omnipresence guided
and motivated his waking life and raised it to a transcendental level. The
Prophet’s urging of people “to pray as if you see Him; and if you see Him
not, then He sees you” was his most important maxim and he certainly
practiced what he preached. He believed that this realization made each
