immediate experience (
dhawq
- literally ‘tasting’), by ecstasy and by a moral
change.”
9
The Sufi who sets out to seek God calls himself a traveller (
salik
). He
advances by slow stages (
maqamat
) along a path (
tariqa
) towards union with
Reality (
Fana‘ fil Haqq
).This path, according to al-Sarraj (d.988), author of
Kitab al-Luma’ fi‘l Tasawwuf
10
,
the oldest comprehensive treatise on Sufi
teaching, consists of the following seven “stages”:
1. Repentance (
tawbah
)
2. Fear of the Lord (
wara
’)
3. Renunciation (
zuhd
)
4. Poverty (
faqr
)
5. Patience or endurance (
sabr
)
6.Trust in God (
tawakkul
)
7. Satisfaction/contentment (
rida
)
11
The book of Sirraj in which the stages were thus enumerated, was written
in Iran in the tenth century, much before Al-Ghazali, during the period
when Sufism was first being consolidated as a coherent body of spiritual
teachings and thus gives a comprehensive picture of how the mystical path
was in harmony with all aspects of Islamic religious law and doctrine. At
9
The Faith and Practice of AI-Ghazali
tr. W.M. Watt, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 1953, 1994,
pp 56-57; the above book consists of a translation of
Deliverance from Error
(
Al-Munqidh min ad-
Dalal
), which is largely autobiographical, and
The Beginning of Guidance
(
Bidayat al-Hidayah
) from
The Revival of the Religious Sciences
(
Ihya’‘Ulum ad-Din
). For a translation of the complete
Ihya’‘Ulum
ad-Din,
see also
Imam Ghazali’s Ihya Ulum-id-Din,
tr. Maulana Fazul-ul-Karim, Sind Sagar Academy,
Lahore, 1971.
10
Abu Nasr ‘Abdallah bin ‘Ali al-Sarraj al-Tusi
The Kitab al-Luma’ fi ‘I-Tasawwuf
ed. R.A. Nicholson,
London, 1914 and 1963. The title can be translated as
The Book of Flashes
. This book has also been
translated into Urdu by Sayyid Asrar Bukhari
Kitab al-Luma’
, Lahore: Islamic Book Foundation,
1984.
11
For a description of the ‘stages’, with references to al-Sirraj and Sufi writers later than al-Sirraj,
see for example:
The Persian Sufis
by C.Rice, Ltd., London, 1964; S.H.Nasr,
Sufi Essays
, London
1972; and others.
Th e Su f i C on c e p t o f Me d i t a t i on 202
