commentaries there is also one by a famous Chishti saint, Gesu Daraz (d.
1422), which points to the fact of its widespread use by the Sufis of the
Indian subcontinent.
Sufi poetry
Starting with the 10
th
century, to be more precise the year 945, when
the Buyahids took over the reins of the Abbasid Empire, the caliphs were
reduced to the status of mere nominal rulers and the Islamic world remained
in constant upheaval.What followed was a virtual disintegration of the empire
into a number of independent provincial regimes. The emergence of local
dynasties in Persian lands led to the flourishing of Persian as the language of
academic discourse. Soon, at least in the central and eastern lands of Islam,
Arabic became above all the language of prayer as well as religious and
scientific writing, while literature turned to Persian.
The earlier works of the Sufis, including those mentioned above, that is
‘the manuals’ (with the exception of
‘Awarif ul Ma’arif
, which was the first of
the manuals in Persian) and the hagiographies of the saints were all inArabic.
But with the emergence of Persian as a vehicle of literary expression, the
Sufis too turned to it with great enthusiasm.Thus, though ‘it was the prose
works of the 10
th
and 11
th
century Sufis which had the greatest effect in
fashioning Sufism into an orthodox mould,… the sensitivity and euphony of
transcendental love, as it led to annihilation, found its greatest expression
through poetry, particularly that written in Persia.’
20
To use a common
expression, the Sufis of the period took to poetry as ducks take to water.
The first practitioner of mystical poetry is
Abu Sa’id Fazlu’llah bin
Abi’l Khair
(d.1049), a great Sufi and a great poet. He was a contemporary
20
Rizvi, S.A.A., A History of Sufism in India, Vol. I, Delhi, 1978, p..66
T owar d s Mys t i c i sm 48
