TASAWWUF As for the origin of the term Tasawwuf, like many other Islamic disciplines, its name was not known to the first generation of Muslims. The historian IBN KHALDUN notes in his Muqaddima: This knowledge is a branch of the sciences of Sacred Law that originated within the Umma. From the first, the way of such people had also been considered the path of truth and guidance by the early Muslim community and its notables, of the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), those who were taught by them, and those who came after them. It basically consists of dedication to worship, total dedication to Allah Most High, disregard for the finery and ornament of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and retiring from others to worship alone. This was the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims, but when involvement in this-worldly things became widespread from the second Islamic century onwards and people became absorbed in worldliness, those devoted to worship came to be called Sufiyya or People of Tasawwuf (Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima [N.d. Reprint. Makka: Dar al-Baz, 1397/1978], 467). In Ibn Khalduns words, the content of Tasawwuf, total dedication to Allah Most High, was, the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early Muslims. So if the word did not exist in earliest times, we should not forget that this is also the case with many other Islamic disciplines, such as tafsir, Quranic exegesis, or ilm al-jarh wa tadil, the science of the positive and negative factors that affect hadith narrators acceptability, or ilm al-tawhid, the science of belief in Islamic tenets of faith, all of which proved to be of the utmost importance to the correct preservation and transmission of the religion. As for the origin of the word Tasawwuf, it may well be from Sufi, the person who does Tasawwuf, which seems to be etymologically prior to it, for the earliest mention of either term was by Hasan al-Basri (Allah be pleased with him) who died 110years after the Hijra, and is reported to have said, I saw a Sufi circumambulating the Kaaba, and offered him a dirham, but he would not accept it. It therefore seems better to understand Tasawwuf by first asking what a Sufi is; and perhaps the best definition of both the Sufi and his way, certainly one of the most frequently quoted by masters of the discipline, is from the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) who said: Allah Most High says: He who is hostile to a friend of Mine I declare war against. My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks me, I will surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him (Fath al-Bari, 11.340 41, hadith 6502); This hadith was related by Imam Bukhari, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bayhaqi, and others with multiple contiguous chains of transmission, and is sahih. It discloses the central reality of Tasawwuf, which is precisely change, while describing the path to this change, in conformity with a traditional definition used by masters in the Middle East, who define a Sufi as Faqihun amila bi ilmihi fa awrathahu Llahu ilma ma lam yalam,A man of religious learning who applied what he knew, so Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know. To clarify, a Sufi is a man of religious learning,because the hadith says, My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and only through learning can the Sufi know the command of Allah, or what has been made obligatory for him. He has applied what he knew, because the hadith says he not only approaches Allah with the obligatory, but keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And in turn, Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know, because the hadith says, And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks, --- which is a metaphor for the consummate awareness of tawhid, or the unity of Allah, which in the context of human actions such as hearing, sight, seizing, and walking, consists of realizing the words of the Quran about Allah that, It is He who created you and what you do (Quran 37:96)
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 17:22:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015