Volume 1

Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.

Date:
1908-1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wardi. He married and had many children— thirteen, according to a tradition reported by Depont and Coppolani (p. 298); forty-nine, of whom twenty-seven were sons, according to another tradition, which seems to be legendary. Many of his children went, during his lifetime, to preach his doctrine in Egypt, Arabia, Turkestan, and India. He died at Baghdad on the 8th of the month of Rabi‘ ii., 561 a.h. [1166 A.D.]. 2. ieyewc?.—Besides the above facts, the numer- ous traditions which have been preserved concern- ing ‘Abd al-Qadir are for the most part of a legendary character. They deal with his austeri- ties, his visions, and his miracles. Among them are the following ;—His mother bore him when she was sixty years old. As a nursling he declined to take the breast in the month of Ramadan. When he came to Baghdad to study, the prophet Ilidr appeared to him and prevented him from entering the city ; he remained seven years before the walls, practising asceticism and living on herbs. When he withdrew into the deserts around Baghdad, he was visited by the same prophet gidr, and was fed miraculously. He also received cakes, herbs, and water from the heavens, on his pilgrimage to Mecca. In the desert he was tormented by Satan, who appeared to him under various forms. From time to time he fixed his abode in tlie ruins of Aiwan Kdsra, the famous palace of Chosroes (Le Strange, Eastern Caliphate, p. 34). One tradition makes him spend eleven years in a tower which ever since bears the name of Btirj al-‘Ajami, ‘ the tower of the Persian.’ One day Satan tried to seduce him by a false vision. While he stood on the seashore with a great thirst, a cloud sailed towards him from which fell a kind of dew. He quenched his thirst with this dew, and then a great light appeared, and a form, and he heard a voice saying to him, ‘I allow thee that which is forbidden.’ ‘May God preserve us from Satan, the accursed one,’ replied the ascetic. At once the light gave place to darkness, and the form became smoke. He was asked later how he had recognized the deceitfulness of this vision. He answered: ‘By the fact that God does not advise to do shameful things.’ While he taught, he was often seen lifted up from the ground; he would walk a few paces through the air and then return to his pulpit. Once, as he was speaking in the Nizamiya school, a Jinni appeared in the form of a snake, which wound itself around his body and exchanged a few words with him. One year the river Tigris rose high, and the inhabitants of Baghdad, fearing their city would be flooded, came to implore the protection of the wonder-worker. Al-Jilani ad- vanced to the bank of the river, planted his stick in the ground, saying, ‘Thus far.’ From that moment the waters decreased. Many of these legends have a close resemblance to those of Christian hagiography. 3. Works.—Many works, mystical treatises, col- lections of prayers and sermons, are ascribed to him. Brockelmann (Arab. Litt. i. 435 f.) mentions twenty-four titles of his books still existing in MS. in the libraries of Europe. The two most imjDortant are :—Al-ghunya litdlib tariq al-haqq, ‘ Sufficiency for the seeker of the way of truth,’ and tlie Eutilli al-ghaib, ‘The conquests of the mystery.’ The latter work contains his mystical teaching, collected by his son ‘Abd ar-Razzaq. It was printed in Persian at Lucknow in 1880 ; in Arabic at Cairo in 1303 A.H. A collection of sermons (Hutab) and of ‘ Sessions ’ (Majalis) was printed at Cairo in 1302, a hizb at Alexandria in 1304. In the language of the dervish orders, a hizb is a kind of service composed in great part of passages from the Qur’an. Le Chatelier iConfr. Musul. du HMjaz, p. 23, n. 1) cites also a collection of prayers named in Turkish Evradi Sherlfeh, printed at Constantinople in 1869 A.D. A wird (plu. aurdd\ Turk, evrdd) is a short invocation. His remaining works include exhorta- tions, prayers, a treatise on the Divine names, mystical poems, one of which is on the author’s being lifted up into the higher spheres. Ibn Taimiya commented on some of his maxims. 4. Teaching.—His teaching may be gathered from the above-mentioned works (cf. also the Lawdqih al-anwdr of ash-Sha‘rani, ed. of Cairo, 1316, i. pp. 100-105) and from the tradition of his order. It is that of orthodox Muslim mysticism. One cannot fail to recognize a certain Christian influ- ence in it, especially in the importance given to the virtues of charity, humility, meekness, in his precept of obedience to the spiritual director, and in the aim held before an ascetic, which is spiritual death and the entire self-surrender of the soul to God. Al-Jilani’s respect for Jesus was very great, and the tradition of this respect is still kept in his order. His love of poverty recalls that of St. Francis of Assisi. In all parts of the Muslim world the poor put themselves under his protec- tion, and ask for alms in his name. His mystical teaching is expounded in his book, Futuh al-gJiaib. Among the titles of its 78 chapters, the following are characteristic :—Spiritual death ; unconscious- ness of created things; the banishment of cares from the heart; drawing near unto God; unveil- ing and vision; the soul and its states; self-sur- render to God ; fear and hope; how to reach God through the medium of a spiritual director; poverty. The book contains expressions that are altogether Christian. Commending the excellence of becoming dead to created things and to one’s own will, the author says, ‘ The sign that you have died to your lusts is that you are like a child in the arms of its mother; the sign that you have died to your own will is that you wish nothing but the will of God.’ Exhorting the soul to search after God, he hits upon an expression of St. Augustine: ‘Rise and hasten to fly unto Him.’ A little further on, he appropriates the famous comparison of the corpse : ‘ Be in the hands of God like a dead body in the hands of the washer.’ 'The effect of this self-surrender of the soul is spiritual clear-mindedness and joy. It is a custom in Muslim mysticism to ascribe the essence of the teaching of the founder of an order to some anterior personages, by means of a chain of intermediaries who go as far back even as Muhammad. Among the predecessors, thus cited, of al-Jilani should be named the famous ascetic Abu-l-Qasim al-Junaid (died A.H. 268). Certain traditions attribute to our mystic, especi- ally while on his deathbed, some very proud words which contrast with what we have just said about his feelings and his doctrine. They are thus re- ported by al-Biqa‘i (Goldziher, Muh. Stud. ii. p. 289): ‘ The sun greets me before he rises; the year greets me before it begins, and it unveils to me all things that shall happen in its course ... I plunge into the sea of God’s knowledge, and I have seen Him with my eyes. I am the living evidence of God’s existence . . .’ Similar sayings are ascribed to many of the great mystics of Islam. It is pro- bable tliat they are the svork of enthusiastic dis- ciples, and that they express only the close union of the mystic with God in a symbolic fashion. 5. Order.—The order, or brotherhood, founded by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani bears the name al- Qadiriya. It has great importahce in Islam. After the death of the founder it was led by his sons and then by their descendants. The majority of his sons became disciples of their father, ascetics, missionaries, and men of learning like him. 'The eldest was ‘Abd ar-Razzaq (a.h. 528-603), the youngest Yahya (550-600). It was ‘Abd ar-Razzaq