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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    ■who succeeded his father in the leadership of the order, and who built over the tomb of the founder the mosque with seven gilt domes, once celebrated by lustorians and poets, but to-day lying in ruins (Le Strange, Baghdad, p. 348 f.). Along with the order the posterity of al-Jilani’s children have spread all over the Muslim world. Branches of this family can be found especially in Baghdad, Cairo, Hamah, and Ya‘u in the district of Aleppo. A Western tradition claims that one son of al- Jilani, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (532-602), emigrated to Fez; but this is contradicted by another tradition (Qala’id al-jawdhir, p. 54), according to which ‘Abd al-‘Aziz emigrated only to the province of Jibal. Baghdad has remained the moral centre of the order. But the jurisdiction of the mother- house does not extend bevond Mesopotamia, Syria, and Turkey. In the otlier Muslim countries the brotherhood went through a process of disintegra- tion, and the congregations have ceased to be sub- ordinate to the mother-house. The monastery (zdwiya) of Baghdad was destroyed by Shah Ismail, and restored by Sultan Sulaiman. The branches of the brotherhood reach out as far as the Farther East, into the Dutch East Indies and Chinese Yunnan. In India there are many kinds of Qadiriyas. The Qadiriya Akbariya, the best-known, founded at the end of the 6th cent. A.H. by Shaih al-Akbar Muhyi ad- Din ibn al- ‘Arab! al-Katimi, forms a distinct order; the Bl Nawd are begging/agirs, recruited from the inferior castes of Muslims, and connected with the Qadiriya. In Arabia the brotherhood is powerful. It possesses important zawiyas in Jiddah and Medina, and has thirty muqaddims (prefects of congregations) in Mecca. In Constantinople it owns forty houses (takyas). It is widespread in Egypt, at Cairo, all along the Nile Valley ; and its missions have advanced as far as Khartum, Kor- dofan, Darfur, Wadai, Bornu, and Sokoto. There are zawiyas at Tripoli and Ghadames. In Algeria and Morocco the order consists of various decen- tralized congregations whose membership reaches a high figure. 24,000 are reckoned in Algeria (Depont and Coppolani), and in the province of Oran alone two hundred chapels (qubhas), under the name of Sidi al-Jilani, are to be found (Rinn). The brotherhood makes great efforts to convert the Berbers to Islam. The dhikr of the order is nothing but the Muslim confession of faith: la ilah illd-llah, ‘ There is no God but Allah.’ But according to a usage, probably instituted by al-Jilani himself, these words are not always pronounced entirely. During the prayer in common, which is accompanied by motions of the head and of the body, and in which the dervishes endeavour to attain a state of ecstatic excitement, after having already pronounced the whole formula, they say only Allah, Allah! and finally, when the rhythm becomes more rapid, they pronounce nothing but hu, hi, ha, the soimd being sustained until loss of breath. Many orders or brotherhoods have separated themselves from the Qadirite order. The most famous, besides the above-mentioned Akbariyas of India, are the Rifa'iyas, commonly called the ‘ Howling Dervishes,’ founded by Ahmad ar-Rifa‘a (died A.H. 570), a nephew of al-Jilani; the Bada- wiyas, an Egyptian order, and the ‘Isawiyas. The other orders are those of the Bakka’iyas, Jaba- wiyas, Jishtiyas, Baiyumiyas, Dasuqiyas, Maula- niyas, ‘Arusiya-Salamiyas, Bu-‘Aliyas,‘Ammariyas (cf. Muhammadanism, § viii.). J.—(Q OUIENTAL: Bah b. Yahya at-Tadifi (died a.h.'963), Cairo 130i The _ the most important. Brockelmann {Arab. Litt. i. p. 435) mentions three other biographies still in MS. Colas translated the Nuzha an-nazir, by ‘Abd al-Latif al-Hashiml’ Cl. Huar„ (lAtt. Arab. pp. 344 , 368) mentions that ‘Afit ad-DIn al-Yafi‘i (died 1367 a.d.) and Shihab ad-Din al-Qastallani (died 1517 A.D.) collected a number of interesting stories relating to Sidi Jilani. The Naiija at-tahqiq, by Muhammad ad-Dilal, lithographed at Fez, a.h. 1309, is translated by T. H. Weir in JRAS, 1903, p. 155 £f. His Ufe by Dhahabi is printed, trans., and commented on by D. S. Margoliouth in JRAS, 1907, p. 267 £f. On the mystics generally see the Nafahat of Jami, Calcutta, A.D. 1859; the WafayHt of Ibn Hallikan, Bulaq, 2 vols., a.h. 1299 (Eng. trans., Paris, 1843-1871); a recent Turkish work on the origin of the principal Muslim orders and their doetrines is Mir^at aUMaqasid fi dafi-Umafasid, by Ahmed Rifa'at Effendi, Constantinople, n.d. (2) WESTERN: Rinn, Marabouts et Ehouan, Algiers, 1884 ; Depont-Coppolani, Les confriries religUuses rnumUmarves, published under the auspices of M. Jules Cambon, Algiers, 1897 ; Le Chatelier, Les corifriries musulmanes du Bidjaz, Paris, 1887; Carra de Vaux, Gazali, Paris, Alcan, 1902; Brockel- mann, Gesck. der Arab. Litt., Berlin, 1897. Among older pub- lications, G&6ral de Neveu, Les Ehouans, 1845; Mercier, ‘ Etudes sur la conWrie des Khouan de Sidi Abd el-Kader el- DjUani,’ RSA de Constantine, iii [1809]. B'^^’ Carra de Vaux. ‘ABD AR-RAZZAQ.—i. Life.—Thewell-known Sufi, Kamal ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Razzaq Abu ’1- Ghana’im ibn Jamal ad-Din al-Qasliani (Kashani, Kashi), was a native of Qashan (Kashan), a con- siderable to-wTi in the Jibal province of Persia, situated about half-way between Teheran and Isfahan. The year of his birth is not recorded, but Rajji Halifa (iv. p. 427) gives as the date of his death A.H. 730 = A.D. 1329-30. Elsewhere he gives A.H. 887 = A.D. 1482-83 ; but this is manifestly an error due to confusion with the historian Kamal ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Razzaq of Samarcand. The former date is confirmed by the following anecdote (Jami, Nafahat al-uns, Calcutta, 1859, p. 557). On one occasion ‘Abd ar-Razzaq was accompanying the Emir Iqbal Sistani on the road to Smtaniya, and asked him in the course of conversation what his shaih—meaning Ahmad ibn Mustefa Rukn ad-Din ‘Ala’ ad-Daula of Simnan—thought of the cele- brated Sufi Muhyi ad-Din Ibn ‘Arabi. The Emir replied that Rukn ad-Din regarded him as a master of mystical science, but believed him to be mis- taken in his pantheistic doctrine touching the unity of the Divine substance; whereupon ‘Abd ar- Razzaq retorted that the doctrine in question was the foundation of Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy, that it was the most excellent he had ever heard, and that it was held by aU the saints and prophets. These remarks were communicated by the Emir Iqbal to his shaih, Rukn ad-Din, who stigmatized Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine as abominable and far worse than avo-wed materialism. Jami has preserved the correspondence which ensued between ‘Abd ar- Razzaq and his adversary {Nafahut, pp. 558-568). This dispute enables us to fix the epoch at which ‘Abd ar-Razzaq flourished, since the shaih Rukn ad-Din, his contemporary, was charged -u-ith a political mission to the court of Abu Sa‘id, son of Uljaitu, the Mongol sovereign of Persia (A.D. 1316-1335), and we Icnow, moreover, that he com- posed one of his works, entitled the ‘Urwa, in 1321 (JA for 1873, p. 133). This book was read by ‘Abd ar-Razzaq, who addressed to the author a letter on the subject (Nur AUah of Shustar in the Majdlis al-mu'minln, ib. p. 135, also British Museum MSS add. No. 26,716, fol. 331 vo. and No. 23,541, fol. 364 vo.). This letter, ■with the answer of Rukn ad-Din, is extant in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge {Catalogue of tde Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, by E. H. Palmer, p. 116). Consequently there can be little doubt that the closing years of ‘Abd ar-Razzaq’s fife fall within the reign of Abu Sa‘id, and he may weU have died, according to the earlier date mentioned by Rajji Halifa, in A.H. 730 = A.D. 1329-30. Concerning the outward events of his life we