The Spiritual and Physical Progeny of ʿAbd Al-Karīm Al-Qushayrī

Journal of Sufĳi Studies 2 (2013) 46–77

brill.com/jss

The Spiritual and Physical Progeny of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī: A Preliminary Study in Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī’s (d. 514/1120) Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl Francesco Chiabotti University of Provence France

Abstract This article discusses discoveries made concerning the teachings of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī based on a preliminary analysis of the manuscript Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa l-amthāl recorded by Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī (d. 514/1120), one of Qushayrī’s six sons. This text is the most signifĳicant attestation to the transmission of Qushayrī’s influence as it was passed down directly by his progeny. The fĳirst part of this study will briefly examine the careers of Qushayrī’s sons and their intellectual and spiritual legacy. The primary questions here are: what did the sons receive from their father and how did they transmit it? What role did familial bonds play in the transmission of religious knowledge and the mystical path? How should we understand the term Qushayriyya that the biographical sources used to describe the Qushayrī family? The second part will concentrate on the above mentioned manuscript and its transmission. After summing up the life and the career of Abū Naṣr and discussing issues of this manuscript’s authorship, the signifĳicance of the term shawāhid will be analyzed according to the role of poetry in Sufĳi literature. Then three important aspects of the Kitāb will be also examined. Résumé Cet article se base sur des découvertes à propos de l’enseignement de ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, sur la base d’une analyse initiale du manuscrit Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa l-Amthāl, écrit par Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī (m. 514/1120), l’un des six enfants de Qushayrī. Ce texte représente le plus important témoignage de la transmission de l’influence de Qushayrī opérée directement par sa progéniture. La première partie de cette étude examinera brièvement la carrière des enfants de Qushayrī, ainsi que leur héritage intellectuel et spirituel. Qu’ont reçu les enfants de Qushayrī de leur père et comment l’ont-ils à leur tour transmis ? Quel rôle a joué le lien familial dans le cadre général de la transmission des connaissances et de la voie mystique ? La seconde partie se concentrera sur le manuscrit susmentionné et sur ses voies de transmission. Après avoir résumé la vie et la carrière d’Abū Naṣr et discuté la question de la paternité du manuscrit, nous analyserons la signifĳication du terme shawāhid mentionné dans le titre, dans le cadre général du questionnement sur le rôle de la poésie dans la littérature soufĳie. Trois thèmes majeurs du Kitāb seront aussi présentés. Keywords ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī, Arabic language, Arabic poetry, brotherhood, genealogy, initiation, Iran—11th century, khirqa, Khurasan, Kitāb al-shawāhid wa-l-amthāl, mathal, mysticism, Nishapur, Persian Sufĳism, shawāhid, Sufĳism, ṭarīqa © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013

DOI: 10.1163/22105956-12341246

F. Chiabotti / Journal of Sufĳi Studies 2 (2013) 46–77

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Introduction This article discusses discoveries made concerning the teachings of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī based on my initial analysis of the manuscript Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl recorded by Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī. This text is the most signifĳicant attestation to the transmission of Qushayrī’s influence as it was passed down directly by his progeny. In general, the analysis of the unpublished manuscript tradition, which represents a substantial part of his textual heritage, is crucial for ascertaining a more precise understanding of his literary contributions and for the reconstruction of his life. The fĳirst part of my study, “The Spiritual and Physical Progeny,” will examine the careers of Qushayrī’s sons and their intellectual and spiritual legacy. The primary questions here are: what did the sons receive from their father and how did they transmit it? What role did familial bonds play in the transmission of religious knowledge and the mystical path? How should we understand the term Qushayriyya that the biographical sources used to describe the Qushayrī family? In the second part of the study, “Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qushayrī (d. 514/1120) and his Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl,” I concentrate on the specifĳied text and its transmission by one of Qushayrī’s six sons, Abū Naṣr. Of all the sons, he was the most similar to his father in character and career. After summing up the life and the career of Abū Naṣr and discussing issues of this manuscript’s authorship, I analyze the signifĳicance of the term shawāhid found in the title, as it raises many crucial questions about the role of poetry in Sufĳi literature. Then I examine three important aspects of the Kitāb: a) its Persian character; b) the information it provides on the role of Qushayrī as a spiritual guide; and, c) the problem of harmonizing the two sources of Qushayrī’s Sufĳism: the Baghdadi school of Iraq and the Persian tradition of Nishapur and Khurasan.

A. The Spiritual and Physical Progeny The history of the Qushayrī family has already been traced by Richard W. Bulliet in his study of the patrician families of Nishapur.1 Broadly speaking, these patrician families represent the core of the social and intellectual life of the 1 Richard W. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 150–9. For a more detailed analysis of the history of this family, see Francesco Chiabotti, “ ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), family ties and transmission in Nishapur’s Sufĳi milieu during the 10th and 11th centuries,” forthcoming in Portrait of Family with Saints, ed. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Alexandre Papas (Klaus Schwarz Verlag).

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medieval capital of Khurasan. From the historical records, it is evident that the sons of Qushayrī played a leading role in the social and intellectual life of the city. In his Ṭabaqāt Subkī praises the sons of Qushayrī as sitta nujūm zāhira or “six luminous stars.”2 Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh (d. 477/1084),3 the fĳirst son of Qushayrī, for whom he had a special regard,4 was in charge of the majlis al-waʿẓ, which came to be known as “a garden of superior and subtle realities” (rawḍat al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-l-daqāʾiq)5. Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Wāḥid (d. 494/1101),6 the second son of Qushayrī, was the khaṭīb of the Manīʿī mosque after the death of the Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī. He also succeeded his father in the charge of teaching hadith (imlāʾ al-ḥadīth) at the Niẓāmiyya mosque.7 How indebted were they to their father and how difffuse were his writings and influence? If we regard the history of Sufĳism, we may be tempted to say that the rise of Sufĳi families is a later phenomenon which came some centuries after the birth of the great Sufĳi orders. Recognizing the diffferent nature of Sufĳism for the age under consideration, we can nevertheless see that even at this early stage family structure was deeply linked to the transmission and diffusion of both the path (talqīn al-dhikr; khirqa; akhdh al-ṭarīq) and the doctrine (ʿilm; iʿtiqād). Fritz Meier pointed out how the family represents the inner core of the circle of a master, as in the case of a contemporary of Qushayrī, Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr.8 In regards to the Qushayrī family, the relationship between the 2 Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAlī al-Subkī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-shāfĳiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw, 10 vols. (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1965), 5:225. 3 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:68–9. 4 Wa-kāna wāliduhu yuʿāmiluhu muʿāmalat al-aqrān wa-yaḥtarimuhu limā yarā ʿalayhi min al-ṭarīqa al-ṣāliḥa (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:69). 5 Ibid., 5:69. 6 Ibid., 5:225–8; and Bulliet, The Patricians, 154. 7 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:227, quoting ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir b. Ismāʿīl al-Fārisī, Kitāb al-siyāq li-ta⁠ʾrīkh Naysābūr, in The Histories of Nishapur, ed. Richard Nelson Frye (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965). The text of the Siyāq has been edited and published in 2005 in Iran as Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī, Mukhtaṣar min Kitāb al-siyāq li-tārīkh Naysābūr, ed. Muḥammad Kāẓim al-Maḥmūdī (Tehran: Mīrāth Maktūb, 2005). As the editor pointed out, the MS published by Frye is only an abridged version of the original text. Bulliet expresses some doubts on the scholarly activity of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid: “If this is so, Abū Saʿīd would seem to have been holding a more exalted post as director of ḥadīth in the Niẓāmiya then his father, which is highly unlikely” (Bulliet, The Patricians, 154). He surely held lectures on hadith and transmitted them also to his son Hibat al-Raḥmān, as evidenced by an isnād quoted by Subkī: “[. . .] akhbaranā Hibat al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Qushayrī imlāʾan ḥaddathanā al-imām Rukn al-islām wālidī imlāʾan [. . .]” (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:273, entry no. 509 on ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥabīb al-Māwardī). 8 Fritz Meier, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr (357–440/967–1049): Wirklichkeit und legende (TehranLiége: Bibliothèque Pahlavi, 1976), 384–402. “The most internal circle of followers was constituted by his family” (ibid., 384). Other examples of the role of family members in the transmission of the spiritual path can be found on 444–5.


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core family and the transmission of knowledge has been well recorded by the sources since the earliest of them was recorded by a grandson of Qushayrī, Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī (d. 529/1135),9 who grew up in the household of Qushayrī, as his father was absent from Nishapur during his childhood.10 ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir was born in 451/1059. At the age of fĳive, he was taught the profession of faith in Persian. In his youth he became a student-servitor (khādim) of Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī for four years, after which he began travelling in the eastern lands of the Islamic word. He went to Ghazna, Lahore, and then India where he taught Qushayrī’s Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt.11 ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir also left a precise description of his uncles as well as the women of his family. His mother Karīma, one of the daughters of Qushayrī, received a strong education from both her father and her mother Fāṭima bt. Abī ʿAlī al-Daqqāq: she was said to have inherited the praxis of Sufĳism from her mother and the path of knowledge from her father.12 Fāṭima bt. Abī ʿAlī had been similarly educated by her father Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq as if she had been a son.13 She was said to be the “glory of the women of his time,”14 “daughter of the master, wife of the master, mother of the masters.”15 She studied under several important personalities 9 On him see Travis Zadeh, The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (London: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 345–50. 10 Bulliet, The Patricians, 167–8. 11 ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt: Tafsīr ṣūfī kāmil li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī, 6 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-ʿArabī, 1968); and George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 83. 12 Akhadhat tarīqat al-ʿibāda wa-l-zuhd ʿan wālidatihā [. . .] wa-l-maʿrifa ʿan wālidihā (Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab min Kitāb al-siyāq li-ta⁠ʾrīkh Naysābūr, ed. Khālid Ḥaydar [Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Fikr, 1993], 468). 13 Fārisī, Siyāq, fol. 76a-76b. 14 Fakhr nisāʾ ʿaṣrihā (Fārisī, Siyāq, fol. 76a; and Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 458–9). 15 Bint al-sayyid, zawjat al-sayyid, umm al-sādāt (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:106). The biographical sources do not mention any second wife. ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir says however that Fāṭima was the mother of six sons, boys and girls (ruziqat al-awlād al-sitta min al-dhukūr wa-l-ināth) (Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 469). But we know that Qushayrī had six boys and at least fĳive daughters (Bulliet, The Patricians, 153). Knysh afffĳirms that Qushayrī had three sons from a second wife. Hamid Algar, in his introduction of Barbara von Schlegell’s partial translation of the Risāla, states: “[h]e had a total of six sons: three by Kadbanu Fatima, herself a woman of scholarly accomplishment, and three by a second wife, the daughter of a certain Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Charkhi al-Baladi,” but he does not give any reference. Algar’s source is most probably Badīʿ al-Zamān Farūzānfar, the Persian translator of the Risāla, who names Charkhi’s daughter in his introduction to the text without referring explicitly to a primary source. Heinz Halm, quoted by Algar, has made a genealogical tree of the Qushayrī family, but he does not mention any second wife. Cf. Alexander Knysh, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufĳism (Reading: Garret Publishing, 2007), xxii, n. 9; Hamid Algar, “Introduction,” in Qushayrī, Principles of Sufĳism, trans. B.R. von Schlegell (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1993), vii; Heinz Halm, Die Ausbreitung der šāfìʿitischen Rechtsschule von den Anfängen bis zum 8./14. Jahrhundert

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in Nishapur, among them Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī,16 and, according to the Asrār al-tawḥīd, may have assisted in the gatherings of shaykh Abū Saʿīd.17 She taught hadith to her children and to her grandson Abū l-Asʿad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Hibat al-Raḥmān al-Qushayrī (d. 548/1153).18 Abū Saʿd ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Samʿānī, who met Hibat al-Raḥmān in Nishapur, confĳirms this line of transmission of prophetical sayings.19 Evidence of transmission by the progeny can be found in the ijāza of a manuscript of the Risāla, Qushayrī’s major handbook on Sufĳism. The manuscript in question is MS Ayasofya 1817 in Turkey.20 According to it, Qushayrī authorized his grandson Hibat al-Raḥmān, the son of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, to spread the Risāla. Another manuscript, MS Escorial n. 735, is a copy of the Risāla written in 530/1136 by Abū l-Muẓafffar ʿAbd al-Munʿim b. ʿAbd al Karīm b. Hawāzin al-Qushayrī (d. 532/1137–8), another of Qushayrī’s sons.21 During his travels in Khurasan, Ibn ʿAsākir, the famous historian of Damascus, received many hadiths from Qushayrī’s sons, especially the above mentioned Abū l-Muẓafffar, as evidenced in the asānīd of his Tarīkh madīnat Dimashq.22 Samʿānī, who also traveled to Nishapur and collected prophetic traditions there,23 met members (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1974), 61; Badīʿ al-Zamān Farūzānfar (trans.), Tarjumah-i Risāla-i Qushayriyyah (Tehran: Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī va Farhangī, 1374/1995), 48. 16 Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 459. 17 Muḥammad b. Munavvar, The Secrets of God’s Mystical Oneness, or, the Spiritual Stations of Shaikh Abu Saʿid, trans. John O’Kane (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishres, 1992), 161; and Meier, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr, 54–5. 18 We fĳind the name of her grandson Hibat al-Raḥmān in Subkī: ʿan jaddatī al-ḥurra Fāṭima bt. al-ustādh Abī ʿAli al-Daqqāq (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 1:2). 19 ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad al-Samʿānī, al-Taḥbīr fī l-muʿjam al-kabīr, ed. Munīra Nājī Sālim, 2 vols. (Baghdad: Maṭbaʿat al-Irshād, 1975), 2:369; and Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:329. Samʿānī defĳines the Qushayrī family as “a house (bayt) of knowledge, hadith and Sufĳism” (Samʿanī, Taḥbīr, 1:51). 20 Helmut Ritter, “Philologika XIII: Arabische Handschriften in Anatolien und İstanbul (Fortsetzung),” Oriens 3.1 (1950): 31–107. 21 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:192–3; and Hartwig Derenbourg, Les manuscrits arabes de l’Escurial, 2,1 Morale et politique (Paris: Leroux, 1903), 24. 22 Ibn ʿAsākir travelled in Khurasan and met Abū l-Muẓafffar al-Qushayrī who transmitted to him some hadiths (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq [Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1990], 1:84). On him and his travels see Nikita Elisséefff, “Ibn ʿAsākir,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 12 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1954–2004; hereafter EI2), 3:713. 23 Samʿānī, Taḥbīr, 2:369. On his travels, see Rudolf Sellheim, “al-Samʿānī, Abū Saʿd (incorrectly Saʿīd) ʿAbd al-Karīm”, in EI2, 8:1024. Samʿānī also received hadiths from a daughter of Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh al-Qushayrī called Amat al-Qāhir al-Qushayriyya (d. 530/1136): “samiʿtu minhā awrāqan min al-ḥadīth bi-Naysābūr.” He also met the daughter of Abū Naṣr Amat Allāh al-Qushayriyya (d. 541/1147), Abu Naṣr had at least three daughters (Ḥurra Amat al-Raḥīm, Sāra Amat al-Raḥmān, Ḥalīla Amat Allāh) and all of them are mentioned by Samʿānī in his Taḥbīr (cf. Samʿānī, Taḥbīr, 2:400, 413).


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of the Qushayrī family and received a certifĳicate of audition (samāʿ) from Hibat al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid for Qushayrī’s ʿUyūn al-ajwiba fī funūn al-asʾila.24 At the end of this section, I will discuss the role of Hibat al-Raḥmān as a spiritual guide and transmitter of a khirqa he received from Qushayrī. I must also mention that his name is linked teaching sessions for the transmission of hadith (amālī) of Qushayrī. Qushayrī started in the year 437/1045–6 at the age of sixty-one giving lectures on hadith until he died in 465/1072. Ibn ʿAsākir states that his teaching was accompanied by the recitation of poetry and mystical allusions.25 Samʿānī has also recorded this teaching activity in his al-Muntakhab min muʿjam al-shuyūkh, and tell us that his grandson Hibat al-Raḥmān attended Qushayrī’s lectures.26 For this statement there is concrete proof: a manuscript from Damascus that is a riwāya (transmission) from Hibat al-Raḥmān of Qushayrī’s lectures on hadith.27 A proof of the transmission of exegetical material can be found in Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Qurṭūbī’s al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, which contains many quotations from Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī: in at least one passage, Abū Naṣr states that his direct source was his father.28 According to Gramlich, Abū Naṣr also had a special role in the difffusion of the Risāla. He authorized Muḥammad Abū l-Faḍl al-Hamadhānī to teach his father’s handbook, who in turn taught it to Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā, who then transmitted the ijāza to Majd al-Dīn al-Baghdādī (d. 616/1219).29 In the second part of this article I will describe Abū Naṣr’s career in greater detail.

24 This text has been edited by Florian Sobieroj, Die Responsensammlung Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušairī’s über das Sufĳitum. Kritische Edition der ʿUyūn al-aǧwiba fī funūn al-asʾila (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012). 25 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 274. 26 ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad al-Samʿānī, al-Muntakhab min muʿjam shuyūkh al-imām al-ḥāfĳiẓ Abī Saʿd ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad b. Manṣūr al-Samʿānī al-Tamīmī, ed. Muwafffaq b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Qādir, 4 vols. (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1996), 3:1830. 27 Qushayrī, Amālī al-Qushayrī, a microfĳilm of this manuscript is available at the Asad Library of Damascus under the code (raqm al-wurūd) “2 tāʾ 1135,” fols. 107–118. See also the catalogue of the Ẓahiriyya Library: Ẓāhiriyya ḥadīth, 377; Ẓāhiriyya majāmīʿ, 1:268. On fol. 107 we read: “ju’z fīhi muntaqā amālī Abī l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karim b. Hawāzim al-Qushayrī. Riwāya Abī l-Asʿad Hibat al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. ʿAbd al-Karīm, wa fīhi ghayr dhālika [. . .].” 28 Wa-qāla al-Qushayrī Abū Naṣr, wa-kāna al-imām wālidī raḥimahu Allāh yaqūl [. . .] (al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-tafsīr, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī [Beirut: al-Risāla], 1:455 [Q. 2:35]). In this case Abū Naṣr is quoting from the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, 1:80. 29 Richard Gramlich (trans.), Das Sendschreiben al-Qušayris über das Sufĳitum. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert, Freiburger Islamstudien, bd. 12 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989), 17. See also Fritz Meier, Die Fawāʾiḥ al-ğamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-ğalāl des Nağm ad-Dīn al-Kubrā. Eine Darstellung mystischer Erfahrungen im Islam aus der Zeit um 12000 N. Chr. Herausgegeben und erläutert von Fritz Meier (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1957), 13.

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One of the trademarks of the Daqqāq-Qushayrī family was their mastery of Arabic language and poetry. According to Jāmī, the majālis of Daqqāq were held in such a high language that people were unable to remain until the end of the session.30 Qushayrī taught Arabic to his children who eventually distinguished themselves in their perfect expressions and literary capabilities.31 All this led J. Chabbi to afffĳirm that “such knowledge was not a general rule among the Khorasanian ascetics.”32 The remarkable relationship that Qushayrī had with his sons is confĳirmed by an episode quoted by Subkī. One of his sons fell seriously ill and was about to die. The pain that this possibility awoke in Qushayrī prompted a vision of God in a dream where he told him to take all the healing verses of the Qur’an (āyāt al-shifāʾ)33 and to recite them over the boy, then to write them on a glass, fĳill it with a drink and to let the boy drink from it. The son subsequently recovered.34 Elsewhere, Ibn al-Jawzī reported in his Muntaẓam the reaction of the sons to the father’s passing: “Qushayrī was buried beside his master. None of his sons entered his house nor touched his clothes or his books for several years as a sign of respect and veneration for him (iḥtirāman wa-taʿẓīman lahu).”35 This special relationship between master and sons, which was not unique in Nishapur at the time (the Juwaynī family is another example),36 is echoed in the terminology that was later applied to describe the Qushayrī family “as a whole.” Not yet an order, but something more than a school of Sufĳism, the Daqqāqiyya-Qushayriyya was an organized structure of teaching that widely disseminated the Sufĳism of Qushayrī alongside the more general teaching of hadith and other fĳields of religious knowledge. This “structure” is referred to 30 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad al-Jāmī, Nafaḥāt al-uns min ḥaḍarāt al-quds, ed. Muḥammad Adīb Jādir (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2003), 1:418–21. “Daqqāq was an excellent orator, had learned Arabic, and was so expert in grammar that he was called Abū ʿAlī al-Naḥwī” (Jacqueline Chabbi, “Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, http://www.iranica.com/articles/abu-ali-daqqaq-hasan-b [accessed 13 May, 2011]). Jāmī’s source is ʿAbd Allāh Ansārī, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfĳiyya, ed. Muḥammad Sarwar Mawlāʾī (Tehrān: Intishārāt-i Tūs, 1362 /1983), 530. 31 Abū Sāʿd was dhū ḥaẓẓ wāfĳir fī l-ʿarabiyya or “possessed an abundant part in Arabic language” (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:69). Abū Saʿīd akhadha ḥaẓẓ wāfĳir fī l-adab or “learned a great portion of Arabic literature” (ibid., 5:225). Abū Naṣr received training in the Arabic language from his father when he was still a child (zaqqahu al-ʿarabiyya fī ṣabāhu zaqqan) (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 308). 32 Chabbi, “Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq.” 33 The verses are Sūrat al-tawba, 14 (Q. 9:14); Yūnus, 57 (Q. 10:57); al-Naḥl, 69 (Q. 16:69); al-Isrāʾ, 8 (Q. 17:8); al-Shuʿarāʾ, 80 (Q. 26:80); and al-Fuṣṣilāt, 44 (Q. 41:44). 34 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:158. 35 Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī ta⁠ʾrīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, 10 vols. (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1357–69), 8:280. A longer account of Qushayrī’s death and his sons’ reaction can be found in Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī’s Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ al-shāfĳiʿiyya, ed. Muḥī l-Dīn ʿAlī Najīb, 2 vols. (Beirut : Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 1992), 2:568. 36 Bulliet, The Patricians, 115–33.


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in the early sources in a way that is similar to how the ṭuruq would be later described in the history of Sufĳism. In his Muntakhab Ṣarīfīnī speaks clearly of a shīʿa daqqāqiyya37 while ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī speaks of an ʿaṣabat al-daqqāqiyya38 or the male progeny of Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq. Also relevant is the title of Qushayrī’s grandson Hibat al-Raḥmān who is called khaṭīb Naysābūr wa-muqaddam al-Qushayriyya bihā or “preacher of Nishapur and the most eminent of the Qushayriyya there.”39 According to later sources Hibat al-Raḥmān passed on the khirqa he received from Qushayrī indicating that he had a signifĳicant role in transmitting the legacy of his grandfather. We have already mentioned that his grandfather authorized him to teach the Risāla, but he is not only linked to the spread of this text. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī in his Ta⁠ʾyīd al-ḥaqīqa al-ʿaliyya fī tashyīd al-ṭarīqat al-shādhiliyya relates the words of Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī (d. 653/1245), who died in Damascus and also has a spiritual chain tracing back to Qushayrī through Abū l-Ḥasan b. Muʾayyid b. Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī. Apparently Shahrazūrī received the khirqa from Hibat al-Raḥmān who in turn states: “I took the khirqa from my grandfather the Master Abū l-Qāsim, who took it from Abī ʿAlī al-Daqqāq . . .”40 Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791) in his Risāla fī lubs al-khirqa quotes once again this chain of transmission which passes through Suyūṭī.41 A much earlier proof of the khirqa 37 Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 371. This term is absent in Fārisī, Siyāq, fol. 52a. 38 Fārisī, Siyāq, fol. 45b. Quoted also by Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 308. 39 Subkī, Tabaqāt, 7:329. This title was already mentioned by Samʿānī, Taḥbīr, 2:369. 40 This chain of transmission has been mentioned by Denis Gril, “De la khirqa à la ṭarīqa: Continuité et évolution dans l’identifĳication et la classifĳication des voies,” in Le Soufĳisme à l’époque ottomane—Sufĳism in the Ottoman Era, ed. Rachida Chih and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2010), 76. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Ta⁠ʾyīd al-ḥaqīqa al-ʿaliyya fī tashyīd al-ṭarīqat al-shādhiliyya, ed. ʿAbd Allah b. Muḥammad b. Al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī (Cairo: Dār al-Fātiḥ li-l-Turāth al-Islamī, 1994), 13–14. Qushayrī’s spiritual chain is described as akhdh al-ṭarīq (Qushayrī, al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd [Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 2003], 449; Gramlich [trans.], Sendschreiben, 408; and Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:157). Other later hagiographical sources speak of a Qushayriyya. ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Ṣaghīr al-Fāsī (d. 1134/1721–22) gives four diffferent chains of transmission from Abu Muẓafffar ʿAbd al-Munʿim b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, Hibāt al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Qushayrī, Abū l-Futūḥ al-Sādayākhī, and Abū l-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī (ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Ṣaghīr al-Fāsī, al-Minaḥ al-bādiyya fī l-asānīd al-‘āliyya wa-l-musalsalāt al-zāhiyya wa-l-ṭuruq al-hādiyya al-kāfĳiyya, ed. Muḥammad Ṣaqalī Ḥasanī [Rabat: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Dīniyya, 2005], 170–1). Abū Rabīʿ Sulaymān al-Ḥawāt also mentions the ṭarīqa Qushayriyya as a spiritual method but does not quote any sanad. He describes the dhikr practice proposed by Qushayrī in his Tartīb al-sulūk (Abū Rabīʿ Sulaymān al-Ḥawāt, al-Rawḍa al-maqṣūda wa-l-ḥalal al-mamrūda fī ma⁠ʾāthir banī sawda, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Tīlānī, 2 vols. [Casablanca: Muʾassasa Aḥmad b. Sawada al-Thaqāfĳiyya, 1994], 1:388). 41 Cf. Gril, “De la khirqa,” 76. This text of Zabīdī, which is unpublished, is described in Denis Gril, “Sources manuscrites de l’histoire du soufīsme à Dār al-Kutub: un premier bilan,” Annales Islamologiques 28 (1994): 138–9. In his ʿIqd al-jawhar al-thamīn fī l-dhikr wa-ṭuruq al-ilbās al-talqīn, Zabīdī describes the Qushayriyya as a branch of the Junaydiyya and quotes the same sanad.

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investment function of Hibat al-Raḥmān can be found in the spiritual chain of one of the masters of ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī, namely Raḍī al-Dīn al-Ṭālaqānī (d. 590/1194), who was invested by Abū l-Asʿad in Nishapur in the family ribāṭ.42 Abū l-Asʿad Hibat al-Raḥmān was also one of the teachers of Ibn Faḍlān (d. 595/1199), who was another master of ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī.43 These elements lead us to conceptualize the Qushayriyya as a cohesive tradition of transmission that was deeply linked to the family network of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī rather than as a “ṭarīqa” as understood in later periods. There existed in Nishapur a place that unifĳied and embodied this family-based transmission of both Sufĳism and religious knowledge: the madrasa of Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq. The madrasa was built in 404/1001 and was active as a Sufĳi hospice. It also became a family mashhad after Qushayrī and some of his sons were buried there alongside master Abū ʿAlī.44 We can also understand the term Qushayriyya as referring to this madrasa Qushayriyya when recalling its usage with Hibat al-Raḥmān. In the year 548/1153 Nishapur was sacked by the Ghuzz armies, who destroyed the city. Another grandson of Qushayrī, Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn, lost his life.45 The history of the Qushayrīs, however, did not come at an end. A grandson of Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī, Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh al-Qushayrī al-Ṣafffār (d. 600/1204), the son of Abū Naṣr’s daughter Ḥurra Amat al-Raḥīm, wrote a book of forty hadiths in which he quotes the most important informants of his cited prophetic reports. The book starts with the most eminent of these authorities: his grandfather Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī.46 Thus, despite the earlier

cf. Âbîd Yasar Koçak, “Al-Murtaza al-Zabidī ve ʿikd al-gavhar al-samîn’î,” quoted in Gril, “De la khirqa,” 77. 42 Erik S. Ohlander, Sufĳism in the Age of Transition: ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī and the Rise of Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 91. 43 Ohlander, Sufĳism in the Age of Transition, 86. 44 On this madrasa see Bulliet, The Patricians, 250. 45 Bulliet, The Patricians, 77. 46 Abū Saʿd Abd Allāh al-Qushayrī al-Ṣafffār, Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn min masānīd al-mashāykh al-ʿashrūn ʿan aṣḥāb al-arbaʿīn, in Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn ḥadīthan, ed. Badr b. ʿAbd Allāh Badr, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Maktabat Aḍwāʾ al-Salaf), 219–320. On him see Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, 29 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1983), 21:403–4; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 8:156; and Bulliet, The Patricians, 164–5. He also quotes (p. 319) all the masters he could not mention in his Kitāb. The Qushayrī family, including the Furāwī, Ṣafffār, and Fārisī branches, is at the core of his network of transmission. He met among others the last two sons of Qushayrī, Abū l-Fatḥ and Abū Muẓafffar, Hibat al-Raḥmān and his brother Abū l-Maḥāsin, the above mentioned Abū l-Barakāt al-Furāwī, ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī, his grandmother Durdāna, sister of ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir, and two sisters of Abū Naṣr, Ḥalīla Amat Allāh and Sāra Amat al-Raḥmān, the aunts of the author.


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destruction, when Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770/1368–9) visited Nishapur during his travels, the city was still a flourishing and culturally active place.47

B. Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qushayrī (d. 514/1120) and his Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl Having discussed the role of familial networks of transmission through the example of the Qushayrī family, I now turn to a specifĳic, as yet unpublished text from the Qushayrī legacy. The Kitāb al-Shawāhid is at present the most important witness to the familial transmission of Qushayrī’s oral teachings. 1. The Author and His Work Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (d. 514/1120),48 the fourth son of Qushayrī, took charge of the family madrasa after the death of his father and had a leading role in the Ashʿari movement during the time of Niẓām al-Mulk, a role that he shared with the Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī. Of his brothers, he was the most similar to his father such that it was said that he was “a chip offf the old block” (ḥattā ka⁠ʾannahu shuqqa minhu shaqqan).49 He received from Qushayrī a solid education. Subkī in Abū Naṣr’s biographical, underlines his rhetorical capabilities. Under his father Abū Naṣr studied uṣūl, hadith and tafsīr, and like his father he was met with strong opposition for teaching Ashʿari theology in the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Baghdad alongside Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī. Makdisi has given a precise account of these events that took place in 469/1077. Niẓām al-Mulk had invited Abū Naṣr to Baghdad and arranged for him a preaching class in the Niẓāmiyya madrasa. His Ashʿari positions incited a protest from the Ḥanbali faction of the city. Makdisi points out that this protest was not due solely to the theological content of his preaching. Political tensions and a social imbalance in the capital had made Abū Naṣr’s activities in Baghdad especially susceptible to criticism. Subkī, lauding Abū Naṣr, says: “how many sinners repented in his majlis, how many unbelievers entered Islam

47 André Miquel, “Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,” in EI2, 3:735. Ibn Battuta, Voyages et périples choisis, trans. Paule Charles-Dominique (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 179. 48 Shams al-Dīn Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1983), 1:298–9; Fārisī, Siyāq, fols. 45b–46a; idem, Mukhtaṣar, 215–16; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 308; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:159–66; Heinz Halm, “al-Qushayrī,” in EI2, 5:526; Bulliet, The Patricians, 155–6; and George Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl et la résurgence de l’islam traditionaliste au XIe siècle (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1963), 350–66. 49 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:160.

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immediately [. . .].”50 While praise, it nonetheless reflects certain historical realities. On 6 Dhū l-Qaʿda, 469/1077, a Jew converted publicly after one of his gatherings. A parade for the event ended in a riot between the factions.51 Niẓām al-Mulk was obliged to intervene in order to quiet Ḥanbali protests in the city and remove Abū Naṣr to Nishapur. Miracles are also mentioned during the course of Abū Naṣr’s life. According to Ibn ʿAsākir, he said: I fell seriously ill in Mecca. I was so scared that I gave up hope of saving my life. A shaykh of Mecca came to me without me ever asking for him. I did not know him. He had in his hands the keys of the Kaaba. He belonged to the tribe of the Banū Shayba, the guardians of the Holy House. He told me: ‘Open your mouth!’ I opened it and he put into my mouth the keys and turned them, than he massaged carefully and tenderly all my limbs with the keys. I was then rid of the illness.52

Then, at the end of his life, the biographer ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir says that Abū Naṣr’s tongue was paralyzed but he was still able to make dhikr and would only utter Qur’anic verses.53 Of his later life, we know that he led in Nishapur the funeral prayer for al-Ḥusayn al-Rāzī in 511/1118.54 Additionally, two years before dying in Nishapur he transmitted hadith in his home.55 Among his writings, we can name his exegetical treatise al-Taysīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr,56 a collection of poems of which traces are preserved by Ibn ʿAsākir

50 Ibid., 7:160. 51 Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqīl, 359. 52 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 309–10. 53 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:162. 54 Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 126. 55 Akhbarnā rukn al-islām Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. ʿAbd al-Karīm Abī l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī fī muḥarram sanat 512 bi-dārihi bi-Naysābūr (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 1:118). 56 Philip K. Hitti, Nabih Amin Faris, and Butrus ʿAbd al-Malik, Descriptive Catalog of the Garrett Collection of Arabic Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938), 386–7. This manuscript, Garrett H 643, covers Sūrat al-isrāʾ (Q. 17) to the end of Sūrat al-muʾminīn (Q. 23) and has been compared by Ritter and Ahmad to quotations related by Subkī. Their fĳindings have authenticated the manuscript as a work by Abū Naṣr (Ritter, “Philologika XIII,” 45; and Rashid Ahmad, “Abu al-Qāsim al-Qushairī as a Theologian and Commentator,” The Islamic Quarterly: A Review of Islamic Culture 13 (1969): 36–8. Other manuscripts exist: MS Üniversite A 3228 is quoted by Ritter and Gerhard Böwering (Ritter, op. cit., 47; and Gerhard Böwering “The Light Verse: Qurʾānic Text and Sūfī Interpretation,” Oriens 36 [2001]: 137). The manuscript goes only to Sūrat Luqmān (Q. 31) and is an abbreviated version of the Taysīr. MS Feyzullah Efendi 89, courtesy of Martin Nguyen, covers Sūrat al-fātiḥa (Q. 1) to the end of Sūrat al-nisāʾ (Q. 4). Rashid Ahmad also quotes MS Sultan Ahmad Library, No. 93A without any other indication (op. cit., 37).


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and Subkī,57 a lost treatise on uṣūl called al-Murshid,58 a Kitāb of hadith quoted by his grandson Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh al-Qushayrī (d. 600/1204),59 a book entitled al-Maqāmāt wa-l-ādāb,60 and a collection of sayings from his father called Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl.61 This last text is important in many regards. It represents an important widening of our knowledge of Qushayrī’s doctrine and life and it is a clear proof of how Abū Naṣr kept the heritage of his father alive and then how he spread it among his contemporaries. The importance of this text, however, is not limited to the study of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, but is helpful for better understanding certain crucial developments in the history of classical Sufĳism overall. 2. On the Authorship This text occupies folios 2a–137a of MS Ayasofya 4128 and has been fĳirst described by Helmut Ritter in his catalogues of Turkish manuscripts.62 The manuscript contains statements by Qushayrī on Sufĳism that his son Abū Naṣr collected throughout the former’s life. There is no evident structure or chapter division in the text. Paragraphs are usually introduced by a fĳixed formulation like “someone raised a question to him and said . . .” (suʾila rāḍī Allāhu ʿanhu wa-qīla), or “I heard him saying . . .” (wa-samiʿtuhu rāḍī Allāhu ʿanhu yaqūl). Additionally, each paragraph ends with a poetic quotation (shāhid). Fol. 2b

57 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:163–5; and Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 167. 58 Extracts of this book are quoted by some authors, for instance, al-Ālūsī (d. 1270/1854) in his Qur’an commentary Rūḥ al-maʿānī: “wa-Ibn al-Qushayrī fī l-Murshid [. . .]” (Maḥmūd al-Shukrī al-Ālūsī al-Baghdādī, Rūḥ al-maʿānī fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-karīm wa-l-sabʿ al-mathānī, 30 vols. [Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, (1970?)], 5:18). A second example in al-Zarkashī’s Burhān: qāla al-imām Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī fī kitābihi al-Murshid [. . .] (Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Zarkashī, al-Burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, 4 vols. [Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, n.d.], 2:177). Suyūṭī in his Itqān quotes also Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī: qāla al-imām Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī fī l-Murshid: qāla muʿẓam a⁠ʾimmatinā [. . .] (Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān [Medina: Markāz al-Mirāsāt al-Qur’āniyya, 1326], 2317). 59 Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh al-Qushayrī, Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn, 222. 60 Quoted by Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL) (Weimar: E. Felber, 1898–1902), 1:432. 61 Mojtaba Shahsavari has also compiled a list of Abū Naṣr’s works in a recent article. In his study, Shahsavari presents Abū Naṣr’s life and then edits and translates several passages from the Kitāb al-Shawāhid. Mojtaba Shahsavari, “Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī and his Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-lamthāl,” Isharāq 3 (2012): 279–300. 62 Ritter, “Philologika XIII,” 51–2. It should also be noted that there is a problem with the folio order: fol. 93a does not follow fol. 92b; fol. 96a does not follow fol. 95b; fol. 105a does not follow fol. 104b; fol. 115a does not follow fol. 114b; fol. 125a does not follow fol. 124b; and fol. 137a does not follow fol. 136b. My thanks to Bilal Orfali for bringing this to my attention.

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contains an original introduction by Abū Naṣr. After praising God,63 Abū Naṣr quotes a prophetic saying on the human heart and its proximity to God.64 The name of Abū Naṣr appears clearly on fol. 3a: The imām Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Rahīm said: It appeared to me that I [should] write (uqayyidu) what I heard from my father, the imām and martyr, may God be pleased with him, from the notes that had been taken from his words, the poetic quotations (shawāhid) and the examples (amthāl). He was the tongue of the Real and his interpreter, to the point that he was the ocean that cannot be exhausted and the scholar (ḥabr) whose depth cannot be realized and that cannot be known [. . .].65

A second occurrence of Abū Naṣr’s name can be found in an unedited biographical episode concerning Qushayrī and Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq: I [Qushayrī] presented myself once at the door of [Abū ʿAlī’s] room but nobody was there to open the door. He stood personally in order to open the door. I mentioned to him what I had to say, then I stood there waiting for him to leave and close the door. But he stood there and the wait became long. Then he said: ‘You leave fĳirst, since I do not want to close the door on your face.’ Imām Abū Naṣr, may God have mercy on him, said: The same thing happened to me with my father the imām.66

The verb qayyada of the fĳirst quotation reminds us of Subkī’s biographical note on Abū Naṣr, which he takes from the grandson of Qushayrī ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī. There he clearly states that Abū Naṣr had an incredible capacity for taking notes, “he was endowed with great speed in writing” (wa-ruziqa al-surʿa bi-l-kitāba) and learned by heart an incredible quantity of poems and historical information.67 The Kitāb al-Shawāhid is perhaps the result of such a repertoire. The older brother of Abū Naṣr, Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, according to Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī, who met the Qushayrīs in Nishapur, also possessed a special solicitude for taking notes (taqyīd) from the “breaths of his father and of his compositions.”68

63 Al-ḥamdu li-llāhi alladhī ashraqat al-samāwātu wa-l-arḍ bi-shumūsihi wa-aqmārihi wa-awḍa⁠ʾat qulūb al-muwaḥḥidīn bi-anwārihi [. . .] (Abū Naṣr, Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 2b). 64 A-lā li-llāh ʾawānī, a-lā wa-hiya al-qulūb, fa-aqrabuhā min Allāhi mā raqqa wa-ṣāfā (Abū Naṣr, Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 2b). Cf. Suyūṭī, Jaʿm al-jawāmiʿ, ed. Mukhtār Ibrāhīm al-Hāʾij, 25 vols. (Cairo: al-Azhar al-Sharīf, 2005), 2:615. 65 Abū Naṣr, Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 3a. 66 Ibid., fols. 131b–132a. 67 Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:161. 68 Wa-qāla al-ḥāfĳiẓ Abū Saʿd: kāna dhā ʿināya bi-taqyīd anfās wālidihi wa-fawāʾidihi (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:226).


Figure 1. Süleymaniye Library (Istanbul), MS Ayasofya 4128, fol. 2b

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The real proof of the authenticity of the manuscript, however, is the presence of several excerpts cited in later writings. In the Ṭabaqāt, Subkī quotes Abū Naṣr citing his father as he pronounced on the presence of the heart (ḥuḍūr al-qalb). This sentence is derived from a passage present in the Kitāb al-Shawāhid on fol. 5b.69 A lengthier quotation from the Kitāb al-Shawāhid can be found in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tabyīn al-kadhib al-muftarī. Ibn ʿAsākir was in contact with Abū Naṣr and received from him some information about his father Qushayrī. The Tabyīn contains a large passage on tawḥīd that can be found in the Kitāb al-Shawāhid on fol. 135b.70 The Tabyīn also quotes a report from Qushayrī transmitted by Abū Naṣr on a Qur’anic verse from Sūrat al-kahf “wa-kanā abūhumā ṣālihā” (Q. 18:82, “Their father was a righteous man”),71 that is an explanation also found in the Kitāb on folio 122b. These notes from Ibn ʿAsākir show us that the material that Abū Naṣr used for this text derived from an organized source that he employed in order to disseminate the teachings of his father. 3. On the Title: Sufĳism and Poetry How should the title Kitāb al-Shawāhid wa-l-amthāl be translated? Walid Saleh in his book on Thaʿlabī translates shawāhid as “poetic citations” and makes a clear distinction between the use of this term in a grammatical context (the use of poetry as argument, proof, or probative authority to illustrate a grammatical rule) and the use of poetry as itself in another context, as in tafsīr.72 Gilliot traces the development of shawāhid literature and explains the diffferent typologies of shāhid. He notes that poetic citation is just one type of linguistic proof (together with the Qur’an and Hadith) that can be used and whose textual authority can be called upon for establishing a grammatical rule.73 John Wansbrough has also described and analyzed the use of the shawāhid in the 69 Wa-qāla Abū Naṣr: samiʿtu wālidī yaqūl: liyakun laka fī l-yawm wa-l-layl sāʿa taḥḍur fīhā bi-qalbika (Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 7:165). Wa-qāla: liyakun laka fī l-yawm wa-l-layl sāʿa taḥḍur fīhā biqalbika wa-takhlū li-rabbika wa-tarfaʿu ilayhi faqraka wa-taqūl [. . .] (Abū Naṣr, Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 5b). 70 Suʾila rāḍī Allahu ʿanhu: arbāb al-tawḥīd hal yatafāwutūn fīhi? [. . .] (Ibid., fol. 135b). Akhbarnā al-shaykh Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Hawāzin ijāzatan qāla: suʾila abī al-ustādh Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī wa-qīla: arbāb al-tawḥīd hal yatafāwutūn fīhi? [. . .] (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tabyīn, 356). 71 Ibid., 372. 72 Walid A. Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Tha⁠ʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 19, 174. 73 Claude Gilliot, “Shawāhid,” in EI2, 9:370–2. See also idem, “Les citations probantes « (Shawāhid) » en langue,” Arabica 43.2 (1996): 297–356, with a translation of the fĳirst chapter of the introduction to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī’s Khizanat al-adab and a detailed bibliography of the shawāhid literature. On mathal, see R. Sellheim “Mathal,” in EI2, 6:815–25.


Figure 2. Süleymaniye Library (Istanbul), MS Ayasofya 4128, fol. 139a

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case of Qur’anic exegesis.74 The use of grammatical devices in Sufĳi discourse is attested by Qushayrī’s treatises on mystical grammar, which demonstrates how Qushayrī and his disciples applied language-tools to the exposition of mystical doctrine.75 In the Sufĳi context, the shawāhid literature grants the terms shāhid and mathal new functions. The second major master of Qushayrī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī76 also composed a Kitāb al-Amthāl wa-l-istishhādāt,77 which shows similarities with the Kitāb al-Shawāhid of Abū Naṣr. Böwering and Orfali note: Sulamī’s k. al-Amthāl wa-l-istishhādāt has a somewhat unusual introduction presenting an anonymous Sufĳi who, when approached with questions about his mystical experiences or doctrines, would respond with poetic verses composed by others so as to explain his own experience and doctrine. Thus, Sulamī’s k. al-Amthāl wa-l-istishhādāt can be seen as a compilation of such verses often mentioned together with the circumstances under which they were recited.78

Böwering and Orfali analyze as well the meaning of shāhid and mathal in this new Sufĳi context and its relationship with the literary usage of these two terms:

74 John Wansbrough, “Arabic Rhetoric and Qur’anic Exegesis,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31.3 (1968): 469–85. 75 Qushayrī revisited grammar till the end of his days with the Algerian Abū l-Qāsim al-Hadhalī (d. 465/1073), who taught canonical lectures (qirāʾāt) in the Niẓāmiyya in Nishapur (Dhahabī, Maʿrifat al-qurrāʾ al-kibār ʿalā al-ṭabaqāt wa-l-aʿṣār [Beirut: n.p., 1404], 1:429–33). Cf. Qushayrī, Naḥw al-qulūb al-ṣaghīr, ed. Aḥmad ʿĀlam al-Dīn Jundī (Libya: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitāb, 1977); idem, Naḥw al-qulūb al-kabīr, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī and Aḥmad ʿAlam al-Dīn Jundī (Cairo: Maktaba ʿĀlam al-Fikr, 1994); Tamás Ivànyi, “Towards a Grammar of the Heart: al-Qushayrī’s Naḥw al-qulūb”, in Proceedings of the Colloquium on Logos, Ethos, Mythos in the Middle East & North Africa. Part One (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University Chair for Arabic Studies / Csoma de Kőrös Society Section of Islamic Studies 1996), 40–54; Francesco Chiabotti, “Naḥw al-qulūb al-ṣaghīr: La « Grammaire des cœurs » de ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī. Présentation et traduction annotée,” Bulletin d’études orientales 58 (2008–9): 385–402; and Giovanni Carrera and Francesco Chiabotti, “Origine et fĳinalité du langage dans le moyen âge islamique,” Kervan: Rivista internazionale di studi afroasiatici 13/14 (2011): 81–126, especially 114–26. 76 On him see Jean-Jacques Thibon, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (325/937–412/1021) et la formation du soufĳisme (Damascus: IFPO, 2009); G. Böwering, “Sulamī”, in EI2, 9:811–12; and Lutz Berger, Geschieden von allem ausser Got (Hildescheim-Zürich-New York: Olms, 1998). 77 Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, Kitāb al-amthāl wa-l-istishhādāt, in Sufĳi Treatises of Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/ 1021), ed. Gerhard Böwering and Bilal Orfali (Beirut: Dar elMachreq, 2009), 87–117. See note 70 at p. 26 for a repertory of the literary texts bearing the double title shawāhid/istishhadāt and mathal/amthāl. 78 Sulamī, Sufĳi Treatises, 27.


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As the title of the treatise indicates, Sulamī tries to collect “similes” (amthāl, literally “proverbs”, mathal pl. amthāl) that give expression to the Sufĳi’s mystical experiences in poetic form (with meter and rhyme) along with “illustrations” (istishhādāt, literally “quotations”) found in a variety of Sufĳi writings. Sulamī may have understood these “illustrations” as the fruit of the Sufĳi experience of mushāhada (“witnessing” or “contemplation”), using them to give testimony in verse to the height of mystical experience. Sulamī’s use of the term istishhādāt may also been influenced by the literary usage of shahid, pl. shawāhid, as a marker for fĳigurative expression.79

Sulamī and Qushayrī were also possibly making an allusion to the meaning of shāhid in the Sufĳi lexicon, which is one of the terms used to describe a mystical experience. Qushayrī in his Risāla states: By the word ”witness” (shāhid) they mean that which is present in the heart of a man—that is, what he constantly recollects to the extent that he continues to see and watch it, even though he is [physically] absent from it. Any recollection that takes possession of a man’s heart is his sign. If his heart is dominated by knowledge, then he is a witness of knowledge; if it is ecstasy, then he is a witness of ecstasy. The meaning of “witness” is presence. That which is present in your heart is your witness.80

This precise meaning of shāhid had been analyzed previously by Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj al-Ṭūsī (d. 378/988) in his Kitāb al-Lumaʿ: The shāhid is something that makes you see (yushhiduka) what is absent from you. This means making your heart present to his being. Someone has said (mutaqārib): In everything there’s a witness (shāhid) Demonstrating that He is unique [. . .]81

The poetic attestation is used by Qushayrī and Sulamī for “making present” and transmitting a spiritual state or experience. The doctrine of the shawāhid in 79 Ibid., 26. 80 Qushayrī, Risāla, 25; Knysh (trans.), Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufĳism, 108 (all English translations, expect where noted, are taken from Knysh’s Epistle); and Gramlich (trans.), Sendschreiben, 143. Ritter has traced back the history of shāhid-doctrine in his The Ocean of the Soul: Men, the World and God in the Stories of Farīḍ al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. John O’Kahne and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 448–520 (Helmut Rittter, Das Meer der Seele [Leiden: Brill, 1955], 470–7). 81 Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj al-Ṭūsī, Kitāb al-Lumaʿ fī l-taṣawwuf, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd (CairoBaghdad: n.p., 1960), 415; idem, Schlaglichter über das Sufĳitum. Abū Naṣr as-Sarrāğs Kitāb al-lumaʿ, trans. Richard Gramlich (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990), 476. See also Gramlich (trans.), Schalglichter, 348, on the difffĳiculty of translating this term.

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these two authors must also be linked to the heritage of Abū Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj whose spiritual lineage Naṣrābādhī (d. 367/977–8) and Daqqāq kept and spread in Khurasan.82 Al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990 or 385/995) in his Taʿarruf also relates from prior Sufĳis on the doctrine of the shāhid.83 Another early defĳinition of shāhid is given by Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Daylamī in his ʿAṭf al-alif al-ma⁠ʾlūf ʿalā l-lām al-maʿṭūf.84 Use of poetry in Sufĳi handbooks appears in some of the earliest texts, such as Makkī’s Qūt al-qulūb.85 Looking for a justifĳication of the use of poetry in a religious and spiritual context, an apologist like Sarrāj quoted a hadith stating that poetry contains a part of wisdom.86 In a chapter of his Lumaʿ, Sarrāj describes the need and the legality of hearing poems and poetry.87 He also concentrates

82 “Naṣrābāḏī, the disciple of Šeblī, had clearly Hallajian tendencies, which were also partly manifest in Daqqāq (Massignon, Passion II, pp. 110, 215–18); and Khorasanian Hallajism centered around Wāseṭī (d. 320/932) and his disciple Sayyārī (d. 342/961) in Marv. Both were known to and quoted by Daqqāq” (J. Chabbi, “Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq”). On Ḥallāj’s doctrine of the shāhid, see Louis Massignon, La Passion de Ḥallāj: martyr mystique de l’islam, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 1:569. See also Paolo Urizzi, Il Sufĳismo nelle parole degli antichi (Palermo: Offfĳicina di Studi Mediovali, 2002), 20 n. 55. 83 Abū Bakr Muḥammad al-Kalābādhī, al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya 1960), 119. Urizzi, Il Sufĳismo nelle parole degli antichi, 262. Urizzi has also demonstrated how many of the poetry quoted anonymously by Kalābādhī derives from Ḥallāj’s Dīwān, see the index of the poetical verses quoted by Kalābādhī in Il Sufĳismo, 518–21. 84 Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Daylamī, ʿAṭ f al-alif al-ma⁠ʾlūf ʿalā l-lām al-maʿṭūf, ed. Ḥasan Maḥmūd Shāfĳiʿī and Joseph Norment Bell (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Miṣrī, 2007), 203–5; Ḥasan Maḥmūd Shāfĳiʿī and Joseph Norment Bell (trans.), A Treatise on Mystical Love (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); and Jean-Claude Vadet, Le Traité d’amour mystique d’Al-Daylami (Geneva: Droz, 1980). 85 Reinhard Wiepert, in his study of the poetic fragments quoted by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, pointed out how this technique is derived from oral sources and noted the necessity for the literary analysis of poetry (takhrīj al-abyāt) in Sufĳi texts. Reinhard Wiepert, “Quellen analytische Untersuchungen zu den Poesiefragmenten im “Qut al-qulub,” Der Islam 75 (1998): 28–65. For a general overview on this topic see Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Michael Frishkopf, “Authorship in Sufĳi Poetry,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 23 (2003): 78–108; Claude Addas, “The Ship of Stone,” www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/shipofstone.html; and Jean-Jacques Thibon, “La poésie et l’extase. Quelques thèmes poétiques dans les concerts spirituels des soufĳis shadhilis,” in Poésie et sacré dans les littératures meditérannéennes et moyen-orientales, ed. Salah Oueslati (Tunis: Les Editions Sahar, 2010), 39–57. More particularly on Qushayrī, see Florian Sobieroj’s recent study “Funktionen von Dichtung in al-Qušairīs K. ʿUyūn al-aǧwiba. Ein sufĳischer Diskurs über die Liebe (maḥabba),” in Arabische Welt: Grammatik, Dichtung und Dialekte: Beiträge einer Tagung in Erlangen zu Ehren von Wolfdietrich Fischer, ed. Shabo Talay and Hartmut Bobzin (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), 179–206; and idem, Die Responsensammlung Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušairī’s über das Sufĳitum. 86 Inna min al-shiʿr ḥikma (Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 347; and Gramlich [trans.], Schaglichter, 402). 87 Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 357; and Gramlich (trans.), Schlaglichter, 412.


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on Sufĳi poetry in a specifĳic chapter of his Lumaʿ and explains how these texts may express an obscure meaning: These poetic compositions contain meanings that are sometimes difffĳicult and sometimes easy to understand. These verses have subtle allusions and fĳine meanings. Whoever reflects on them should meditate on their goals and symbols, until he does not ascribe to their authors something that they (the Sufĳis) are not worthy of. If he fĳinds some difffĳiculties and does not understand their meaning, he should long for those who understand this poetry and ask them, since to each spiritual station belongs a specifĳic expression (li-anna li-kull maqām maqālan) [. . .].88

An episode quoted by Sulamī shows clearly that this kind of poetical response was meant to have a provocative function that would shock the listeners: I heard al-Ḥusayb b. Yaḥyā saying: I heard Jaʿfar saying: Samnūn was questioned about the word of God Thus they devised a plan, and We devised a plan, while they were not aware (Q. 27:50). Is it permitted to ascribe to God a plot? [Samnūn] began to recite (wāfĳir): Horrible to me is the action perpetuated by other than You But when it is You who acts this way, it becomes pleasant. The questioner replied: ‘I asked you the explanation of this verse and you reply with a verse of poetry?’ [Samnūn] said: ‘From which land do you come from?’ He replied: ‘From the mountain (jabal).’ [Samnūn] replied: ‘Your place, among the men, is like the leek among the vegetables. God prescribed to himself that he will not accord his wisdom to [a man] whose heart is a stranger [to his knowledge] (ʿajamiyy al-qalb). I did not reply with a poem because I was not able to give you a clear explanation (bayān). I replied in order to teach you that in the most vile thing there exists the most eminent guide to him!’89

Qushayrī notes in the Risāla a similar role for poetry. Once again, the questioner is shocked by the use of poetry instead of the Qur’an or the Hadith: Junayd was asked about declaration of unity. He replied: ‘I heard someone recite the following verses (hazaj)’: He sang to me from my heart and I sang to him as he did to me We were wherever they were and they were wherever we were. 88 Sarrāj, Lumaʿ, 327; and Gramlich (trans.), Schlaglichter, 377. 89 Sulamī, Kitāb al-Amthāl, no. 530, 112–13. According to the Asrār al-tawḥīd, Abū l-Khayr once questioned Qushayrī about the relationship between a poem and the meaning of a Qur’anic verse (Meier, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr, 243–4).

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The questioner replied: ‘So the Qur’an and the sacred tradition have perished?!’ He answered: ‘No, however, a man declaring the divine Oneness perceives the most sublime tawḥīd in the most ordinary and simplest speech!’90

What kind of poetry did the Sufĳi masters quote? Böwering and Orfali have indexed the poetic verses of Sulamī’s Kitāb al-Amthāl from which we can see that the poetry quoted derives mostly from non-Sufĳi poets with few exceptions like Shiblī, Ḥallāj and Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya: The preponderance of poetic verses quoted by Sulamī can be traced to the love poetry of well-known Arab poets, which Sulamī interpreted as expressing the Sufĳi experience of the mystical power of the divine Love. [. . .] Poetry of “secular” poets became poetic testimony for the “sacred” experience of the early mystics of Islam.91

Bilal Orfali and Nada Saab have recognized a similar function for poetical citation in the work of a contemporary of Qushayrī, the mystic Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077). In their introduction to the edition of Sīrjānī’s Kitāb al-Bayāḍ wa-l-sawād, Orfali and Saab make some important remarks on the interplay of Sufĳi narrative and poetry: The interplay of poetry with Sufĳi narrative is a topic worthy of further research. It should be studied within the wider context of medieval Arabic belle-letters [. . .]. Noteworthy here, however, is Sīrjānīs adoption of poetry as the form that embraced his ‘voice.’ In the same vein, we fĳind that unless a chapter is concluded with Sīrjānīs own comment, a poetic selection gives the concluding remark. Poetic conclusions seem to conjure the mystical concepts in question. They highlight the experience they entail and lend Sīrjānī that concluding voiced opinion. [. . .] The preponderant presence of poetry in Sufĳi compilations served several functions. For one, poetry’s reliance on illusive language and imagery was a perfect vehicle to express the inexpressible, not to mention the Sufĳi investment in such poetic genres as love or wine recitations. What has been lacking in present research on Sufĳi discourse is the generation of poetry from Sufĳi narratives, or vice versa, the prosifĳication of poetry which may not necessarily be originally Sufĳi. Hagiographies of Sufĳis are full of such interplay between genres, so are the Sufĳi manuals replete with them.92 90 Qushayrī, Risāla, 457. I have changed Knysh’s translation (Epistle, 311–12) according to Gramlich’s version (Sendschreiben, 417). 91 Sulamī, Sufĳi Treatises, 28. See the editors’ index of poetic verses, 167–75 of the Arabic text. 92 Bilal Orfali and Nada Saab, Sufĳism, Black and White: A Critical Edition of Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-l-sawād by Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077) (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 33. A contemporary of Qushayrī, Shaykh Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Khayr, used to quote the more popular Persian poetry instead of Arabic classical poetry. Despite this diffference (we will see further on that Qushayrī quotes Persian poetry as well), Abū Saʿīd’s poetical citations were similarly used “to teach on diffferent levels


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The use of non-Sufĳi poetry is a literary device that Qushayrī exploited extensively in his Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, as shown by Aḥmad Amīn Muṣṭafā’s index of the verses quoted by Qushayrī in the Laṭāʾif.93 The biographical records confĳirm Qushayrī’s love for secular poetry. For instance, Ṣarīfīnī afffĳirms that Qushayrī learned the dīwān of al-Mutanabbī directly from Ibn Bākūyah.94 The interpolation of adab literature quoted anonymously is one of the most signifĳicant trademarks of Qushayrī’s Sufĳism. Some of the poetry quoted by Sulamī in his Kitāb can also be found in Qushayrī’s Risāla. In some cases Qushayrī quotes Sulamī as his direct transmitter: The Shaykh Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī said: ʿAbd Allāh b. Ibrāhīm b. al-ʿAlāʾ recited to me: Aḥmad b. ʿAtāʾ recited to me (basīṭ): They told [me]: Tomorrow is a holiday. What will you wear? [. . .].95

In other cases, Qushayrī has a diffferent source or quotes the poetry anonymously: One Sufĳi recited (ṭawīl): I was patient and did not reveal my love for you to my patience [. . .]96

Sulamī in his Kitāb al-Amthāl gives the context of the recitation of this poem together with the chain of transmission: I heard ʿAbd Allāh b. Mūsā al-Salāmī al-Baghdādī in Marw who said: I heard al-Murtaʿish, who when questioned on what patience is, replied: ‘[patience] is that you do not show outwardly the signs of hardship (balāʾ).’ Then he recited:

of consciousness” and “served as haiku-like encapsulation of a mystical state” (Terry Graham, “Abū Saʿīd Abīʾl-Khayr and the School of Khurāsān,” in The Heritage of Sufĳism: Classical Persian Sufĳism from its Origins to Rumi (700–1300), ed. L. Lewisohn [Oxford: Oneworld, 1999], 83–135, especially the section “Spirituality in verse: Abū Saʿīd’s use of poetry,” 94–106). 93 Aḥmad Amīn Muṣṭafā, Takhrīj abyāt Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt li-l-imām al-Qushayrī wa-dirāsat alminhaj al-Qushayrī fī l-istishhād al-adabī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1986). See his introduction (3–20) where he describes Qushayrī’s method in quoting poetry (istishhād; tamaththul), analyzes his “profane” sources and the changes that Qushayrī makes in quoting verses. 94 Ṣārīfīnī, Muntakhab, 32. 95 Qushayrī, Risāla, 424; idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 286–7; and idem (Gramlich [trans.], Sendschreiben, 381 (with a long note on the attribution of this poem) = Sulamī, Kitāb al-Amthāl, 88, which quotes the contest in which Rūdhabārī recited this poetry. 96 Qushayrī, Risāla, 310; idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 199; idem (Gramlich [trans.]), Sendschreiben, 266; and Sulāmī, Kitāb al-Amthāl, 88–9.

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I was patient and did not reveal my love for you to my patience [. . .].97

These few examples allow us to understand how the shawāhid quotations represent a deeply embedded structure within the Risāla that should be fully analyzed in order to better understand the role of poetry in Qushayrī’s handbook. Florian Sobieroj notices that the mix of poetry and prose is a literary device widespread in Sufĳi literature. This use of poetry is, according to Sobieroj, didactical and pedagogical, striving to communicate a deeper form of knowledge in didactical texts.98 If this is valid for the ʿUyūn al-ajwiba, which Sobieroj studied, it is even truer for the Kitāb al-Shawāhid of Abū Naṣr, where poetry (shawāhid) and didactical illustrations (amthāl) are the real substance of the book. If the shawāhid quotations in the Risāla share some sources with Sulamī’s Kitāb al-Amthāl, we can now see if the Kitāb al-Shawāhid of Abū Naṣr shares some poetic material with Sulamī’s book. Some of the material quoted by Qushayrī and transcribed by Abū Naṣr is clearly present in Sulamī’s book. It is however hard to establish if this poetry derives from Sulamī’s book or from common sources, i.e. a “shared poetical repertory.”99 Yet the Kitāb al-Shawāhid shows some diffferences with Sulami’s Kitāb al-Amthāl. While Sulamī’s work is a precise reconstruction of a moment in which poetry was pronounced, Qushayrī uses the same poetry to illustrate a teaching, often quoting the poetry anonymously, as in the Laṭāʾif. In some cases Qushayrī quotes himself. The Kitāb al-Shawāhid includes some verses that Subkī ascribes to Qushayrī and that are quoted both in the Risāla and in the Laṭāʾif.100 A second major diffference is that Qushayrī will quote poetry in Persian, while Sulamī only provides Arabic poems.101 Thus, this text can help us to better identify Qushayrī’s personal composition of poetry, since his Dīwān is now lost.102 However, 97 Sulāmī, Kitāb al-Amthāl, 88. 98 “Die grundsätzlich anonym zitierten Verse haben gelegentlich assoziativen [. . .] zumeist aber zusammenfassenden Charakter. Mit der letzteren Eigenschaft bedienen sie eine didaktische Funktion, nämlich in einprägsamer Form Kenntnisse über das Sufĳitum zu vermitteln” (F. Sobieroj, “Funktionen von Dichtung,” 190). 99 See the appendix to this article which contains a concordance table between the Kitāb al-Amthāl, the Kitāb al-Shawāhid, the Risāla, and the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt. 100 “(Sarīʿ) thumma qaṭaʿtu l-layla fī mahmahin / lā asadan akhshā wa lā dhībā / yaghlibunī shawqī fa-aṭwī l-surā / wa-lam yazal dhū l-shawqī maghlūbā,” (I passed the night in the desert, fearing neither lion nor wolf / My longing overwhelmed me and I wandered hastily through the night / For my passionate desire granted me no respite) (Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 3a; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 5:160; Qushayrī, Risāla, 331; idem, Laṭāʾif, 3:30 (Q. 9:42); idem (Knysh [trans.], Epistle, 214; and idem (Gramlich [trans.], Sendschreiben, 287). 101 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fols. 23b, 24b, 25a, 128a, 132a. 102 The MS Dīwān ʿalāmat al-Qushayrī (MS Berlin Ahwardt 3092, fols. 21–31) is erroneously ascribed to Qushayrī. See Wilhelm Ahlwardt, Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1887–99), 3:126–7.


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without a critical edition of the manuscript that includes an analysis of the poetic sources, Qushayrī’s own contribution is hard to decode. Only a full identifĳication of these verses could help us to better understand the function of poetry in the mystical discourse. The poetry contained in the Kitāb al-Shawāhid (and its function in the text) should also be compared with the poems of another lesser known text by Qushayrī, the ʿUyūn al-ajwiba. Sobieroj, who has studied the text, underlines that each paragraph of the ʿUyūn contains poetry and in some cases Qushayrī ascribes the poems to himself.103 Summing up, we can identify three kinds of shāhid in Sufĳi tradition: 1) The shāhid may be a testament to a mystical experience. When Qushayrī uses shāhid as such he places himself within the historical lineage of the mystical school of Bagdad which also used it in this way. 2) The shāhid may refer to the practice of shāhid-bāzī or the contemplation of divine beauty in a created form, such as in the face of a youth. Qushayrī’s disapproval of this practice is explicit in the Risāla and in the hagiographical literature that mentions him, such as the Asrār al-tawḥīd.104 3) The shāhid may be a poetical citation that reveals mystical meaning in a poetic form. This more literary practice, as I have shown, is well attested throughout Qushayrī’s œuvre. These three types of shāhid share at a base level the ability to disclose in a concrete form something that would otherwise belong to the world of mysteries (ghuyūb). In Qushayrī’s theoretical universe, the third type, the istishhād 103 F. Sobieroj, “Funktionen von Dichtung,” 183. 104 Qushayrī, Risāla, 25 (bab al-shāhid); idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 108; idem (Gramlich [trans.]), Sendschreiben, 143; and Ibn al-Munawwar, The Secrets of God’s Mystical Oneness, 162–3. On the shāhid debate, see H. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 448–520 (idem, Das Meer der Seele, 470– 7). Concerning the practice at the core of the sālimiyya movement, see Mohammad Amir Moezzi, “Ibn ʿAṭâ al-Adamî, esquisse d’une biographie historique,” Studia Islamica 63 (1986): 63–127. See also Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek, A la croisée des voies célestes. Faxr al-Din ‘Eraqi, 285, online at: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/61/11/95/PDF/ERAQI-HAL-SHS.pdf, with a bibliography; Nasrollah Pourjavady, “Stories of Ahmad al-Ghazali ‘Playing the Witness’ in Tabriz (Shams-i Tabrizi’s Interest in Shahid-bazi),” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. Todd Lawson, (London & New York: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2005), 200–20; and Leonard Lewisohn, “The Mystical Milieu: Ḥāfĳiẓ’s Erotic Spirituality,” in Hafĳiz and the religion of Love in Classical Persian poetry, ed. idem (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with Iran Heritage Foundation, 2010), 43–55, with a bibliography.

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or tamaththul, might be interpreted as as substitute for shāhid-bāzī. Shāhid-bāzī is deeply linked to poetry, as Lewisohn’s study of Ḥāfĳiẓ’s erotic spirituality demonstrates, in that poetry allows mystic authors to express the fruits of this practice. More generally, language, of which poetic experience is a part, is intimately linked to mystical experience and Qushayrī demonstrates his agreement with this idea through his spiritual grammars. Finally, there is a remarkable hagiographical account from Ibn al-Mulaqqin’s (d. 804/1401) Ṭabaqāt al-awliyāʾ which warrants attention given its usage of poetry in respect to Qushayrī’s life. The text relates Qushayrī’s investiture of his khirqa upon Hibat al-Raḥmān when his grandson is still a child: It was said that [Hibat al-Raḥmān] was fĳive years old. [Hibat al-Raḥmān] said: ‘He [Qushayrī] led me to a public bath, he sat me down on his lap and shaved my head. He began the initiatic transmission (laqqananī) by saying, ‘Repeat: I am a beggar, the son of a beggar. So were my father and grandfather.’ He went on to a second transmission reciting [these lines of poetry]: His desire reached me before I even knew desire, he found an empty heart and decisively settled within. Qushayrī dressed him [with the khirqa] of Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq, of Abū l-Qāsim Ibrahīm b. Muḥammad b. Hamawayh al-Naṣrābādhī, of Shiblī, and of Junayd.105

In the text all three types of shāhid are present. The setting immediately invokes the notion of shāhid-bāzī and the poem that is then quoted underscores Qushayrī’s usage of poetry as a means of mystical conveyance. The tamaththul communicates in a poetic way both a mystical experience and the Sufĳi path. 4. On the Content Giving even an incomplete summary of the content of this text would be a task that goes beyond the principal aims of this article. I will endeavor instead to underline several important analytical points about the Kitāb al-Shawāhid.

105 Ibn Mulaqqin, Ṭabaqāt al-awliyāʾ, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādit ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998), 322. Translation based on a German translation by F. Sobieroj in idem, Die Responsensammlung Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušairī’s über das Sufĳitum, 5–6.


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a. Did Qushayrī speak Persian? How “Persian” was Qushayrī? It has already been established that at this time, the religious and spiritual milieu of Nishapur was expressed in both Arabic and Persian.106 Bulliet speaks of “the relative insignifĳicance by the eleventh/fĳifth century of the distinction between Arab and Persian.”107 Until now, the only signifĳicant example of Qushayrī’s use of Persian was in the Tartīb al-sulūk.108 In this text Qushayrī narrates how he reached the commemoration of the secret (sirr) by practicing a soundless dhikr with the Persian word for God, khudāy. Fritz Meier pointed out that the Tartīb represents “a special form of writing which should not be placed at the same level with the Risāla. [. . .] The Tartīb is not an actual book by Qushayrī but a transcription of his words, a recording of what Qushayrī explained orally [. . .].”109 The Kitāb al-Shawahid, which is also a recording of the oral teachings of Qushayrī, shares with the Tartīb the quotation of Persian, but in the poetic form of shāhid.110 Even if the recording of these poems has been slightly corrupted by later scribes, their presence is nevertheless proof of Qushayrī’s use of Persian in his spiritual teachings.111

106 See also Bernd Radtke, “Zweisprachigkeit im frühen persischen taṣawwuf,” Orientalia Suecana 38–39 (1991): 128. See Gramlich’s list of Persian words in Sarrāj’s Lumaʿ in idem (trans.), Schalglichter, 26. On bilingualism, see also Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Persian, the Other Sacred Language of Islam: Some Brief Notes,” in Fortresses of the Intellect: Ismaili and Other Islamic Studies in Honour of Farhad Daftary, ed. Omar Ali-de-Unzaga, (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 59–75; idem, “Préface: Du Persan comme langue sacrée de l’Islam,” in Khwâdjâ ʿAbd Allâh Anṣârî, Cris du coeur: Munâjât—Présentation et traduction du persan de Serge de Laugier de Beaurecueil (Paris: CERF, 2010), 9–17; N. Pourjavady, “The Use of Persian as a Religious Language in the Early Centuries of Islam,” in Religious Texts in Iranian Languages: Symposium Held in Copenhagen May 2002, ed. Fereydun and Claus V. Pedersen (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2007), 237–45; idem, “Philosophie iranienne et caractère sacrée de la langue persane,” in Mélanges littéraires et mystiques (Tehran: Presses Universitaires d’Iran, 1998), 7–40; idem, “Poésie licite et poésie illicite,” in Mélanges littéraires, 63–91; idem, “Signifĳication du lexique mystique dans la littérature persane,” in Mélanges littéraires, 92–101; and Travis Zadeh’s introduction to The Vernacular Qur’an and the bibliography. 107 Bulliet, The Patricians, 157. 108 F. Meier, “Qusǎyrī’s Tartīb as-sulūk,” Oriens, 16 (1963): 1–39. See p. 13 of the introduction, p. 39 of the German translation, and p. 28 of the Arabic text. See also Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani, “Persian Contributions to Sufĳi Literature in Arabic,” in The Heritage of Sufĳism, 33–81. Recently, Eliyahu Stern has argued against the ascription of the Tartīb to Qushayrī, see Eliyahu Stern, “On the Authenticity of the Mystical Treatise Tartīb al-Sulūk ascribed to Al-Qushayrī,” Studia Islamica 3 (2012): 83–118. 109 Meir, “Qusǎyrī’s Tartīb as-sulūk,” 10; and idem, “Qushayrī’s Tartīb al-sulūk,” in Essays on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, trans. John O’Kane, ed. Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 102. 110 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fols. 23b, 24b, 25a, 128a, 132a. 111 Annabel Keeler and Nasrollah Pourjavady kindly accepted to help me analyze these Persian fragments. In order to quote one example, what follows is the reconstruction of the poem quoted

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There is also another aspect that underlines the Persian character of Qushayrī’s Sufĳism: the presence of metaphors taken from the courtly life that reminds us of some later Sufĳi texts, such as the works of Niẓāmī and others. Literary images of kings,112 chamberlains,113 and viziers114 are more present here than in others works by Qushayrī. The recent Iranian past is also present in this text: he quotes once a king of the Sāmāniyya (the Samanids)115 and two anonymous amīrs of Khurasan.116 b. Qushayrī: Master among His Pupils Information concerning the master-pupil relationship in the doctrine of Qushayrī is provided in a number of his work such as his Tartīb al-sulūk and two chapters of the Risāla.117 Less clear is Qushayrī’s position as a master before his pupils. The only well-known source addressing this is the biography of Abū ʿAlī al-Farmadhī (d. 477/1084–5).118 This general lack of information about the role of Qushayrī as a spiritual master has led some scholars to minimize his role as a spiritual guide during his lifetime.119 Our reconstruction of the “Qushayriyya” and some evidence from this manuscript allows us to rectify this opinion. Abū Naṣr provides us with a number of examples of Qushayrī’s efffectiveness as a spiritual master to his pupils through the questions that the latter brought to him: It was put to him: When we are in front of you our hearts are present and pleased but as we leave you nothing of this [state] remains. He replied: ‘People are diffferent. Some of them, staying in their houses, fĳind fĳine spiritual meanings and do not need to go out. Their spiritual attribute is the lack of need (waṣfuhum al-ghinā). Some others assist [the spiritual classes] but are dispossessed [of understanding]. on fol. 23b: jān az qebal-i tu dāram andar [tana] khwīsh (“I have a soul in my body because of you”). The copyist wrote man instead of tan. 112 For instance: Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 22a (image of the king as the divine presence), and fol. 10a (a history of the caliph in Baghdad). 113 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 114b. 114 Ibid., fols. 10a, 134b. 115 Ibid., fol. 16b. 116 Ibid., fols. 61a, 118a. 117 Qushayrī, Risāla, “bāb ḥifẓ qulūb al-mashāyikh” (protecting the hearts of the masters), 495–8; idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 339–42; idem (Gramlich [trans.]), Sendschreiben, 458–60; and, “Waṣīya li-l-murīdīn” (spiritual advice for Sufĳi novices), in idem, Risāla, 574–90; idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 403–16; and idem (Gramlich [trans.]), Sendschreiben, 536–48. 118 Ṣarīfīnī, Muntakhab, 452–3; Subkī, Ṭabaqāt 5:304–6; Jāmī, Nafaḥāt al-uns, 2:513–5; Ibn alMunawwar, The Secrets of God’s Mystical Oneness, 209; and Meier, Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr, 56–7. 119 “Despite his great renown and the interest he took in Sufĳi pedagogy, al-Qushayrī left surprisingly few disciples” (Knysh, Epistle, xxii); and “Berühmte Sufĳis sind aus Qushayrīs Schule nicht hervorgegangen” (Gramlich, Sendschreiben, 16).


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Some others will fĳind the quintessence (ṣafwa), but of this only the words will remain. For some people, the efffect will accompany them for a while. The Master Abū ʿAlī [al-Daqqāq] said: “We used to know some masters to which we addressed the Salām and the efffect of this salutation stayed with us from the time of the meeting until the next meeting”.’120 It was put to him: [Your] words have no efffect on us. He replied: ‘When the seed is planted in the ground and it does not grow, this may be a consequence of the sterility of the soil, or the cause could be the seed itself, or sometimes both of them. It could be a matter of time, or maybe it could be because of a delay of the rain from the sky. The words are like this seed, the hearts like the soil, the divine solicitude (tawfīq) like the rain. When the words have no efffect on the heart, it is possible that the cause is the heart itself and its unawareness (ghafla), or it could derive from the seed, or together from the heart and the one who listens (mustamiʿ). The seed has a precise moment (for planting). This speech also has a precise moment. [. . .]’121

c. Qushayrī between Iraqi and Khurasani Sufism Many important studies on the development of the Sufĳism in Khurasan have noted how the mysticism of Baghdad had been introduced into Khurasan and the subsequent difffĳiculties that it encountered during its process of penetration. The mystic Junayd became a central fĳigure to this Iraqi tradition of Sufĳism, a tradition of Islamic mysticism that largely developed in the Arabic-speaking world centered around Baghdad. Alternatively in predominantly Persianspeaking Khurasan, a parallel tradition of mysticism had developed around the city of Nishapur.122 One of Qushayrī’s major contributions to the defĳinition of Sufĳism is the inclusion in his handbook al-Risāla of spiritual movements like the futuwwa that were still seen by others as something diffferent from taṣawwuf. At the same time, the name of a movement like the malāmatiyya

120 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 48b. 121 Ibid., fol. 137b. 122 Jacqueline Chabbi, “Remarques sur le développement historique des mouvements ascétiques et mystiques au Khurasan: IIIe/IXe siècle–IVe/Xe siècle,” Studia Islamica 46 (1977): 5–72; Margaret Malamud, “Sufĳi Organizations and Structures of Authority in Medieval Nishapur,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26.3, (1994): 427–42; Christopher Melchert, “The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E.,” Studia Islamica 83 (1996): 51–70; idem, “Sufĳis and Competing movements in Nishapur,” Iran, 9 (2001): 237–47; idem, “Khargūshī, Tahdhīb al-asrār,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 73.1 (2010): 29–44; Laury Silvers-Alario, “The Teaching Relationship in Early Sufĳism: A Reassessment of Fritz Meier’s Defĳinition of the shaykh al-tarbiya and the shaykh al-taʿlim,” Muslim World 93.1 (2003): 69–97; Sara Sviri, “Ḥakīm Tirmidhī and the Malāmātī Movement in Early Sufĳism,” in The Heritage of Sufĳism, 583–613; and idem, “The Early Mystical Schools of Baghdad and Nīshāpūr: In Search of Ibn Munāzil,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): 450–82.

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disappears although its members are included.123 In the Risāla we fĳind a passage in which al-Wāsiṭī, a Khurasani who studied with the Iraqi Junayd, arrives in Nishapur after the death of Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (d. 298/910),124 who was linked to the Persian mystical movement called the malāmatī. The episode shows us that the Iraqis held their doctrine to be superior: When al-Wāsiṭī arrived in Nishapur, he asked the disciples of Abu ʿUthmān [al-Ḥīrī]: ‘What did your master usually command you to do?’ They answered: ‘He used to command us to practice acts of obedience [toward God], while keeping in sight our shortcomings [in performing them].’ Al-Wāsiṭī responded: ‘Then he taught you nothing but pure Zoroastrianism (al-majūsiyya al-maḥḍa).’125

The Kitāb al-Shawāhid contains the complementary opposite point the view of the Baghdadis from al-Ḥīrī, who probably studied Sufĳism in Baghdad before al-Wāsiṭī: Abū ʿAmr al-Zajjājī said: I came back once from a travel in the Hejaz and on the way home I passed by Abū ʿUthmān [al-Ḥīrī]. He told to me: ‘Did you see al-Junayd?’ I replied: ‘Yes.’ He asked: ‘Did you hear his words?’ I replied: ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Don’t be misled by this, as this does not correspond to your spiritual state.’126

This passage demonstrates that even if ʿAbū ʿUthmān met Junayd in Baghdad, he did not fĳind that that form of mysticism was suitable for everyone. The Kitāb al-Shawāhid also offfers us some indications of how the exchange between the two traditions of Islamic mysticism, Baghdadi and Nishapuri, was still underway during the time of Qushayrī. Qushayrī explains to his pupils a diffferent point of view between the Iraqis and the Khurasanians about a matter of Sufĳi terminology and proposes at the end his own synthesis of the two positions: Among the people of Khurasan, contentment (riḍā) belongs to the spiritual stations. Among the people of Iraq it belongs to the spiritual states. It is possible to 123 Cf. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, Risālat al-Malāmatiyya, in al-Malāmatiyya wa-ltaṣawwuf wa-ahl al-futuwwa, ed. Abū l-ʿAlāʾ ʿAfīfī (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1945), 71–120; Richard Hartmann, “As-Sulamī’s Risālat al-Malāmatīja,” Der Islam 8 (1918), 157–203; and Frederick de Jong et al., “Malāmatiyya,” in EI2. 124 Cf. Laury Silvers, A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr Al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufĳism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010). About this episode see Thibon, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulāmī, 75; and J. Chabbi, “Remarques,” 63. 125 Qushayrī, Risāla, 132; idem (Knysh [trans.]), Epistle, 78; and idem (Gramlich [trans.]), Sendschreiben, 109. 126 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 63b. Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī is counted among the “malāmatis with Sufĳi tendencies” (Thibon, L’œuvre d’Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulāmī, 62). His travels in Iraq in quest of hadith have been recorded by Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:64.


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unify the two positions because the beginning of contentment belongs to the fĳinal phases of the spiritual stations and its term belongs to the fĳirst spiritual state.127

Qushayrī’s ability to fĳind a synthesis between two diffferent, sometimes contradictory positions on specifĳic items of Sufĳism may explain why his Risāla became one of the most widespread manuals on Sufĳism.

Conclusions Even if Bulliet has already documented the lives of the Qushayrī family in his remarkable reconstruction of the social history of Nishapur, a deeper appreciation of the textual legacy carried on by the sons and grandsons of Qushayrī further illuminates the special relationship present between family structure and mystical transmission. This special relationship is fully recorded by the sources, the most ancient of them being from ʿAbd al-Ghāfĳir al-Fārisī, a descendent of the Daqqāq-Qushayrī family. In the fĳirst part of this study I tried to answer the question: how should we understand the genesis of a Qushayriyya at a time when such nisbas typically indicated schools of mystical teaching and not spiritual orders? Abū Naṣr’s Kitāb al-Shawāhid is a concrete case that helps explain the nature of that legacy. Going beyond a simple philological study of the text, the Kitāb is an important resource for analyzing the larger development of Sufĳism in Khurasan and the role that poetry played in that development. By comparing our results to Sobieroj’s literary analysis of Qushayrī’s ʿUyūn al-ajwiba, we can state that it is in Qushayrī’s literary production that poetry assumes in the Sufĳi context a full mystical dimension deeply linked with didactical purposes. Furthermore, three main items demonstrate the value of the text: 1) its multilingualism as a reflection of everyday life and culture; 2) the role of Qushayrī as a spiritual master; and, fĳinally 3) the birth of classical Sufĳism as a marriage, at times a difffĳicult one, between two diffferent mystical traditions, the Iraqi and Persian. The text also raises important questions that still need to be addressed. For instance, what does the text evince for the development of the concept of sainthood within a Sufĳi family? While Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen has discussed this matter in her article “Le saint musulman en père de famille,” her study was aimed at a much later period of history, the sixteenth century of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī.128 Secondly, Jacqueline Chabbi has cautioned that 127 Kitāb al-Shawāhid, fol. 91b, cf. idem, Risāla, bāb al-riḍā, 319. 128 Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, “Le saint musulman en père de famille,” in Saint et sainteté dans le christianisme et l’islam: le regard des sciences de l’homme, ed. Denis Gril and Nelly Amri (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2007), 249–63.

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we must stop reading Sufĳi authors exclusively for what they said about Sufĳism.129 Agreeing with her, it is necessary to apply a multidisciplinary approach to the history of Sufĳism as the primary question remains: do we really know what the Sufĳis said? The discovery of texts like this one is proof that the work of unearthing the voices of early Sufĳism remains still incomplete.

Appendix Table of concordances between Sulamī’s Kitāb al-Amthāl, Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī’s Kitāb al-Shawāhid, Qushayrī’s Risāla and Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt. Kitāb alAmthāl 130

Kitāb alShawahid

Risāla

Laṭāʾif

#422 #423 #425 #428 #429 #430 #435 #426 #440 #442 #448

fol. 73a — — fol. 61b fol. 123b — — fol. 19b fol. 56b — —

— — bāb al-faqr (424) —

#450

—

#451 #455 #462 #463 #469 #486 #489 #482 #485 #486

fol. 101a — fol. 133b fol. 125b — — — — fol. 91a —

bāb al-ṣabr (410) bāb al-dhikr (360 — — bāb al-wajd (141–2) bāb al-khurūj min al-dunyā (461) bāb al-khurūj min al-dunyā (459) — bāb al-ḥāl (134) — — bāb al-ʿubūdiyya (327) — — bāb al-maḥabba (482) — —

— Q. 44:12 (5:382) — — — — — — — — —

#495 #498

fol. 68a fol. 128a

— —

129 J. Chabbi, “Remarques,” 5–72. 130 According to the editor’s paragraphs.

— — — Q. 57:29 (5:103) — Q. 1:5 (1:61) Q. 38:19 (5:248) Q. 44:12 (5:382) — Q. 12:1 (3:166); Q. 57:22 (6:111) Q. 3:191 (1:316); Q. 16:12 (3:288); Q. 18:19 (4:58) Q. 11:90 (3:154) —

F. Chiabotti / Journal of Sufĳi Studies 2 (2013) 46–77 Table (cont.) #506 #510 Kitāb alAmthāl

— fol. 68b Kitāb alShawahid

bāb al-dhikr (359) — Risāla

Q. 3:191 (3 :318) — Laṭāʾif

#518 #521 #526 #529 #532 #541 #545

fol. 109a fol. 51b fol. 68b fol. 128b — fol. 120b —

— Q. 80:37 (6:259) — — — Q. 2:42 (1:98) Q. 5:89 (2:140)

#552

—

— — — — bāb al- wajd (141) — bāb al-khurūj min al-dunyā (461) bāb al- khurūj min al-dunyā (464)

Q. 50:19 (6:19)

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The Spiritual and Physical Progeny of ʿAbd Al-Karīm Al-Qushayrī

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