4 - Religion: “I Saw My God”

Summary

Death embraces us into its breast

Venturing and abstaining

It bears us as a secret upon its secret

Making our multitude one

– Adūnīs

1. INTRODUCTION

Early mystic Arabic poetry arose along with the development of Ṣūfī theory at the beginning of the ninth century ad and flourished during the next several centuries. Its origins were in the spontaneous utterances of the early Ṣūfī mystics, who poetically expressed their love of God and at the same time their rejection of worldly pleasures. They were inspired by the profane secular Arabic love poetry in its both erotic (ḥissī) and Platonic (‘udhrī) trends, which emerged out of the pre-Islamic period and the early Islamic era. Noteworthy medieval Ṣūfī poets include Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801), although there is no clear evidence that she actually composed all the verses attributed to her; al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (858–922); ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ (1181–1234); and Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (1164–1240). Ṣūfī poetry also developed in other languages, such as Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. From the thirteenth century ad, a new genre of Ṣūfī poetry emerged, the panegyric poems for the Prophet Muḥammad (al-madā’iḥ al-nabawiyya), the most famous being “al-Burda” (“The Mantle Ode”) by the Egyptian poet Sharaf al-Dīn al-Būṣīrī (d. 1295). This poem, in memory of the poet's miraculous recovery from paralysis through a vision in which the Prophet cast his mantle over him, is thought to have special powers against illness and misfortune and has had over forty interpretations and even more imitations. Gradually losing the spontaneity and enthusiasm that had characterized its early stages, Arabic mystic poetry underwent the same process experienced by medieval Arabic canonical poetry, which was integral to it from the standpoint of poetics. Only a very few poets stood out against the background of their era, such as ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1640–1731), who also wrote a commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ's poetry. In our times, traditional Ṣūfī poetry has been primarily written within the circles of Ṣūfī orders and published by magazines, such as Majallat al-Taṣawwuf al-Islāmī (The Magazine of Islamic Sufism), the organ of the High Council of the Ṣūfī Orders in Egypt, as well as in special religious collections.