The Concept of jadhb and the Image of majdhūb in Sufi Teachings and Life in the Period between the Fourth/Tenth and the Tenth/Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

This paper discusses the theoretical basis of the Sufi term jadhb (the effortless attraction of man by God), and examines the different approaches towards the figure of majdhūb as developed and presented in Sufi compendia and both Sufi and non-Sufi biographies of the period between the fourth/tenth and the tenth/sixteenth centuries. It suggests that there are three major phases in the development of the theoretical basis of jadhb. The first stage covers the period between the fourth/tenth century and the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. Jadhb during this stage was not discussed as a separate technical term, and its early foundations were embedded particularly in the early discussions of tawba (repentance) beside other expressions such as ghayba and fanā’. The period that began with the late part of the sixth/twelfth century and reached the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century was distinguished by attempts of later Sufi authors to moderate the problematic aspects of jadhb and to integrate it with the detailed discussions of mashyakha (sheikh status). In light of the increasing antinomian appearances of the majdhūbs and the anarchistic qalandariyya in Muslim landscapes, the period following the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century up to the tenth/sixteenth century witnessed the popularity of majdhūb Sufis whose antinomian approach towards social codes and religious rituals came to be freely presented in the sources. Jadhb became separated from the institutionalised doctrinal system of mashyakha, although some attempts were made to integrate jadhb with sulūk and, thus, to maintain the majdhūb’s ability to act as a spiritual guide.

Introduction

Modern scholarship on early Sufism pays little attention to the problematic and elaborate concepts of jadhb (lit. effortless attraction of man by God), and majdhūb (the one who is attracted by God).¹ Included within his discussion of the saintly characteristics of the Sufi sheikh in Die Schiitischen Derwischorden Persiens (1976), Richard Gramlich investigates in great depth the dichotomy between sulūk (following a road, wayfaring, German: Hinangezogene)² and jadhb (effortless attraction, German: Schreitende) in Sufi literature. This dichotomy is implied in the detailed discussions of the process of qualifying wayfarers to the status of sheikh (mashyakha) in Sufi writings of the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.³ At the beginning of his chapter on Sufi mashyakha, Gramlich refers to the influential role of the Sufi sheikh who “stands in the centre of the theories and aspirations of Sufi dervishes”.⁴ The state of jadhb in its content designates passivism. It should be, then, differentiated from other Sufi situations distinguished by a clear activism. Both activism and passivism were proposed by Gramlich as a way of clarifying the differences between majdhūb and sālik as part of his detailed treatment of the qualification for the status of sheikh in early Sufi thought.

Gramlich's short entry “Madjdhūb” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam relies on his Derwischorden in addition to a few additional references to Arabic and Persian sources.⁵ Leonard Lewisohn, who wrote the entry “Sulūk” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, refers briefly to jadhb as the polar opposite of the Sufi concept of sulūk. The latter, as Lewisohn emphasises, has no early foundations in the oldest key Sufi works of the early stage. Neither jadhb as an influential concept in early Sufi thinking, nor the wider mechanism of its development parallel to the Sufi movement as a whole, has been the subject of detailed study in recent scholarship.

This article, therefore, discusses the treatment of the theoretical contents of jadhb in early Sufi compendia in the period from the fourth/tenth century up to the tenth/sixteenth centuries, and suggests three possible different stages in the development of this term. Among the questions that it raises are: How did jadhb and majdhūbs became essential components of later Sufi doctrines that highlighted the process of creating sheikhs? What were the various approaches regarding the image of majdhūb in early Muslim contexts? Were these approaches subordinate to different contexts of time and space?

In its very essence, the state of jadhb implies the mystic's arrival at his ultimate destination, that is the last stop on his arduous path, and, therefore, it disregards or marginalises the need to travel along the path through all its stages. Theoretically-speaking, the state of jadhb is not necessarily an outcome of this spiritual journey. Indeed, it can occur without being preceded by ascetic exercises and spiritual preparations. This idea was one of the serious challenges facing early Sufi theoreticians, and accordingly they made strenuous efforts to maintain the general theoretical structure of the Sufi path that they had started to consolidate in the course of the fourth/tenth century. This was a threefold structure beginning with difficult ascetic exercises and austerities and later turning into an intensive process of spiritual development shaped by successive states of divine grace, until the highest and most spiritually prestigious situation of achieving the final destination of the path is accomplished. This last stage is usually referred to in early Sufi writings in a variety of terms, including ḥuḍūr, mushāhada, wuṣūl, jamʿ, maḥw, ṭams and many others.⁶ Sufi authors usually indicate that all stages that follow that of ascetic exercises depend completely on God's willingness to bestow His grace upon the mystic. God could, in particular cases, even keep the mystic at the preliminary stage and deprive him of the higher states of grace.⁷

Beside this general structure of the Sufi path, medieval Muslim societies witnessed the appearance of majdhūbs, those said to have been suddenly and intensively attracted by God without being wayfarers (sing. sālik, pl. sālikūn), and who had not travelled along the path of hardship and self-discipline beforehand. The authors of Sufi manuals, who became responsible for creating the general Sufi ethos, were unable to ignore the high position that those figures succeeded in gaining within their communities, and, hence, they included these exceptional cases into the general fabric of their theoretical systems, while maintaining the validity of their original threefold structure. Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), for instance, while discussing the state of ghayba (spiritual absence), provides an interesting story about the early Sufi character, Abū Bakr al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) in the section which he devotes to Sufi terminology. According to Qushayrī, Shiblī entered Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd's (d. 298/910) place and found the great master of Baghdad sitting in the company of his wife. When the woman wanted to cover herself, Junayd asked her to calm down and remain seated since Shiblī at that moment was not able to identify her. Junayd started talking with Shiblī until the latter began to cry. Then Junayd asked his wife to cover herself since Shiblī had woken up from his spiritual absence (afāq al-Shiblī min ghaybatihi).⁸ A more detailed version of this episode appeared prior to Qushayrī’s work in Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, and with the same structure in the work of the late eighth/fourteenth century biographer, Ibn al-Mulaqqin.⁹

The absorption of the jadhb system into the formal Sufi ethos reached its peak when certain Sufi systems of thought, during the sixth/twelfth century, sought to integrate it into the emerging process of qualifying for sheikh status (al-taʾhīl li-l-mashyakha). Outlining the different strategies offered by early Sufi authors on how to deal with jadhb and majdhūb would provide us with a useful way of understanding the more general process of creating a Sufi ethos in the works of such authors, and so reveal just how dynamic and flexible this process was, and how creatively it responded to changing realities.

Early Foundations of jadhb in Classical Sufism

Early Sufi literature referred to the conceptual content of the term jadhb, the deep experience of spiritual intimacy and revelation, through the use of additional terms and a type of evasive language. The famous Sufi statement jadhba min jadhbāt al-Ḥaqq turbī ʿalā aʿmāl al-thaqalayn (lit. “One divine jadhba surpasses all hardships performed by both Jinn and human beings”) dates back to the fourth/tenth century.¹⁰ Nonetheless, it should be noted that the word jadhb itself appears to have been quite rare in sections devoted to terminology in Sufi works and manuals of this period. Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899), the leading figure of the Sufis of Baghdad in the third/ninth century, describes at the very beginning of his Kitāb al-ḍiyāʾ those whom “God attracted their inner secrets” (jadhaba al-Ḥaqq awhāmahum).¹¹

As part of his detailed section devoted to Sufi technical terms in his Kitāb al-lumaʿ, Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj al-Ṭūsī (d. 378/988) singled out the term jadhb al-arwāḥ (lit. “the attraction of the spirits”). Sarrāj explains the term by combining it with a group of synonymous terms that, according to him, all appear to designate divine providence (ʿināya) and guidance (hidāya). Two personalities are mentioned here: Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz and Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī (d. ca. 320/928). Both are quoted by Sarrāj as having defined jadhb:

The divine attraction of the spirits, as well as the hearts' elevation, the revelation of secrets, the intimate discourse (munājāt), conversation (mukhāṭaba) and other synonyms are all phrases that carry the meanings of the divine providence, and they refer to what appears to human hearts from the lights of guidance [. . .]. It was Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz who is alleged to have said: God attracted the spirits of His friends, and He made them enjoy the recollection of His name and the arrival to His intimacy. God, furthermore, grants their bodies in advance with all pleasures that were supposed to be granted to them on the day after; and that is why the life of their bodies is like the life of the animals (ʿayshu abdānihim ʿayshu al-ḥayawāniyyīn), while the life of their souls is more like a life of God's men (ʿayshu arwāḥihim ʿayshu al-rabbāniyyīn). Wāsiṭī is reported to have said: God caused them to observe His deep secrets through which He attracted their inner selves to Himself. He [that is Wāsiṭī] said further: When God attracts the spirits and moves them away from the bodies, He stabilises the bodies with the intellects and the [human] attributes.¹²

However, in order to understand the way in which Sarrāj conceived jadhb and the sophisticated system of thought that lies behind it, the information implied in this extract needs to be subdivided as follows.

First, for Sarrāj himself, jadhb al-arwāḥ appears to be an additional synonym for a group of terms that imply states of observation and divine revelation, all of which could be caused ultimately by divine will. Meanwhile, Sarrāj quotes Kharrāz whose definition of the term combines the state of jadhb with spiritual pleasure (ladhdha).

Second, the definition provided by Kharrāz adds the element of pleasure to the state of jadhb. Kharrāz refrains from referring to the bodily or even the animalistic pleasures granted to those whose spirits deserve God's spiritual pleasures. In the state of jadhb al-arwāḥ, according to Kharrāz, the bodies of Sufis are not deprived of their right to enjoy earthly pleasures since the latter are considered an expression of God's will to recompense certain Sufis in this world by allowing them to enjoy the otherworldly pleasures in advance.

Third, Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī is an interesting figure of early Sufism. Laury Silvers, who relies heavily on his sayings in her detailed discussion of the relationship between theoretical and practical Sufism, refers to Wāsiṭī’s theory on the relationship between God and the world of creation. God, according to Wāsiṭī, “is manifest in everything through what He makes manifest of Himself. His making manifest the things is His manifestation through them”.¹³ God makes His own attributes and signs manifest in everything, and He makes His own Self manifest in each self. No one in the world of creation has the right to say “myself”.

In another saying preserved by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) in his Sufi commentary on the Qurʾān, Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, Wāsiṭī is alleged to have said: “Among them are those whom the Real (al-Ḥaqq) attracts, and whom He blots out from themselves through Himself; for He says: ‘God blots out whatever He wills and makes firm’ [Q 13, 39]”. The latter statement resembles that quoted by Sarrāj. The verbal form jadhaba in Wāsiṭī’s statement was quoted by Sarrāj and, most probably, should be understood as “blots out” (maḥā). In other words, God blots out the selves of human beings since they are all manifestations of His absolute Self. Meanwhile, bodies are veiled from His act of jadhb since they are attached to the intellect and human attributes. Jadhb in Wāsiṭī’s metaphysics is the ultimate destiny of selves (sarāʾir): It serves as God's way to make manifest of Himself through people's selves.

Sarrāj seems to be satisfied with quoting Wāsiṭī’s statement without following it with a comment or explanation of his own. He did the same with the previous quotation from Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz. Both statements, it should be noted, imply a state in which the human body is detached from the inner self amidst jadhb. The body is ‘animalistic’ and, therefore, is veiled from the divine presence. Furthermore, both statements refer to jadhb not as a sudden or one-time spiritual experience but rather as a permanent spiritual description of the friends of God (awliyāʾ Allāh).

Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990) singles out the term jadhb as a separate technical term. The verbal form jadhaba appears twice in Kitāb al-taʿarruf, while the infinitive forms jadhba and jadhb are introduced in four places.¹⁴ God's attraction is perceived as a proof of the state of wilāya (aʿlām wilāyatihi),¹⁵ or a proof of the shift from the rank of murīd (the one who seeks God) to the rank of murād (the one whom God seeks to bring close to Him).¹⁶ Jadhb, according to the second identification, refers to the shift from being the subject to the state of being the ultimate object of God's actions. In two places of Chapter 63 of his Taʿarruf, Kalābādhī introduces the term jadhbat al-qudra, and he presents three examples to explain the term: Pharaoh's magicians (saḥarat Firʿawn), ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and finally Ibrāhīm ibn Adham:

Murād is the one whom God attracts to Him by His jadhbat al-qudra, and He reveals to him the secret states of grace. This intensive revelation causes the murād to have a total commitment to his spiritual state, and a power needed to endure its hardships. One example of this state is that of Pharaoh's magicians [that according to the Qurʾān] when God revealed to them the very secret of Moses’ prophecy, He graced them with the power to endure Pharaoh's punishment and that is why they said: “We choose thee not above the clear proofs that have come unto us, and above Him Who created us. So decree what thou wilt decree” [Q. 20,72]. Another example [of jadhbat al-qudra] is to be found in ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb's behaviour when he became totally captured by Islam at the same moment he intended to kill the prophet Muḥammad. [The third example is] the story of Ibrāhīm ibn Adham who went outside to go hunting, and, suddenly, heard an anonymous voice calling him twice: “You have not been created for this sake, and you have not been ordered to do this”.¹⁷

According to Kalābādhī, the divine act of jadhb demonstrates the state commonly combined with tawba (repentance) in early Sufi writings, when a dramatic and shocking incident occurs suddenly, and leaves its intensive influence on one person, causing him to change his life completely.¹⁸

Later, Qushayrī does not refer to jadhb as a separate Sufi term as he did with many other terms in the section that he devotes to Sufi terminology in his Risālā.¹⁹ Meanwhile, he refers in detail to the concept of tawba, which gains a special position in his influential epistle, as it does in other Sufi compendia of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. It is the topic of the first chapter that opens a discussion of the different ranks of the Sufi path. Tawba, according to Qushayrī, is the most important of all Sufi degrees in the same way that standing on the mountain of ʿArafa is the most important ritual during the Ḥajj. Qushayrī’s own definition of tawba is distinguished by his attempt to keep it among makāsib, those spiritual degrees that could be attained by the mystic's own efforts. He explains in great detail how someone could initiate tawba, and then practise it through certain codes of behaviour and morals. After its Qurʾānic opening, the relevant prophetic tradition, and Qushayrī’s own definition of the terms (indeed these are the structural units of all his chapters on Sufi situations and states),²⁰ comes the structural unit in which the author gathers sayings of Sufi masters on tawba. It is here where the idea is frequently raised of the unexpected incident that leads to a sincere repentance that could never be followed by recanting. This stimulus, particularly in a form of an anonymous voice (hātif), appears mostly when the person who repents faces a situation of coldness (fitra) and loses interest in all the religious commitments imposed by tawba. One of those Sufis who felt coldness after making tawba used to ask himself: What would happen if he decided to turn back to his tawba, what would be his legal position (kayfa ḥukmuhu)? An anonymous voice suddenly sounded in his ears, saying: “Oh, you nameless creature! When you obeyed us we thanked you. Later on, when you left us behind, we gave you time to repent, and when you decided to turn back to us we welcomed you”. It was claimed that this voice caused the Sufi to turn to God in a state of complete repentance and he succeeded in making his way along the Sufi path.²¹

In certain cases, the spiritual stimulus takes the form of someone's statement or an influential piece of advice coming from a great master. Interestingly, this was the case of Abū ʿAmr Ismāʿīl ibn Nujayd (d. 366/976). Ibn Nujayd himself was the famous Sufi master of Nishapur, and the maternal grandfather of Sulamī who, in turn, was one of Qushayrī’s masters. Qushayrī relates that even Ibn Nujayd, at the very beginning of his spiritual career, experienced spiritual coldness (waqaʿat lahu fitra). Having been a sincere disciple who used to attend all the lessons of his master Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (d. 298/910), he once decided to cease doing so. One day, Abū ʿUthmān followed Ibn Nujayd and, when he got close to him, he said to him: “Oh my son! Do not accompany that who wants you to be protected from committing faults (maʿṣūm). It is none other than Abū ʿUthmān, who will be of great benefit for you!” The young disciple Ibn Nujayd became completely overwhelmed by the tender words of his master and, consequently, turned back to God and made progress along the Sufi path.²²

Sufi authors who portrayed the theoretical boundaries of the tawba system of thought most likely had to face the following paradox: If the very meaning of the verb tāba (repented) indicates a human effort to begin the act of ‘turning back’ to God, then how can this self-initiative process harmonise with the Sufi principle according to which all human behaviours and actions, including tawba, are exclusively motivated and caused by the divine will?²³ Early Sufi authors suggested an ingenious solution to this essential theoretical paradox. In order to overcome it, they introduced two levels of tawba into the detailed discussions of the topic in their writings, the first referring to a sudden situation of repentance, usually caused by a powerful stimulus such as an anonymous voice or saying, the second requires a lengthy process of purification and ascetic hardship. The first, I would argue, provides us with the earliest foundations of jadhb.

Stages in the Development of the Concept: A Proposed Sketch

As this article has pointed out, the early foundations of jadhb theory were embedded in the discussion of tawba. This is despite the fact that tawba was considered in early Sufi ethos as one of the stations (maqāmāt) that the Sufi acquires by his own will through his human efforts and not as a state of grace (ḥāl) that expresses God's will to bestow a spiritual state of the soul upon him. Sufi writings of the late sixth/twelfth century and the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth century provide some evidence that jadhb gradually became an established term that could designate the final destination of the Sufi path, or the highly demanding spiritual state to which many Sufis looked forward. The writings of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) and his contemporary Najm al-Dīn al-Rāzī Dāya (d. 654/1256) are the most outspoken in this regard. Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī, the prominent Sufi master of Baghdad, discusses the state of jadhb as one of the outstanding components in his practical system of qualifying for mashyakha status. This system encompassed the whole body of characteristics and conditions that needed to exist in Sufis who succeeded in achieving the final destination of the Sufi path (the rank of intihāʾ according to Suhrawardī) so that they qualified for mashyakha. According to Suhrawardī, if the effortless attraction of the Sufi seeker by God (his jadhba) is followed by arduous spiritual training, the seeker reaches the path's final destination and becomes muntahī. Sufis who began as majdhūbs and later endured the hardships of the mystic path along its various stages are regarded as the preferred group to qualify for mashyakha.²⁴ A biographical note made by ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Yāfiʿī (d. 768/67-1366) is very interesting here. Yāfiʿī in his Rawḍ al-rayāḥīn fī ḥikāyāt al-ṣāliḥīn discusses the category of the ‘wise fools’ (ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn), and refers to a personality named ʿAlī al-Kurdī, a wise fool of Damascus. Yāfiʿī describes this man as follows: “He used to hold sway over the people of Damascus in the same way that a king was able to hold sway over his people”.²⁵ Yāfiʿī, moreover, mentions the following anecdote: when the renowned master of Baghdad Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī visited Damascus as the envoy of the Abbāsid khalīfa al-Nāṣir to the court of the Ayyūbī ruler al-Malik al-ʿĀdil in 604/1207, he asked his companions to take him to see ʿAlī al-Kurdī. His companions tried to convince him not to do so since Kurdī was “a man that used not to pray and to appear in public while uncovering his private parts” (“hādhā rajul lā yuṣallī wa-yamshī makshūf al-ʿawra akthar awqātihi”). It was narrated that Suhrawardī insisted on visiting the controversial figure in spite of his antinomian behaviour. When he arrived at Kurdī’s place, the Baghdadi master dismounted and approached the fool who, after identifying Suhrawardī, exposed his private parts before him (“kashafa ʿawratahu”)! Suhrawardī, according to the story, succeeded in controlling his shock, and even told the man that this strange behaviour did not affect his sincere will to visit him and talk to him. As a result, as Yāfiʿī relates, Kurdī allowed Suhrawardī to sit with him.²⁶ The same story was later mentioned by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) in his biographical account of ʿAlī al-Kurdī.²⁷ The figure of ʿAlī al-Kurdī appears in the historiographies of Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373) and, later on, of Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1061/1651). Ibn Kathīr refers to this man among those who died in 622, and indicates that the people of Damascus had disagreed about his character due to his strange behaviour.²⁸ Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī mentions ʿAlī al-Kurdī on two occasions in his al-Kawākib al-sāʾira: the first time, Ghazzī indicates that he was one of the famous defenders of traditional (sunnī) Islam who would denounce heretical tendencies in his days even though he used to “conceal his spiritual state from public eyes through tajādhub at the beginning of his career” (“kāna yatasattar bi-l-tajādhub fī bidāʾat amrihi”). The term tajādhub here, as the context indicates, refers to certain asocial actions that this man apparently used to carry out in public, such as riding on a cane and carrying another cane with a fox's tail attached to its top.²⁹ Elsewhere in Ghazzī’s work, a reference is made to another figure also named ʿAlī al-Kurdī who died in 925 and who was, according to Ghazzī, one of the famous “three perfect majdhūbs” (“al-majādhīb al-thalātha al-kummal”).³⁰ The latter reference creates the impression that two different figures bearing the same name lived in Damascus and acted as wise fools in two different periods.

Whether the story of the encounter between Suhrawardī and the wise fool of Damascus was authentic or fabricated by later biographers, its appearance in the sources has important implications as it appears that both Yāfiʿī and Jāmī believed that referring to this story would provide an effective instrument with which to defend the jadhb system of their day. Examining the works of Suhrawardī, the renowned master of Baghdad, who himself offered a level-headed approach towards jadhb and majdhūb in his writings, could defend jadhb and the fame of wise fools who most probably were targets for traditionalists’ condemnation and accusation, more than anything else. According to Yāfiʿī, for instance, ʿAlī al-Kurdī was only one example of a larger group of wise fools who used to act anarchically in public, such as uncovering their private parts, so as to claim that they had abandoned the rituals of Islam, and that they would no longer pray nor fast, while in practice they prayed and fasted and observed all the rituals.³¹

Such antinomian codes of behaviour were common among majdhūb figures and deviant dervish groups known in the history of Islam as the qalandariyya. The latter were referenced in detail for the first time in Arabic writings in Suhrawardī’s ʿAwārif al-maʿārif. Qalandarī Sufis, who intentionally violated social norms of behaviour and dress and did not submit themselves to masters of instruction and training, were a well-known phenomenon in Suhrawardī’s time, as shown by the pioneering work by Ahmet Karamustafa on qalandariyya and other deviant dervishes.³² Qalandariyya, however, had made their appearance before Suhrawardī’s days. The earliest work that documents them is—most probably—ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī of Herāt's Qalandar-nāmeh dating from the fifth/eleventh century.³³ In the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century, qalandariyya got as far as Anatolia as implied in Aflākī’s biographical work Manāqib al-ʿārifīn.³⁴

The anarchist and anti-social appearances of qalandariyya left their marks on Muslim landscapes during the seventh/thirteenth century. Karamustafa points out that Suhrawardī’s contemporary Jamāl al-Dīn al-Sāwī (or al-Sāwjī) (d. ca. 630/1232-33)—the man who took responsibility for crystallising the theoretical system of the qalandariyya—used to uncover parts of his body in public.³⁵ Suhrawardī himself was not able to conceal his positive attitude towards the qalandariyya in the same way as he did not hide his respect for majdhūbs. Taṣawwuf of the two categories, according to him, could not be considered the ultimate manifestation of the Sufi mode of life as Suhrawardī conceived of this; however, for him it was still legitimate and acceptable.³⁶

Suhrawardī’s tolerant approach did not harmonise with the severely critical voices against both jadhb and the social deviance of qalandariyya that existing during his time. The Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), who interestingly did not mention the term qalandariyya in his Talbīs Iblīs, criticises the malāmatiyya (Sufis of blame) and their customs of concealing their piety and drawing the blame of the world by committing faults.³⁷ In his Kitāb al-mawḍūʿāt, Ibn al-Jawzī refers to a group of men who “fall asleep flat on their faces out of wandering in pious travel”.³⁸ Such textual evidence suggests that even if wandering groups of qalandariyya were not known to practise a distinct mode of piety in Iraq in Ibn al-Jawzī’s time, similar features and customs among other deviant individuals were undoubtedly present prior to the seventh/thirteenth century in that region. Suhrawardī, most likely, encountered deviant Sufis—who abandoned social norms and undertook anarchistic behaviour—belonging to both categories: qalandariyya and general majdhūbs. He might have also been acquainted with Anṣārī’s aforementioned work on qalandariyya, and so, when he encountered deviant Sufis himself, he introduced the term qalandariyya to describe them.

Having said this, the suggested shift in approaching jadhb in Sufi writings drew upon the teachings of Suhrawardī and his contemporaries over the course of the late sixth/twelfth century and the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth century. Another Sufi author of that period was Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā (d. 618/1221). Kubrā provides an additional theoretical basis to the legitimate position of majdhūb in his Fawāʾiḥ al-jamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-jalāl. Though majdhūb enjoy a high spiritual position according to Kubrā, they are not, in fact, qualified to act as a Sufi sheikh. In order to guide his novices effectively, a Sufi sheikh should ‘taste’ the difficulties along the path. Majdhūb, according to Kubrā, tastes the final destination of the path without enduring the pains of the journey that leads to it (“fa-inna al-majdhūb wa-in dhāqa al-maqṣūd wa-lākin lam yadhuq al-ṭarīq ilā al-maqṣūd”).³⁹

Richard Gramlich has discussed the differences among Sufi authors in Suhrawardī and Kubrā’s time in relation to how they handled jadhb and the act of travelling along the path (sulūk). He presents two theoretical ways in which the two concepts were approached: the first way includes Suhrawardī and those who followed him, such as ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī (d. after 735/1352-53) and ʿAzīz Nasafī (d. 686/1287); while the second way includes Kubrā and his famous disciple Najm al-Dīn al-Rāzī Dāya. Suhrawardī’s category conceives of jadhb and sulūk as two separate situations that can each precede one other in terms of timing. Kubrā and Dāya, in contrast, prefer to integrate jadhb with sulūk, and to consider sālik as one who has a weak jadhb while considering majdhūb as a sālik who enjoys a strong jadhb.⁴⁰

The integration of jadhb into detailed discussions of mashyakha over the course of the sixth/twelfth and early seventh/thirteenth centuries reached its peak in the writings of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī, Kubrā and their successors. I would argue here that after the first part of the seventh/century, references to jadhb in Sufi and non-Sufi biographies were intended to place the focus on certain aspects that differed from those of the previous phase. Early medieval literature began to devote greater space to majdhūb figures. Groups of qalandariyya succeeded in reaching the central Arab territories of Iraq and Syria and making a stronger impact on Muslim life there. Damascus may have played a fundamental role as one of the key centres of majdhūbs’ activities. Scholarly attempts to moderate jadhb by identifying its connection with sulūk, such as in the biographical work of Junayd Shīrāzī and Yāfiʿī during the eighth/fourteenth century, reflect a reality in which jadhb could not maintain its previous position as an integral part of mashyakha system, and instead became an integral part of a general fabric of antinomianism that involved majdhūbs and qalandars together.

This article now outlines the three stages in the development of jadhb conceptual systems. But since a detailed discussion of the first stage was presented earlier in this paper, I will treat it very briefly here while looking at the second and third suggested stages in more detail.

The first stage

From the fourth/tenth century to the first half of the sixth/twelfth century, the concept of jadhb was not discussed as a separate Sufi term. Rather it was generally integrated into the detailed discussions of repentance in addition to other contexts such as the discussions of the concept of irāda which technically designates the starting point of adopting the Sufi path. Early Sufi sources provide a theoretical differentiation between murīd (the one who desires to be a Sufi), and murād (the one who is desired by God's will).⁴¹ In the chapter on irāda in his Risāla, Qushayrī states that Sufis of his day use the active participle murīd for the beginner Sufi and the passive participle murād for those who achieve the final destination of the Sufi path (muntahī).⁴² Interestingly, Qushayrī, before Suhrawardī, refers to the possible situation according to which certain men could be granted mystic revelations and become initiated into God's knowledge and secrets at the very beginning of their spiritual careers, even without any previous intention or ascetic preparation. In this case, Qushayrī, like Suhrawardī later on, insists on the need for them to turn back to the path of hardship and ascetic austerities. Murād is beautifully described by Qushayrī as ‘a flyer’ (ṭāʾir), a famous metaphor that was frequently used in later Sufi writings.⁴³ Here, we come across a colourful lexicon of treating the jadhb state without introducing the term itself.

Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Yaḥyā al-Tādilī, known as Ibn al-Zayyāt (d. 617/1220), in his biographical work on the Sufis of North Africa—Kitāb al-tashawwuf ilā rijāl al-taṣawwuf—frequently describes his pious hero as a person who “became motivated by an intensive impulse, turned back to God, and left behind all worldly affairs” (“thumma nazaʿat bihi ilā Allāh himma ʿāliya, fa-tajarrad min al-dunyā wa-takhallā ʿanhā”).⁴⁴ The same expression appears in the biography of Abū ʿAlī Manṣūr al-Ṣanhājī, whose biographical account goes as follows:

Abū ʿAlī was preoccupied with his lower soul (kāna musrifan ʿalā nafsihi) while singing at wedding parties and amusing himself during those parties; he then became motivated by an intensive impulse (nazaʿat bihi ilā Allāh himma ʿāliya), and started accompanying pious men.⁴⁵

Abū Yaʿqūb Tazūlī’s tawba story includes the element of a sudden incident that caused the person to leave his previous life in pursuit of a pious mode of life. He was a thief who experienced a dramatic change after listening to a group of men whom he was about to attack.⁴⁶ A similar anecdote is told about Abū Wakīl Maymūn al-Aswad.⁴⁷ One of the long biographical accounts in Ibn al-Zayyāt's work refers to Abū Ibrāhīm Ismāʿīl al-Rajrājī (who died, according to Ibn al-Zayyāt, in 595/1198). The author describes in detail the strange behaviour of this man, who had no disciple of his own and who used to lose consciousness while speaking in a very ambiguous manner. One of his contemporaries relates that when he planned to meet the sheikh, Abū Ibrāhīm, he prayed to God asking Him to make the sheikh’s common sense keep him away from any strange behaviour at the time of their meeting, so as to allow him enjoy their association.⁴⁸

This first stage in the development of jadhb theory needs to be considered in the light of a parallel development of another Sufi, concept sulūk. This term is absent from classical Sufi texts produced between the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, which explains why sulūk as a key technical term within the Sufi lexicon does not appear in Louis Massignon's Essai sur les origins du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane (1928). It is interesting to note that when Sufi authors of the later period started dealing with sulūk as a methodical progress in which both the ethical and spiritual aspects of the mystic's life are combined together, the doctrine around the opposite state of being attracted without any methodical progress, namely that of jadhb, started to gain its special position in the history of Sufi thought.

The second stage

The period from the late part of the sixth/twelfth century up to the early part of the seventh/thirteenth century witnessed the appearance of Sufi manuals that contributed to the embedding of jadhb into the discussions of mashyakha for the first time in the history of Sufi theory. Indeed, descriptions of jadhb experiences came to be one of the hallmarks in the process of establishing the saintly image of the great Sufi masters.

During this second stage, Sufi authors attempted to moderate the problematic aspects of jadhb. It should be noted here that the abnormal behaviour of mystics who claimed to be “attracted by the divine will” was witnessed in the public space of Muslim early medieval societies. Michael Dols indicates that in the course of the sixth/twelfth century, the Sufis of Islam adopted the term ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn (the wise fools), and started introducing it into their own milieu although it was a general term without any particular Sufi connotations.⁴⁹ Dols points out that from the fifth/eleventh century Sufism succeeded in gaining a very wide popularity in Muslim societies, and that is why the religious insanity of the majdhūb Sufis was commonly witnessed and, thereby, became less shocking, and more sympathised with. Ibn al-Jawzī, the great scholar of the sixth/twelfth century, for one, refers remarkably sympathetically to several characters who were known as reasonable fools in their communities.⁵⁰ If this was the general scene, we might well understand why most of the famous authors of this period felt an urgent need to reconsider the system of thought that supported jadhb and its representatives in these Muslim contexts. The aforementioned Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī along with others such as Najm al-Dīn al-Kubrā and Najm al-Dīn Dāya attempted to integrate jadhb into their discussions of master status (mashyakha). The general approach towards jadhb in their writings is distinguished primarily by the authors’ insistence on the idea that jadhb is strongly embedded within the Sufi doctrinal system that treats the sheikh status and its requirements and conditions as a whole.

Very occasionally in the writings of this period, we come across stories that celebrate that majdhūb who, after the act of the divine attraction itself, was recognised by God to guide others along the Sufi path. The late sixth/twelfth century author ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī (d. between 590/1194 and 604/1207),⁵¹ for instance, discusses the exalted degree of the muḥaddath (lit. the one with whom God conversed), the one to whom God chose to grant His secret knowledge. The muḥaddath, according to Bidlīsī, gains divine revelations and his heart turns into “a throne where God manifests Himself”.⁵² Later in his work, Bidlīsī describes the degree of umanāʾ (lit. ‘Trusteeship’), which is a higher rank than that of muḥaddath. The trustee is originally a muḥaddath whom God allows to control the worlds of creation (taṣarruf fī al-akwān) so as to guide others.⁵³ Bidlīsī’s work, like others from the same period and prior to it, manages to consolidate the theoretical basis of jadhb and the elevated position of those who claimed to have experienced it.

Najm al-Dīn Dāya, in one place in his Mirṣād al-ʿibād, indicates that obtaining the higher ranks of the Sufi path is possible through the act of jadhb; however, this is very difficult and very rare. The most effective method is through commitment to a Sufi master. Dāya provides an example of a Sufi of Khawārazm named Sheikh Abū Bakr who told Dāya that he had gained his Sufi status through jadhb, albeit after forty-five years of hard sulūk.⁵⁴

The third period

The later middle period that ranged from the late seventh/thirteenth up to the tenth/sixteenth century witnessed the antinomian appearances of the qalandariyya and other deviant anti-social groups such as Ḥaydariyya in different Muslim regions, who were both increasingly widely recognised and criticised. Ibn Kathīr refers to 655 as the year when Ḥaydariyya groups appeared in Syria.⁵⁵ Karamustafa's comprehensive work on these groups points to the period from 600/1200 to 900/1500 as the one that witnessed the appearance of the first clear manifestations of this “new renunciatory piety” in the form of “identifiable social collectivities”.⁵⁶ Before the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, as Karamustafa indicates, other dervish groups began also to appear, and during the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, more deviant movements in Asia Minor, India and other territories found their own ways to affect Muslim landscapes and culture.

At the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, Ibn Baydakīn al-Turkmānī wrote about the antinomian customs of the group of qalandariyya whom he chose to entitle ṭāʾifat al-qarandaliyya in his Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī al-ḥawādith wa-l-bidaʿ. Among those customs he highlights, for instance, the act of piercing of one's urethra (thaqb al-iḥlīl), and being shackled with chains of iron (al-takbīl bi-l-salāsil wa-l-ḥadīd).⁵⁷ By the end of the eighth/fourteenth century, the traditionalist and Qurʾān commentator Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) composed a work on the legal prohibition of ḥashīsh. He writes that taking ḥashīsh had become a widespread custom in his day, and so closely related to qalandariyya and Ḥaydariyya that their names were synonyms with ḥashīsh itself.⁵⁸ Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1441) indicates that what was known as ḥashīshat al-fuqarāʾ began to appear in the regions of Iraq after the year 628/1231.⁵⁹ Later on, during the tenth/sixteenth century, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Nuʿaymī (d. 978/1570) refers to the impact of qalandariyya in Damascus particularly during the days of their leader Jamāl al-Dīn al-Sāwī. The latter's impact stretched to Egypt so that even the Qāḍī of Dimyāṭ and all his sons starting following him.⁶⁰

During this stage the character of majdhūb became integrated with that of the qalandars and other deviant groups. Sufi and non-Sufi biographies refer to an increasing number of majdhūb figures. The reference to qalanadariyya in Suhrawardī’s ʿAwārif al-maʿārif during the previous stage does not necessarily mean that Suhrawardī met Jamāl al-Dīn al-Sāwī. Rather, it implies a reality that witnessed the increasing impact of spiritual antinomianism and pious deviance that continued affecting Muslim societies during the following centuries. In response, authors of Sufi manuals sought to defend jadhb by following earlier attempts to include jadhb under the doctrinal system of mashyakha as well as emphasising the necessity of sulūk after the occurrence of jadhba.

ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī, during the later seventh/thirteenth and the early eighth/fourteenth centuries, followed Suhrawardī’s doctrine in reference to majdhūb and sālik in his Miṣbāḥ al-hidāya wa-miftāḥ al-kifāya. Though Kāshānī relies on Suhrawardī, he develops the discussion and adds new interesting insights. The spiritual essence of the prophet Muḥammad (rūḥ Muḥammadī), for instance, appears as the first prototype of the state of maḥbūb (beloved) who is also majdhūb. The act of jadhba, according to Kāshānī, contributes to turning wayfaring sayr into flying ṭayr,⁶¹

Paradoxically, what was claimed to be a moderate discourse of treating jadhb in the works of Suhrawardī, Kubrā, Dāya and Kāshānī during the previous stage and the early part of the third stage could grant the majdhūb and their followers a strong theoretical basis that supported their existence and activities as no one else could do. Though the original purpose of these authors was to portray the moderate and ethical boundaries of jadhb, they, in fact, contributed to extending the legal coverage of the Sufi institution to majdhūbs and, consequently, helped to elevate the venerated image of the ‘Sufi madman’ within medieval Islamic culture.

In light of the popularity of majdhūbs, some effort was invested during this third stage to emphasise the integration between jadhb and sulūk, and, thereby, to maintain the majdhūb’s ability to act as a spiritual guide, although jadhb itself became separated from the theoretical discussions of the system of mashyakha. Shadd al-izār fī ḥaṭṭ al-awzār ʿan zuwwār al-mazār—the biographical work of the late eighth/fourteenth century Sufi author, Muʿīn al-Dīn Junayd Shīrāzī—includes several stories of jadhb where the idea that the mystic turned to sulūk after getting jadhba is celebrated.⁶² Tūrān b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Turkī, as Junayd Shīrāzī describes him, “was at the beginning of his career a soldier. When he experienced one jadhba whose significance exceeds the worships of all men and jinn together, he repented and followed the great Sufi masters”.⁶³ Jamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad of Fasā experienced jadhba and, consequently, abandoned his work and became completely committed to sulūk (“lazima sulūk ṭarīq al-rijāl”).⁶⁴

Besides these attempts, the material presented by Sufi and non-Sufi biographies of the period between the eight/fourteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries leaves a strong impression that the wish to moderate jadhb by integrating it with sulūk (as shown in Junayd Shīrāzī’s work) was not always the agenda of the biographers. This material reflects a reality that witnessed an unparalleled popularity of majdhūb figures whose antinomian customs could be presented and even celebrated without any problem. During this period, majdhūbs succeeded in gaining public fame and prestigious positions among the authorities. Jāmī’s Nafaḥāt al-uns, dating from the late ninth/fifteenth century, offers many examples of jadhb stories that referred to antinomian behaviour including the custom of abandoning ritual prayers and other religious duties. For instance, in the biography of Sulaymān al-Turkmānī (who died, according to Jāmī, in 714/1314), Jāmī tells us that this figure was a majdhūb who abandoned Muslim ritual prayers and did not fast during the holy month of Ramaḍān.⁶⁵ In the biography of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Kūsawī al-Jāmī, the author relates that, at the very beginning of his spiritual career, this man experienced jadhba with the result that he disappeared from the eyes of the people for several days and missed the ritual prayers.⁶⁶ Similar stories are told in the text of Nafaḥāt about Jamāl al-Dīn al-Lūrī (who was accused of heresy),⁶⁷ Ibrāhīm al-Majdhūb,⁶⁸ and many others.

The work of Ghazzī likewise provides us with numerous examples of majdhūbs, many of who were to be found in Damascus and other Syrian towns. Muḥammad al-ʿAryān (lit. Muḥammad the Naked) lived in Aleppo. Ghazzī tells that after his repentance, he remained naked and uncovered the whole of his body with the exception of his private parts.⁶⁹ Abū Sanqar al-Baʿlī, the majdhūb of Damascus, was a man of Sufi knowledge, and thereby enjoyed the position of the spiritual protector of the city (khafīr Dimashq) and even the protector of all Syria (khafīr al-Shāmm).⁷⁰ Very frequently in Ghazzī’s work, the majdhūb figure is portrayed as the one who was committed to Muslim rituals amidst his jadhba: Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣāliḥī lost his sanity because of his addiction to Qurʾān recitation (jaffa dimāghuhu bi-sabab kathrat al-qirāʾa)! During his jadhba, he even used to recite the Qurʾān.⁷¹ The Egyptian majdhūb Abū al-Khayr al-Kulaybānī used to associate with dogs and even take them to prayers in the mosque. Ghazzī explains that although many attacked him for this behaviour, he was venerated by the men of political authority.⁷²

Interestingly, Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Tahānawī (d. after 1158/1745), the author of the famous lexicon Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn wa-l-ʿulūm, writes at the end of the entry ‘sulūk’ that the unacceptable behaviour of those who were granted God's closeness and intimacy would bring about the deprivation of their exalted spiritual state and, if they did not repent, then they might reach the rank of tasallī, which meant that their hearts would become accustomed to the situation of being distant from God. This dangerous situation, as Tahānawī defines it, leads to the worst situation in which God turns His love for the mystic into a feeling of complete hostility (ʿadāwa).⁷³

Conclusion

Studying the development of jadhb and the shifts in the image of majdhūb in Sufi teachings and practices between the fourth/tenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries sheds light on developments that played a fundamental role in shaping the cultural and social structures of medieval Muslim societies. In addition to examining the influence of jadhb on Muslims’ lives, this article has sought to reconstruct the various strategies that medieval Sufi authors employed to confront a reality that witnessed the growing status of majdhūbs and, later, the integration of jadhb with antinomianism and deviant movements. From two viewpoints—one focussing on jadhb as a social factor and the other looking at the pragmatic strategies to treat it among Sufi theoreticians—jadhb passed through some interesting shifts in this period. While its early foundations were integrated into the general fabric of Sufi discussions of tawba, ghayba and other related concepts, from the end of the sixth/twelfth up to the early seventh/thirteenth century jadhb succeeded in becoming one of the significant features of the status of a Sufi master. But this mode of integration between jadhb and master-status began to lose its impact in Sufi circles after the early seventh/thirteenth century, a shift that coincided with the appearance of various antinomian groups in the Muslim landscapes.