عزيمةAsh-Shâtibî’s readings on Sufism and the Sufis

1. Ash-Shâtibî’s standing as a scholar

The jurist and usûlî Abû Ishâq ash-Shâtibî (d. 790 AH) stood out by his high rank among the scholars of the Community. His star shone so brightly that it raised him to the rank of the scholars who exercise the effort of interpretation, those whose memory history has preserved. He enriched the Islamic library to the point that his thought became a support for the Community in fiqh, in the foundations of law, in exegesis and in the science of hadith.

This is how the scholars described him:

The imam, the most learned, the verifier, the model, the eminent memoriser, the one who exercises the effort of interpretation. He was an usûlî and an exegete, a jurist and a traditionist, a linguist and a master of rhetoric, a rigorous and reliable dialectician, scrupulous, virtuous, detached from the world, Sunni, an imam in the full sense, a meticulous researcher skilled in debate, eminent in the sciences, one of the rare reliable verifying scholars, and among the greatest imams who were masters of their art and worthy of trust.¹

The scholars of the science of biographies called him an imam, saying: “He has a firm foothold and the highest authority in the disciplines, in fiqh, in the foundations, in exegesis and hadith, in the Arabic language and in other sciences.”²

2. The standing of Sufism for ash-Shâtibî, through his book “Al-I’tisâm”

Ash-Shâtibî rose in the best manner to combat innovations, and on this subject he composed a considerable book through which he upheld the Sunna of the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, and pushed back the innovations of the innovators: he named it Al-I’tisâm. It is a book of perfect excellence, in which he deals with the question of innovations, studies them in a scholarly way and tests them against the measure of the foundations of the Law. Al-I’tisâm has been praised by scholars ancient and modern, scholarly studies have been devoted to it, it has been printed more than once, and it is missing from hardly any student’s library.

In Al-I’tisâm he himself spoke of what he had undertaken in this matter:

I have never ceased to track down the innovations to which the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, drew attention and against which he warned, which he showed to be misguidance and a departure from the straight path, and which the scholars pointed out in order to distinguish them and make a number of them known. May I avoid them as far as I am able, and seek out the traditions whose light these new things have all but put out. May I, through practice, make their brightness shine again, and be counted on the Day of Resurrection among those who brought them back to life.³

Now in Al-I’tisâm Imam ash-Shâtibî relied on more than forty Sufi masters to establish the Sunna and refute innovation. He writes:

The fourth category of transmissions: what is reported from the Sufis known to the people in blame of innovations and their partisans. We have given this place a particular mention, although what came before would have been enough, because many ignorant people believe that the Sufis are lax in following the Sunna, and that inventing devotions and binding oneself to what the Law has not prescribed is part of what they say and practise. Far be it from them to believe or profess it! The first thing on which they built their path is following the Sunna and avoiding what contradicts it. So much so that the one who reminds them of themselves, the guardian of their source and the pillar of their school, Abû al-Qâsim al-Qushayrî,⁴ holds that they took the name of Sufism precisely to set themselves apart from the people of innovation.⁵

He described the Sufis with praiseworthy qualities:

The Sufis, to whom the path is attributed, are unanimous in exalting the Law. They hold to following the Sunna, neglect none of its proprieties, and are the furthest of people from innovation and its partisans. That is why we find no one among them attached to any of the misguided groups, nor inclined to what contradicts the Sunna. And most of those mentioned among them are scholars, jurists and traditionists, people from whom the religion is taken in its foundations and its branches. As for one who is not, he must necessarily be learned in his religion to the extent that suffices him.⁶

He praised them in these terms: “The people of realities, of ecstasies, of spiritual tastes, of states and of the secrets of oneness: they are our argument against anyone who claims to belong to their path without walking on their road.”⁷

Then he adds:

And since the people of Sufism stand, in their path, with regard to their consensus on a question, as all people of knowledge stand in their sciences, I have drawn from their words what establishes a proof of the praise of the Sunna and the blame of innovation within their very path. So that it may be for us, coming from their side, an argument against the people of innovation in general, and against those who claim their path in particular. And success comes from God.⁸

The book he did not have time to write

He intended to devote an entire work to praising the path of Sufism and to protecting it from the people of innovation and of passions. He writes:

And my intention, if God grants me the time, assists me with His grace and makes the means easy for me, is to set out, concerning the path of these people, a model by which its soundness and its conformity to the best of paths can be established. And to show that corruptions entered it and innovations reached it only from the side of people who came late, after the time of those virtuous predecessors, who claimed to enter it without a journey in conformity with the Law or an understanding of the aims of its people, and attributed to them what they never professed, so that it has become, in these latter times, like another Law than the one Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, brought. Yet the path of these people is innocent of this disorder, praise be to God.⁹

And at the end of the first volume of Al-I’tisâm there is a passage confirming his resolve to compose a book on Sufism, refuting what had been introduced into it and is not part of it: “And if God grants me the time and assists me with His grace, we will develop the discussion of this subject in a book on the doctrine of the people of Sufism, and on what has been introduced into it that is not of their path.”¹⁰

But death overtook ash-Shâtibî before he could fulfil his intention, and his term came before he could compose his work. And there remains Sufism, which has held an important and fundamental place in Islamic thought: the field that made the spiritual wealth of Islam bear fruit, that brought forth the springs of sound and upright religious taste, and whose reality rests on knowledge of God, exalted be He, and on following the Sunna of the Chosen One, peace and blessings be upon him, in words, deeds and states.

3. Ash-Shâtibî’s positions on Sufism, through “Al-Muwâfaqât”

Let us follow the position of the Andalusi jurist and usûlî, Imam ash-Shâtibî, towards Sufism and the Sufis, through his book Al-Muwâfaqât fî usûl ash-sharî’a. It is the book in which he built the edifice of the science of the aims of the Law, relying on the Sufis in a number of his inquiries, knowing that the very first outlines of this science appeared with al-Hakîm at-Tirmidhî, the great Sufi of Khorasan.¹¹

Holding to firm resolve, not to ease

Among the foundations on which the Sufis built their doctrine in putting the aims of the Law into practice is their adoption of firm resolutions without relying on concessions. That is why ash-Shâtibî praised their path and held it to be a sound journey, for seeking concessions involves following the appetites of the soul and its passions, and one is not safe there from falling into the snares of Satan and his cunning. Ash-Shâtibî writes: “That is why the masters of the Sufis advised their disciples to give up seeking concessions altogether, and made holding to the firm resolutions of knowledge one of their principles: it is a sound and excellent principle, among the benefits they have brought to light, may God have mercy on them.”¹²

Ash-Shâtibî also praised the noble Sufis for their journey, in that they do not turn towards the passing shares of this world, nor let themselves be drawn along behind them:

The explanation is that the masters of spiritual states work, in their states, to let their shares fall away, and that they have reached the limit of effort in fulfilling what is due, whether spurred by fear, led by hope or carried by love. Their passing shares have therefore slipped from their hands, taken up as they are by what turns them away from everything other than what they are in. So they have neither respite in their works, nor rest in the ardour of the journey… And moreover God, exalted be He, has made easy for them what is difficult for others, and has strengthened them with a strength from Himself for what they have taken on in carrying out His service, so that what weighs on people does not weigh on them, and what is heavy for others is light for them. How then could someone claim to imitate them who is weak in resolve before carrying such burdens, or sick in will when it comes to crossing the expanses of the soul, or whose desire for these high degrees has gone out, or who is content with beginnings instead of ends?¹³

He also writes, may God have mercy on him: “If it is asked: in what sense should one understand giving up regard for effects? And how is one to distinguish what counts as such from what does not? The answer is that letting go of one’s shares may be manifest, in the sense that the heart no longer turns towards them at all, and this is rare. And those most distinguished by it are the masters of states among the Sufis: such a person carries out the cause absolutely, without looking at whether it has an effect or not.”¹⁴

Neither excess nor departure from the Law

This journey followed by the Sufis kept them in the just measure and balance that are among the properties of this Community. On the contrary, they keep within the limits of the Law in their movements as in their stillness. Ash-Shâtibî writes: “Whoever examines the lives of the saints finds them guardians of the outward forms of the Law.”¹⁵

Then he defends their states: “One who presumes may think that they imposed hardships on themselves, that they took on what they had not been charged with, and that they entered by a door other than that of the people of the Law. God forbid! They were not men to do so, they who built their school on following the Sunna, and who are, by the agreement of the people of the Sunna, God’s elite among creation.”¹⁶

Whoever follows the states of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and of his companions after him, finds that they held to firm resolutions, for what these involve in fulfilling the rights of servanthood, and that they left aside nine tenths of what is lawful for fear of falling into what is unlawful. Imam ash-Shâtibî writes on this point: “And if you look at the qualities of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, and at his deeds, the difference between the two categories will become clear to you, and the distance between the two degrees. The same holds for what is reported of the dispositions of the companions and their conformity to these principles. And it is on this first category that those who distinguished themselves among the people of Sufism relied. It is through this that they surpassed those who did not reach their measure in conforming to the qualities of the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, and of his companions.”¹⁷

The gaze of the Sufi and the gaze of the jurist

The noble Sufis keep the legal ruling dependent on the requirement alone, and not on the degrees of that requirement: for them there is no difference, in what is required, between the obligatory and the recommended, nor between the disliked and the forbidden. Ash-Shâtibî writes:

Commands and prohibitions are not, in their degree of insistence, at a single rank as regards the requirement to act or to refrain. This varies according to the difference in the benefits that arise from obeying commands and avoiding prohibitions, and in the harms that arise from transgressing them. On this basis, one can conceive of dividing the requirement into four categories: the obligatory, the recommended, the disliked and the forbidden. But there is another consideration under which this division does not take place: the ruling there remains dependent on the requirement alone, and the requirement has only two faces, one being the requirement to act, the other the requirement to refrain. There is therefore, in what is required, no difference between the obligatory and the recommended, nor between the disliked and the forbidden. It is this consideration that the masters of states among the Sufis followed, and those who walked in their footsteps among those who rejected the demands of this world entirely and held firmly to the journey towards the next: they did not distinguish between the obligatory and the recommended in practising them, nor between the disliked and the forbidden in abstaining from them. Some of them even applied the name of obligatory to the recommended for the wayfarer, and that of forbidden to the disliked. It is they who counted permitted things among the concessions, as was said in the rulings on concessions.¹⁸

This is where the gaze of the Sufis differs from that of the jurists: they look to the outcomes of deeds, to attaining perfection and to drawing near to their Master in the most beautiful and most complete form. Shaykh Zarrûq, the great Moroccan Shâdhilî master, writes in his Qawâ’id: “The Sufi’s gaze on works is more finely adjusted than the jurist’s, for the jurist considers what lifts the hardship, and the Sufi looks at what brings perfection.”¹⁹

Against those who distort the purity of Sufism

Ash-Shâtibî paid close attention to the claims and misunderstandings of those who distort the purity of Sufism: “Many imagine that things were permitted to the Sufis that were not permitted to others, because they are supposed to have risen from the rank of the common people, immersed in appetites, to the rank of the angels, stripped of any inclination to pursue them…”²⁰

He also refuted the claims of those who reject the states of the Sufis and their understandings: “Everything reported of the saints or the scholars, or that will be reported until the Day of Resurrection, in the way of states, wonders, sciences, understandings and other things, consists of particular cases of it, singular instances included under the universals of what has been reported from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.”²¹

Notes

1. Ahmad Bâbâ at-Tinbuktî, Nayl al-ibtihâj, pp. 46-47.
2. Nayl al-ibtihâj, p. 47.
3. Abû Ishâq ash-Shâtibî, Al-I’tisâm, Dâr al-Athariyya, 2nd ed., 2007, 1/24.
4. Abû al-Qâsim al-Qushayrî (376-465 AH / 986-1072), Sufi master and theologian of Khorasan, author of the Risâla, one of the great reference treatises of Sunni Sufism.
5. Al-I’tisâm, 1/147-148.
6. Ibid., 1/165-166.
7. Ibid., 1/166.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 1/148.
10. Ibid., 1/368.
11. Al-Hakîm at-Tirmidhî (d. c. 320 AH / 932), Sufi master of Khorasan, author of Khatm al-awliyâ’. His work on the aims of the Law is regarded as the first outline of the science of the maqâsid.
12. Ash-Shâtibî, Al-Muwâfaqât, Book of rulings, ed. ‘Abdallâh Darrâz, Muhammad ‘Abdallâh and ‘Abd as-Salâm Muhammad, Dâr al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, Lebanon, 7th ed., 2005, 1/252.
13. Ibid., 4/209-210.
14. Ibid., 1/166-167.
15. Ibid., 2/207.
16. Ibid., 4/174.
17. Ibid., 4/173.
18. Ibid., 3/178-179.
19. Ahmad Zarrûq (846-899 AH / 1442-1493), great master of the Shâdhiliyya path, born in Fez, author of the Qawâ’id at-tasawwuf (here, rule 55).
20. Al-Muwâfaqât, 2/189.
21. Ibid., 2/198.