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Chapter 6: Sanctity according to Al• Wafå’
- State University of New York Press
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The medieval Egyptian intellectual milieu in which the Wafå’s functioned has yet to be reconstructed in detail. As for >Al• Wafå’ personally, it will be seen in the following discussion that he was well versed in mystical thought—from the early Shådhiliyya, the Akbarian school, and the classical sufis. He was also trained in kalåm (theology), as the various discussions below make clear. His able handling of concepts such as the ‘senses’ and the ‘intellects’ signals a substantial training in philosophy. Further, his reference to the biology of pregnancy suggests a basic grasp of the science of medicine. These observations are perhaps not surprising since our subject was from a well-established family. An educated man of the medieval Islamic world would normally have been exposed to the principal sciences as they existed in his day. However, the distinct presence of a pro->Alid sentiment in >Al• Wafå’s speculations on sanctity demonstrate an openness to non-traditional Sunni sources. Of course Cairo was the cosmopolitan hub of the mediteranean Muslim world, where ideas circulated rather freely among the learned classes. It is in this milieu that >Al• Wafå’ came into contact with not only the school of Ibn >Arab•, but also a pro->Alid perspective, or at least an intellectual perspective that felt free to avail itself, mystically and philosophically, of what it found most compelling in the Sh•>• tradition. In this chapter we shall explore >Al• Wafå’s thinking with particular attenttion to his theory of walåya. As his father did, >Al• lays the existential groundwork through a discussion of the unity of God, creation, and Divine Self-disclosure. In brief, his position is that existence is at once unified in God and subject to the differentiation of creation but that the mystic vision holds both perspectives simultaneously. This existential tension reappears in his discussion of the role of the teacher, who functions for the aspirant as a mediator Chapter 6 Sanctity according to >Al• Wafå’ between contingent and necessary existence. These discussions are interesting in themselves, but they also contextualize >Al•’s complex elaborations on sanctity. It will be seen from his distinction between sainthood and prophecy that one perspective may encompass both elements. The nature of the mysterious figure al-Khå∂ir is important here. Our discussion ends with >Al•’s explicit treatment of sainthood, and his effort to identify himself and his father within this mystical universe. Divine Oneness, Self-disclosure, and Creation In the previous chapter we saw that Mu˙ammad Wafå was not without his critics . Al-Sakhåw• had pointed to what he saw as an excessive blurring of the existential line between the Divine and creation in the writings of both father Wafå’ and son. Polemics, and more often principled criticism, have been a historical reality for most branches of sufism from early on in the medieval period. Ibn al-Jawz• had (d. 597/1200) ridiculed the miracles of a number of so-called saints in Iraq,1 and the Syrian doctor of law Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) criticized a number of practices, in particular that of shrine visitation .2 Yet critics could also come from within. The sixteenth-century biographer al-Sha>rån•, clearly an ally of saints and sufism in general, mounted his own criticism of one aspect of >Al• Wafå’s teaching. In what is his largest entry on any one figure in his al-Tabaqåt al-kubrå, al-Sha>rån• stops to challenge a passage he has quoted from >Al• Wafå’s Waßåyå. The lengthy quotation presented emphasizes the unity of the Creator and creation. We are told that “He [God] is the essence of all that is existent, and everything in existence is His Attribute.”3 Further, there is nothing to the plurality of these existents, since their single shared existence is their only reality and essence. Discussion then turns to creation itself, saying the first thing in existence is not these existents, but rather it is their ordaining (taqd•r). This ordaining is, from their perspective , preexistential. Thus there are two phases of the creative movement, one is ordaining while the other is a bringing into tangible physical existence. The first is a descent of existence to a station that has no existence, while the second is the descent of that which has no existence onto the station of existence. The various ordainings may also be thought of as the descent of metaphysical existence (i.e...