Shaykh Abdul Rahman Al Shaghouri
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Sidi Shaykh once recounted that when Shaykh Husni al-Baghghal caught tuberculosis, before the era of antibiotics, they were put into quarantine. Defying the imposed isolation, Sidi Shaykh visited his teacher, who warned him of the life-threatening risk they were taking. Observing a piece of candy in their teacher’s mouth, Sidi Shaykh asked for it. When it was handed to him, they placed it into their own mouth, proclaiming that according to tenets of faith (ilm al-tawhid), causes do not bring about effects by themselves, but only by the will of Allah. Though the illness claimed the life of Shaykh Husni, Sidi Shaykh survived, a testament to their unwavering faith and profound trust in Divine decree.
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Their long association with Shaykhs of learning bequeathed them a lifelong respect for Islamic knowledge and a habit of making sure before answering any question about religion. What the Imams have recorded is our religion, he used to say, and when I once asked him what dhikrs one should recite after the prescribed prayer, though he had prayed all his life and was over seventy at the time, instead of answering he reached to his bookshelf, found Imam Nawawis Kitab al-adhkar, and read several sahih hadiths from it.
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Throughout the 1980s, whenever I would ask them about a hadith or verse of the Qur'an, they would always reach for a reference work, and in his patient way open it up and find something about it. Though they knew many of the answers, I had to be taught to use references, and so they taught me. This became apparent in later years, when they came to answer me more freely from their own learning.
Shaykh al- Alawi had sat in the Shamiyya Mosque after sunset to give a lesson, and the young weaver had looked askance at the Shaykhs socks, which were French, not of the plain-spun local manufacture. Shaykh Abdul Rahman told us: I said: Look at those socks. This man is supposed to be a Shaykh? Then Shaykh al-Alawi began to speak on the aphorism of Sidi Ibn Ata Illah:
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"Do not leave the invocation of Allah (dhikr) because of your lack of presence with Allah therein, for your heedlessness of invocation is worse than your heedlessness in invocation. It may well be that He raises you from invocation with heedlessness to invocation with attentiveness, and from invocation with attentiveness to invocation with presence of heart, and from invocation with presence of heart to invocation in which there is absence from anything besides the Invoked, and that is not difficult for Allah [Qur an 14:20]."
In subsequent years, until Sheikh al-Hashimi s death in 1961, Sidi Shaykh became the head munshid or singer of mystic odes, at the hadra or public dhikr the audition (sama) advocated by imam Junayd and his circle anciently, and used in the Shadhili tariqa for the last several centuries. The shaykh would say, "A munshid is half a murshid". They related that once they had set an ode to a melody that no one had ever heard the likes of before, Shaykh Al Hashimi smiled and raised their finger upwards, proclaiming, "Do not think that you created it".
Shaykh al-Hashimi also authorised them to give the general litany (wird al- amm) of the tariqa to others. Although later in the sixties, the brethren urged Sidi Shaykh to teach them, and he had been authorised at the time by both Shaykh Muhammad Sa id al-Hamzawi of Syria and Shaykh Ali al- Budlaymi of Algeria, they did not use either authorisation to teach. That is until Shaykh Muhammad Sa'id al-Kurdi of Jordan, whom Sheikh Abd al-Rahman had introduced to Shaykh al-Hashimi in the 1930s and been his fellow disciple with made them their authorised successor.
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And the lights of Oneness appeared;
Disclosed without any ‘where,’
So see them, O Sufis!
I am the mirror of my Beloved,
In His love, O my spirit, grow well;
From other than Him, O self, be absent,
And cast aside all things vile.
Since He has been manifest in these places of vision,
have I been bowing and prostrate;
Thanking Him and praising,
For He has encompassed me in Identity.
O the wonderfulness of my encounter,
O my subsistence in my annihilation;
O the light of my empyrean,
O my life forever and ever.
The pourer has drawn near us,
And presented us the goblet;
We have sipped and drunk our fill,
From the cups of al-Hashimi.
My friend, seize the chance to live,
How many a dead person that came to them revived;
Never shall anyone be disappointed, never,
Who comes with a true intention.
Clear your heart for the theophany,
Open your eye to true joy;
Other than the Divine, my friend, abandon,
And be annihilated in the Exalted Entity.
Quaff the goblet openly,
See no disgrace in drinking;
Go mad with love, and throw off all shame,
In the most sacred meanings.
Speed with might and main to the stations,
Following the way of the ancients,
Heed not him who would bar your love,
To give ear is but tribulation.
It is the All in All from its inception,
Those who would bar love have no action;
The forbidding of love is naught but
Sent from the Bestower of Gifts.
Then shower blessings, O You of Majesty,
Upon the Door of Connection;
Taha, with Companions and folk,
Long as the camelteer may chant to spur his mount.
There is no deity but Allah."
"As for when the path is merely 'for the blessings of it' and the Shaykh lacks some of the conditions of a true guide, or when the disciple is seeking several different sins from it at once, or the disciples intention is contrary to the spiritual will of the Shaykh, or the time required is unduly prolonged, or he is separated from his Shaykh by the latter’s death or the exigencies of the time and has not yet completed his journey to Allāh in the path or attained his goal from it—then it is obligatory for him to go and associate with someone who can complete his journey for him and convey him to what he seeks from the path, as it is not permissible for him to remain bound to the first Shaykh his whole life if it is only to die in ignorance of his Lord, claiming that this is the purpose of the path.
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By no means is this the purpose. The purpose of the path is to reach the goal, and a path that does not reach it is a means without an end. The path was made for travel on it with the intention of reaching ones goal, not for remaining abs residing in even if this leads to dying in ignorance of ones Lord. The meaning of a true disciple is one who forthrightly submits himself to a living sheikh who is a guide (murshid) during the days of his journey to Allāh Most High so that the sheikh may put him through the stages of the journey until he can say to him, “Here you are, and here is your Lord”
ㅤShaykh Muhammad al-Hashimi
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"When that which originates in time is conjoined with the Beginninglessly Eternal, what originates in time vanishes, and the Eternal remains."
Al Imam Junayd al-Baghdadi
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Early on, he showed me a copy of the letters of Mawlay al-'Arabi al-Darqawi printed in the lithographic script found in many older Moroccan books. I copied it out so it would be easier to read, and was impressed by what it said about mujahada or subduing the ego (nafs).
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"The ego," he told me, "we deal with diplomatically. It wants whatever it wants, with or without the Sacred Law: it doesn't care. So we give it what it wants within the bounds of the Sacred Law, and exact from it what we want: that it serve us, that it rise at night to pray, that it fulfill our duties. This is our diplomacy with the ego."
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I had hoped for something a bit more dramatic. "Darqawi says in the Letters," I said, "that the truly wretched is he who sees the form of his nafs, his ego, and does not strangle it until it dies." He said, "Strangling it means by invocation (dhikr)."
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The path he taught differed from methods of Sufism prior to Abul Hasan al-Shadhili, its founder, in a number of ways. Earlier figures such as Dhul Nun al-Misri, Imam Ghazali, and Ibn al-'Arabi, had emphasized mortifying the self with spiritual rigors like sleeplessness, silence, hunger, and solitude, until the ego died, and illumination dawned.
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The way of Abul Hasan was instead a way of gratitude to the Divine, humbly striving to please Allah for the sake of Allah, rather than for illumination, seeing His favour in everything, and thanking Him for it.
This was what Shadhilis sought in their worship: to show gratitude to the Divine for being. It was not a "spiritual technique" of realization, but rather grounded in the reality of the slave and the Lord from the outset. "The person seeking sainthood," Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman once told me, "is not given it." Rather, when Allah saw a traveller's sincerity, He opened his heart to the Presence, as befitted His infinite generosity. It was a way of hearts, not outward rigors and privations.
His own experience of the way had convinced him that this knowledge was a living reality that would never die. I once asked him, "The great sheikhs, the huge awliya (saints)—how can anyone after them hope to reach their level of marifa, of consciousness of the Divine?" "It is a matter of clouds," he said, "that have come between us and the sun. If one removes the clouds, it is the same sun that has always been there." "The knowledge of Allah is identical?" I asked. He said, "It is but 'the primal human disposition (fitra) from Allah Himself to embrace divine truth, with which He has created all mankind'" (Koran 30:30).
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The years passed, and one day I came to the sheikh to ask about marrying someone. She was a girl in the Naqshbandi tariga who had said that before we could meet, I had to first go to Turkey to see her sheikh. Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman paused for a moment, then said she would be fine for me to marry. After a few minutes he remarked: "The Naqshbandi tariga is one of true spiritual progress (suluk). Like the Shadhili tariga, it has kept itself pure of violations of Sacred Law, such as musical instruments, which have crept into others. We don't see anything of that in the Naqshbandi tariqa.
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"Both the Naqshbandis and the Shadhilis," he said, "use the Supreme Name, the Word of Majesty 'Allah,' though for us it is audible, while for them it is mentioned silently in the heart, and its letters envisioned. But the Naqshbandi is a majestic (jalali) tariqa: discipline, training and training. They reach high ranks, but their predominant state is spiritual contraction (qabd). The Shadhili tariqa is beauteous (jamali)." "What does 'beauteous' mean?" I asked "It is the opposite of majestic," he said. "The divine names have opposites, just as contraction (qabd) is the opposite of elation (bast). Majestically, one sees Allah behind His creatures, as the Naqshbandis do. Beatifically, one sees His creatures behind Allah, and this is the state of the adepts in our way. When contraction comes to one of us, we benefit, for there is little room for missteps in such a state, and we face it with elation. And if elation comes, we must be more careful, as it is a site of mistakes, but an adept is not with either elation or contraction. He is with Allah.
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On one of my early visits to him, I had asked, "What does a Sufi make supplication (du'a) to Allah for?" He answered, "For His presence."
Shaykh Abdul Rahman Shaghouri & Shaykh Muhammad Al Yaqoubi
His poetry was born out of his spiritual state, and much of his ongoing legacy remains the stirring performance of his own mystic gasidas to the rhythmic dhikr of hadras across the Muslim world. He often said of Sufi poems, "They are scholarly texts (mutun 'ilmiyya)," and would adduce for their Divine provenance the words of the Prophet
"Truly, some poetry is wisdom" (Bukhari (171, 8.42: 6145. S), at which he would raise a finger and ask: "Where is wisdom from?" Of his own poetic inspiration he used to say, "It comes all at once, after which one sets forth its details." As a poet in an Arabic tradition rich in symbolism, he regularly used metaphors to express the highest spiritual meanings. Like Sufis before him, he used "cup" as a metaphor for the phenomenal universe, including the self, and "wine" for the Divine Presence. One of his most frequently sung odes is
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I, the cup, the Beloved, the wine,
When I had once asked Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman why God created the universe when He was already perfect in Himself without need of anything, he answered simply, "That there might be love." He also said, "The traveller proceeds along, but the lover flies." For him, Allah was the First and Last, the Manifest and the Hidden.
I have since thought more than once about the sheikh's words with me on that evening when we sat together, for when someone said to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), "A man loves a group of people, yet cannot catch up with them," he replied: "A man shall be with whomever he loves" (Bukhari (*7),8.49: 6170. S).
He authorized a number of sheikhs to teach the path. It is related that he wrote out such an ijaza or authorization and carried it to one of the cities of the north to give to a sheikh there, but when he discussed Ibn al-'Arabi with him, realized that he was not of the same opinion about him as himself, and because he felt this was important, returned to Damascus without giving it to him. He likewise gave an authorization that he later revoked because he found the recipient's character wanting.
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When asked about the reality of the ijaza, he once said, "It is a means for its possessor to defeat his devil." And when asked why sometimes even an authorized sheikh may go bad, he said, "It happens to someone who did not keep the company of his sheikh long enough to absorb his state (hal)." Though Sheikh al-'Alawi has said in the first gasida of his diwan, "After the sheikh's death there appears another like him; that is the wont of Allah that never varies," Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman used to warn, "The path is rare." In a word, he considered the ijaza a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. For him, the true heir was someone who had as well inherited a certain hal or state with Allah.
For these reasons he was very conservative about authorising Shaykhs in the tariqa saying that whoever asked for it would be plagued by Allah with it until after a series of strokes and a coma of fifty-five days in January and February of 1999. He returned to consciousness extremely weakened, and afterwards was much less stringent, perhaps because he considered Sufism to be the third great pillar of the din, and wanted as many people as possible to teach it in whatever capacity they could.
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Only a few of those he authorized originally took him as their sheikh, kept his company in his active years, entered his khalwa, and attended his readings to the brethren before he stopped for health reasons in 1996; while most were previously trained or authorized by other sheikhs or only kept his company in his final years after his illness. Sheikh Abd al- Rahman used to caution in his lifetime, The path is rare, and Allah knows best the sheikh s true inheritors, in path, in godfearingness, and in absorption in the Divine; though Sheikh al- Alawi has written in the first of his diwan: After the sheikh’s death there appears another like him; That is the way of Allah which never changes.
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Ona visit to Amman at the end of his life, he sat in front of the brethren after the dhikr, and one of them had asked, "What is the result of all your years in the tariqa? What does one reach? "Being with Allah," he said simply. "A with-ness befitting His majesty, that nothing is comparable to."
Sheikh Abd al-Rahman’s teaching in Sufism, like that of Dhul Nun al-Misri, Shadhili, Ibn al- Arabi, Darqawi, and others, was based on the Oneness of Being, realised experientially by the salik or mystic traveler. Oneness of Being meant the being of Allah, and was never confused or identified with the physical, contingent being of created things. Physical things, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman would say, never even catch the scent of true Being. Rather, Allah is One, without any partner in His transcendent perfection, without any associate in His entity, attributes, rulings, or actions; while the entire world is merely His action, as the Qur an says, This is the creating of Allah, so show me what those besides Him have created (Qur an 31:11).
I was curious at the beginning of the path as to how this vision should be, and on a visit I recorded in the sheikh's diwan, I said, "The station of 'beholding' (mushahada) —does it take different forms?" He said: "Beholding the Divine is of two kinds: that of the eye, and that of the heart. In this world, the beholding of the heart is had by many of the arifin (knowers of Allah; sing. 'arif), and consists of looking at contingent things, created beings, that they do not exist through themselves, but rather exist through Allah; and when the greatness of Allah occurs to one, contingent things dwindle to nothing in one's view, and are obliterated from one's thought, and the Real (al-Hagg) dawns upon one's heart, and it is as if one beholds. This is termed the beholding of the heart.' The beholding of the eye lin this world] is for the Chosen, the Prophet alone, Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace). As for the next world, it shall be for all believers. Allah Most High says,
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'On that day shall faces be radiant, gazing upon their Lord' (Koran 75:22-23).
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"I have told you," he said after a pause, "that the theophany, the disclosure, the revealing of Allah—by means of it, all existent contingent things with their details are folded up, collapse, and pass from the reflection of the human being, from his thought. The light of the Real shines upon the heart of the human being, so he sees nothing except Allah. This is the heart vision of Allah." I said, "The servant disappears at that point?" "Yes," he said. "From himself." "The servant doesn't remain?" "Allah was," answered the sheikh, in the words of the hadith related by Bukhari, "and nothing besides." I said, "It's..." "Beautiful," he said. "Something beautiful. That is Sufism." He never seemed to speak except from his own experience.
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When asked a question, he would often close his eyes, rock back for a moment, and say "Allah," drawing out the last syllable at length, then open his eyes and begin the answer. In a way, it summarized his whole life: teaching the experiential knowledge of the Divine. "A spiritual path that does not bring one to Allah," he used to say, “is a means without an end.”
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His way of mudhakara or teaching Sufism was mainly by public lectures from classic works, semi-public sessions of singing poetry at peoples homes, and private meetings with students who had taken his hand. I heard him teach from Ibn al- Arabi s al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, Abd al-Qadir al-Jaylani s Futuh al-ghayb, al-Siraj al-Tusi s al-Luma , Muhammad al-Buzaydi s al- Adab al-mardiyya, Ibn Ajiba s al-Mabahith al-asliya, Abul Mawahib al-Tunisi s Qawanin hikam al-ishraq, Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi s Awarif al-ma arif, Abd al-Wahhab al- Sha rani s al-Yawaqit wa al-jawahir and his Lata if al-minan, Mustafa Naja s Sharh al-wadhifa, and other works.
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He had heard most of these from Sheikh al-Hashimi, and like his sheikh, would exposit them with the Qur'an, hadith, Ibn Ata Illahs and other Sufi masters aphorisms, but most of all, as a poet and singer, with verses from the diwans of the great Arab masters of mystic poetry. He had memorized much from Ibn al-Farid, Abu Madyan, Ahmad al- Alawi, Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, Yusuf al-Nabahani, Muhammad al-Harraq, Umar al-Yafi, Amin al-Jundi, Abd al-Qadir al-Himsi, and of course his own two-hundred-page volume of poetry al-Hada iq al-nadiyya fi al-nasamat al-ruhiyya (The dew-laden gardens: in the soft breezes of the spiritual), which he edited with his disciple Dr. Mahmud Masri and published in Aleppo in 1996.
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His main lesson of the week took place after the dawn prayer in his own home high on the side of Mount Qasiyun above Damascus. He would begin with Ibn al- Arabi s al-Futuhat al- Makkiyya, which he read consecutively in this lesson for seventeen years. Then he would read from a work of Ash ari theology such as Sheikh al-Hashimi s Miftah al-janna, Ibrahim al- Bajuri s Hashiya on the Matn of Sanusi, or one of the other books which he finished from beginning to end over the years in this lesson. Then he would conclude with Kandahlawi s Hayat al-Sahaba to emphasize that a true Sufi must gauge his spiritual path by those educated by the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), the prophetic Companions.
His scrupulousness (wara) resembled that of the early Muslims; his personal practice of Islam was strictness for himself and leniency for others. When told that the soap he had used might have been derived from something ritually impure, he immediately took a shower and changed his clothes. He knew that Hanafis considered the chemical transformation of soap manufacture to purify unclean animal products, but he was a Shafi i, and he adhered to his own school in all matters of taqwa.
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In 1988 I went with him and three others by car from Medina to Mecca on an umra or lesser pilgrimage, and from the moment we entered the Sacred Mosque until we left to Jedda, the sheikh would not lift his eyes more than two meters ahead of his feet, out of awe for the place, in which even the sins of the eyes are greater than anywhere else. In the last year of his life, I saw him refuse to use cologne he had been told was ritually pure, waving it away impatiently because of the probable alcohol content in it, and forming with his lips, which could no longer speak, the words How do you know?
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His daily wirds, besides the Qur an, and the sunna dhikrs that Muslims say throughout the day, were four: the wird al- amm or general litany of the tariqa; Abul Hasan al-Shadhili s Hizb al- Bahr; the Wadhifa or Abul Mawahib al-Tunisi s and Dhafir al-Madani s interlineal prayer upon Ibn Mashish s famous Blessing on the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace); and the wird al-khass, or Supreme Name Allah, which he recited at night.
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He was at his greatest as a spiritual guide, perhaps, in the khalwa or spiritual retreat, into which he initiated a number of those who took the path. He would impart the Supreme Name to the disciple, and then by degrees bring him to a point of the dhikr at which he would pour his own yaqin or certitude into the heart of the disciple in a way not easy to describe, bringing him to a realisation of the transcendent Oneness of the Divine.
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Disciples varied in their level of spiritual aspiration, purity of heart, intention towards the sheikh, and taqwa, and consequently in their degree of attainment, and the sheikh would follow up with them in the years afterwards by precept, example, and readings from classical works, so that they could continue to progress by measuring themselves against suitably high standards, the prophets (upon whom be peace), the Sahaba, and the great awliya of the past.
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I remember him being asked, on one of his teaching visits to Jordan, about long hours of dhikr for disciples after they had entered the khalwa and were free to invoke the Supreme Name as long as they wished, something not allowed to those who have not entered it. Long hours of dhikr? the sheikh had wondered. No, it is sufficient to just invoke the Name for five minutes, or ten minutes, before going to bed. After the singing and stories, and the questions and answers, the brethren finally went to sleep on the pallets spread around the floor, and the sheikh repaired to his room, where he invoked the Supreme Name through the night. It was his way to tax himself, and make things easy for others.
Although always kind and warm, in earlier years he would sometimes express his concern for disciples with a firm yes or no. When I once asked him on behalf of a disciple from Jordan for permission to add a room onto a house, the sheikh said, Tell him that if it is necessary for his family or guests, he may go ahead. But if it is only to glut a desire, then no. He mostly advised however by hint and suggestion, and I recall that when some disciples ignored his advice and did what they wanted instead, he merely said, Had Allah known any good in them, He would have made them listen (Qur an 8:23).
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On Friday 11 June 2004 the Damascus brethren of Sheikh Abd al-Rahman put their hands in the hand of Sheikh Mustafa al-Turkmani at the Nuriyya Mosque as their head. The Shaykhs main legacy however does not lie in the polity he left behind, but in his reviving the spirit of the tariqa with the Qur'an and sunna and pure experiential knowledge of the Divine.
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A spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Religious Endowments said at his funeral that he was the renewer of the Sufi tariqas in the Levant and an inspiration to those of the larger Islamic World, renewing the tariqas according to the exacting standards of the Qur an and sunna. The thousands who followed and benefited from the sheikh certainly concurred with this, for he had filled their lives with din and hearts with yaqin. May Allah bless the Umma with the knowledge he taught, and be well pleased with His servant Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri. And praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.
I last saw him on a visit to his diwan. He had changed over the years, filling more and more with light, his humanness refined more and more into pure meaning. I recall the warm parting touch of his fingers as we kissed each other's hands in farewell, which was where we had begun those years before when he first gave me the way.
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After the funeral, I realized that death could take little away from the sheikh because his secret was undying; namely, that everything in the universe existed only through the Divine Reality (haqiqa). The sheikh had been transformed into a siddiq, a man of truth, by living this secret until it imbued every breath he took. Without those like him, the alchemy of this transformation would remain merely theoretical. He had been able to impart it, to show people a bridge beyond ordinary human existence.
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He was a connection not only with a living brotherhood of those travelling the way of sincerity, and with the hal or spiritual state of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) transmitted by unbroken personal contact down the centuries, but with the illuminatory tariqa ilabiyya, the divine path itself, ascending like a vertical ray of light through all being. This was his secret, and why his path would endure, Allah willing, as long as there were souls to travel it.
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We had sat on the edge of a pallet on a narrow wooden bed in a room with a single window, whence light shone down on us, and the sheikh was answering a few questions I had on the last day of my first khalwa. "Will we be together in the next world?” “all those who attained ma’rifa, gnosis of the Divine, in this life,” he said, “shall have a special place in paradise by a white dome of musk. Our Lord shall manifest Himself to them once a week, and they will remain drunken with the vision of it for the entire week, when He shall appear to them again, and hence ever shall it be."
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So this, I may hope, will be the reuniting in love together of our physical frames, hearts, and souls: in the supreme good-pleasure of God,
her radiance, if a lover were to hide it, would be manifest. and if the enraptured one spoke of it, it would be most hidden.
when she smiles, it is like the sun, and when she frowns, darkness, when united with her, it is life, and when distant, death.
from her light, the physical forms take the torch of guidance, and in her taverns, the souls have their healing placed.
from her wine, the secrets are poured, ripening the fruits, and in her water, the brilliant lights shine clearly.
for her, from my eyes, are tears, and my soul is her possession, as for my heart, it edges closer to the flames of her love.
Shaykh Abdul Rahman Shaghouri
