AL-ḤAKIM AL-TIRMIDHI’S DEPICTION OF THE ṬARIQ ILA ALLAH THROUGH AN APPRAISAL OF HIS MANAZIL AL-QASIDIN

The states and stations of the path (ṭarīq) of Sufism are probably one of its most salient features. Sufism is an orientation towards God as well as a path that many saints and mystics have tread in their attempts to draw nearer to God. This path, just like the path to Hajj, for example can be described as having stopping places. These stopping places were called manāzil, they were points upon the path that marked spiritual development. How could one know that one had progressed, or that one was any nearer to one’s goal. In fact, we don’t really have a path (ṭarīq) of Sufism without these stopping places. Later in the literature of early Sufism these stopping places would be developed into the highly refined system of states (aḥwāl) and stations (maqāmāt). There have been a number of schematizations of the path. However, it reaches its fullest development under Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī.

Some credit first proto-Sufi to talk about states and stations as being Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī who Abū Nuʿaym al-Isfahānī records having mentioned some seventeen manāzil beginning with the response to the call of God and ending with tawakkul[1]. Shaqīq al-Balkhī (d. 165/782) who hails from Transoxania and who precedes Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī discuses four manāzil in his Adab al-ʿIbādāt. Shaqīq describes the manāzil of ahl al-ṣidq (the people of truth) with some traversing to the manzil of zuhd (renunciation) but stopping there and not going further. A second group traverses to the manzil of khawf (fear) but stops there and does not go further. A third group traverses the manzil of al-shawq ilā al-janna (longing for Paradise), but stops there and does not go further. The final group arrives at the manzil of complete attachment to God, living in the largesse and mercy of their Lord, reliant upon Him alone. Their hearts taste the pleasure of intimate discourse with Him. God has conquered their hearts and is their only joy and source of solitude[2]. Shaqīq al-Balkhī’s four manāzil represent the earliest representation of the path as a spiritual journey to God.

In Iraq, Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, a contemporary of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, is the first to describe the path in terms of fanāʾ (annihilation) and baqāʾ (subsistence). Al-Kharrāz describes three groups of people. There are those who have gone astray and prefer this world, those who desire the rewards of the Hereafter, and then those who are consumed in the contemplation of God and are characterized by God’s love of them and their love of God. This third group is the one that is actually on the path of God. In the reciprocal relationship of maḥabba (love) they have begun the path to God. These are the one’s chosen by God. This third group traverses a number of maqāmāt which are yaqīn (certitude), ṣidq (truthfulness), tawakkul (reliance), ghinā (bounteousness). For al-Kharrāz, these maqāmāt are still veils that indicate distance from God. Of these there is a spiritual elite that attain the first station of fanāʾ (annihilation) which is annihilation of the remembrance of all things other than God from their hearts. From this vantage point of qurb (nearness) there is no other station. At this point the mystic arrives at the reality mentioned in the Ḥadīth al-Nawāfil in which God becomes the hearing by which the mystic hears and the seeing by which the mystic sees and the hand with which he seizes and the foot by which he walks. With Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz we find an exploration of the path between the third and fourth manzil of Shaqīq al-Balkhī. Al-Junayd al-Baghdādī extends al-Kharrāz’s path by explaining the state of the mystic after annihilation in the phase of the path called baqāʾ (subsistence). This phase of the path is important because it explains how elevated spiritual states coincide with following the outward norms of the Shariah. Al-Junayd provided a solution to the debate between drunkenness and sobriety. Witnessing according to al-Junayd is either through the eye if subsistence or the eye of annihilation for the one who has arrived. Both of these require turning completely away from the created world[3].

In his Manāzil al-qāsidīn, al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī outlines seven manāzil that represent the path to Allah. The first manzil is the manzil of tawba (repentance). Al-Tirmidhī is the first to establish tawba as the first stopping place and this would remain consistent among Sufis after him. The second manzil is zuhd (renunciation), then the third is maḥabba (love). The fourth manzil is qurb (nearness) to God. The fifth is riḍā (being well pleased) at the door of the King. The sixth is ḥayrā (bewilderment). The seventh and final manzil is the lifting of the veil and the manifestation of God’s presence. The lower self of the mystic has died and he is established in constant witnessing of God. They are killed in the dhāt (person) of Allāh in the state of fardāniyya (singularity). Compared with the aḥwāl (states) and maqāmāt (stations) of Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, al-Tirmidhī mixes between states and stations. For example, tawba (repentance) and zuhd (renunciation) are stations according to al-Qushayrī while maḥabba (love), qurb (nearness), riḍā (being well-pleased), and ḥayrā (bewilderment) are states. Stations, according to al-Qushayrī, are those aspects of the path that the mystic focuses his own effort on achieving, while states are not focused on by the mystic because they are from the pure generosity of God. In fact, to focus on them can lead the traveler on the path astray.

If we connect al-Tirmidhī’s manāzil to his discussion of the path of the awliyāʾ (those near to God) we will get a fuller picture of al-Tirmidhī’s understanding of the path of wilāya (divine protection). In Khatm al-awliyāʾ, al-Tirmidhī speaks more specifically about the process of achieving wilāya. We will summarize some of the main aspects of the path of wilāya and then show how this path intersects with al-Tirmidhī’s manāzil. For al-Tirmidhī the ṭarīq (path) to Allāh is a path that leads from the bondage of the nafs (soul) to created things to freedom in the all-encompassing worship of Allāh. This path of is one that is characterized by two main aspects. These are wilāya (guardianship) and ʿilm/maʿrifa (knowledge). Wilāya, according to al-Tirmidhī is divided into two main stages. These he called the awliyāʾ ḥaqq Allāh and the awliyāʾ Allāh. The awliyāʾ ḥaqq Allāh are those who have worked on their lower selves and are constantly in an adversarial relationship with their lower selves. The awliyāʾ Allah are the bona fide awliyāʾ. They have been freed from the bondage to their lower selves and have special protection from Allāh swt. These awliyāʾ are the true khulafāʾ who are the inheritors of the Prophet may Allāh bless him and grant him peace. The path of wilāya is a path that is riddled with dangers both outwardly and inwardly. The awliyāʾḥaqq Allāh include the ʿulamāʾ and the ḥukamāʾ while the awliyāʾ Allāh are the kubarāʾ and the munfaridūn. They are the abdāl (substitutes) and the ones for whom Allāh swt provides protection in the earth. This path also is characterized by levels of knowledge. For the ʿulamāʾ the knowledge is textual. This is the knowledge of the outward purport of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth and knowledge that is transmitted through books. A special group of the ʿulamāʾ are those who are called ḥukamāʾ. That is, they have knowledge of the reasons behind the aḥkām. They are able to provide a legal judgment, a ḥukm because of their fiqh (understanding) of the religious texts. The ḥukamāʾ also have wisdom, that is they have experiential knowledge that results from their struggle against their lower selves and they have knowledge of the world. They can read the signs that Allāh creates in the phenomenal world just as the ulama can read the signs of Allāh in the texts of revelation. Among this group of ḥukamāʾ there is an even smaller group who become the true awliyāʾ. They are awliyāʾAllāh ḥaqqan. They are the muḥaddathūn, those spoken to by Allāh. Such an example is Umar, the second caliph of Islam, who was according to a Ḥadīth, muḥaddath al-umma. This is the level of maʿrifa in which Allah bestows divinely gifted knowledge from Himself. The ḥukamāʾ are like doctors who treat their patients with medicine, while the awliyāʾAllāhḥaqqan are a medicine for souls simply through their being beheld. They have sakīna (peace) and waqār (composed and collected countenance).

From al-Tirmidhī’s manāzil one might think that the path of maʿrifa and wilāya is linear, however, from Khatm al-awliyāʾ we know that this is not the case. There is a discontinuity in the path just before the third manzil of maḥabba (love). The awliyāʾ Allāh ḥaqqan are made to inherit His love. They do not inherit this love until the love of Allāh for them is brought to life in them[4]. The transition from awliyāʾ ḥaqq Allāh to awliyāʾ Allāh occurs at this point and there is no way for the traveler on the path to pass beyond this point without God’s choosing. What is significant about this point is that it is precisely the transition from those stations that require effort to the states that are gifts from God. While al-Qushayrī saw these two aspects of the path as occurring simultaneously, al-Tirmidhī places the manāzil that require effort before the manāzil that are divine gifts.

In Khatm al-awliyāʾ, al-Tirmidhī depicts the walī Allāh ḥaqqan as one who is refined by Allāh in successive degrees. He states that the walī:

... لزم المرتبة حتى قوّم وهذّب وأدّب ونقّي وطهّر وطيّب ووسّع وربّي وغذّي وشجّع وعوّد فتمت ولاية الله له بهذه الخصال العشر.

remains in the station until he is established and refined and disciplined and purified and cleansed and perfumed and enriched and cultivated and nourished and heartened and seasoned until his wilāya by Allah becomes complete through these ten means[5].

In other words, the walī is, by definition, a person who undergoes a process of refinement such that this person becomes an exemplar of conduct. Prior to God taking on his tarbiya directly as a walī Allāh, the walī ḥaqq Allāh avails himself of the ḥukamāʾ who are teachers and guides upon the path. Radtke has argued that al-Tirmidhī did not believe that the ṭarīq (the path) should involve a master, but that it was a path that each mystic should tread individually. This notion draws its support from a letter that al-Tirmidhī wrote to an unnamed questioner from Rayy, who al-Tirmidhī counsels against looking for and following a teacher:

ووصفت أنّ شأنك ومبتدأ أمرك أنّك نلت منزلة لا تعمل شيئاً إلا بإذن ثم صحبت رجلاً ممّن ترجو الزيادة به فتركت أمرك وأقبلت عليه فافتقدت الأمر الأول وهكذا يكون شأن من يطلب الخالق بالمخلوق. الصادق في الطريق يطلب ربّه به لا بشيء سواه.

You described how your affair and initial training was such that you had arrived at the station in which you would not do anything without permission. Then you took the company of a great man from whom you sought increase and you left your original affair and went over to him and hence you lost the better situation. Thus it is with those who seek the creator through a created thing. The true wayfarer upon the path seeks his Lord through him (his Lord) and not through anything else.

The advice continues and is nuanced about how a traveler on the path of maʿrifa moves from station to station through a careful attentiveness to the inspirations from God that come to his soul. The traveler should begin with only the bare minimum and then only add acts of obedience when his Lord inspires him to do more. However, Radtke’s interpretation ignores the larger context of al-Tirmidhī’s structure of wilāya. As al-Tirmidhī describes at the beginning of Khatm al-awliyāʾ, there are two kinds of awliyāʾ. There are the awliyāʾḥaqq Allāh and then the awliyāʾAllāh. The awliyāʾḥaqq Allāh are those who strive to resemble the awliyāʾ and because of their efforts in this regard God has mercy on them and rewards them. However, they are not the bona fide awliyāʾ. The bona fide awliyāʾ are those who are granted this special status from God’s own choosing and not because of the particular efforts that they make. These are “trained” by God Himself. If we notice in the above quote, the questioner was already on the path of wilāya but then retreated from this lofty position. Al-Tirmidhī is counseling him to stay on the path of wilāya. If we overlay this distinction with a hierarchy of epistemic authority that al-Tirmidhī develops we find that the ḥukamāʾ and ʿulamāʾ coincide with the level of awliyāʾ ḥaqq Allāh, while the bona fide awliyāʾ are described as kubarāʾ and munfaridīn among other terms. We have to understand that al-Tirmidhī sees wilāya as a spectrum that spans the length of belief, from the simple believer to the highest of God’s saints. Therefore, ʿilm and ḥikma are acquired knowledges, while maʾrifa is divinely gifted knowledge. ʿIlm is textual knowledge of the Qurʾān and Sunna and ḥikma, as al-Tirmidhī explains in Nawādir al-uṣūl, is the result self-refinement and the experience of being in the world.

This leads us to understand that al-Tirmidhī, in fact, does accept the master-disciple relationship but only within the realm of ḥikma. Al-Tirmidhī’s assignment of ḥikma as the content of the master-disciple relationship connects well with what Thibbon has mentioned about the term ḥakīm or sage, which he says was a term synonymous with shaykh during the 9th and 10th centuries CE in Khurasan and Transoxania. I would venture to posit that this was the term used by Malamatis during this time period for the master of spiritual instruction as we see a number of figures with connection to the Malamatī tradition having this title. Al-Tirmidhī distinguishes between the ḥakīm and the walī by saying that the ḥakīm is like a king and the walī is like the faqīr (Nawādir). Since the period of Abū Ḥafs al-Ḥaddad, the Malamatīs were known to require complete obedience of the disciple to the master[6]. When Abū Ḥafs al-Ḥaddād and his student Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī visited al-Junayd and his disciples in Baghdad, the difference in teaching styles was evident[7]. The Khurasanī Malamatī masters comported themselves like kings while their disciples took on the role of obedient subjects. This contrasts strikingly with the more congenial atmosphere of brotherhood that characterized the circle of al-Junayd, who acted more like a first among equals. According to the 10th century mystic Ibrāhīm b. Shaybānī al-Qirmisīnī, the ḥakīm was associated with adab and the was the educator par excellence of the disciple.

If wilāya/walāya is not achievable through personal effort and is bestowed directly by God, then the distinction between the awliyāʾAllāh and the hukamāʾ becomes an important one. The master is primarily a ḥakīm and may not have been chosen to be one of the awliya Allahḥaqqan, the bona fide awliyāʾ. In a sense this clarifies the role of the master as well as the subject of his teaching. The spiritual master according to al-Tirmidhī is someone who is first of all learned in the textual traditions, that is, he is a scholar of the outward disciplines of Islam, i.e. he is one of the ʿulamāʾ. Above and beyond this he should also be one of the hukamāʾ if he wants to guide disciples in the spiritual path. That is, he is someone who has mastered his lower self and can read the signs (ayāt) of God in the world just as the scholar of outward knowledge reads religious texts. He understands these ayāt through the prism of amthāl (analogies). The use of legal analogy (qiyās) as applied to a text is now extrapolated to the world of creation. The ḥakīm instructs his disciple in the many pitfalls of the lower self and helps direct him towards understanding the world as an exemplification of God’s wisdom as al-Ḥakīm, the All-Wise.

In his Kitāb al-ḥikma al-Tirmidhī uses an analogy to help explain the relationship between the walī, the ḥakīm and the common people. The walī is likened to the shepherd whose existence and very presence pervades the atmosphere of the shepherding. The shepherd only needs to sit in one place and watch for danger. He is like one of the umanāʾ among the awliyāʾ whose presence brings calm and protection to the group. The general populace are like the sheep who are being shepherded. The ḥakīm is like the shepherd dog whose natural instinct is to hunt, but this instinct his turned in on itself such that the shepherd dog protects the sheep and fights the predator such as the wolf. The role of the ḥakīm is that of the muʾaddib, the one who trains and refines someone in culture and letters. The muʾaddib trains the student by bringing their spiritual state into balance. The ḥakīm is able to do this because he has had experience training his own lower self and knows its faults.

Conclusion

Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī provides the most developed schema of all early Islamic mystics about the ṭarīq (path) that leads to gnosis of God. Not only does he delineate the manāzil that are significant for traveling the path, but he predicts the distinction between aḥwāl (states) and maqāmāt (stations). He identifies the role of the spiritual guide as a ḥakīm whose role ceases in direct counsel of his disciple with gift of wilaya at the manzil of maḥabba. The statement that al-Tirmidhī was not a Sufi as some scholars such as Radtke have assumed is to miss the fundamental role that al-Tirmidhī played in the development of Islamic mysticism, not only in the area of wilāya (sainthood), but also in the fundamental notion of the path and its various manāzil (stopping places).

AIYUB PALMER,

University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington

[1] Alexander Knysh. Islamic Mysticism a Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2000) p. 41.

[2] Paul Nwiya. Exégèse coranique et language mystique, Beirut, 1970, pp. 213–216.

[3] Abu Al-Qasim Al-Junayd Ibn Muhammad and 'Ali Hasan 'Abd al-Qadir. The Life Personality and Writings of Al-Junayd: A Study of a Ninth Century Mystic with an Edition and Translation of His Writings New ed. (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2013) pp. 93-94.

[4] Al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi. Manazil al-sidiqqin. Ankara: Ismail Saib 1571 fol. recto 223.

[5] Al-Tirmidhī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ḥakīm. Thalathat muṣannafāt li-l-Ḥakīm at-Tirmidhī: Kitāb sīrat al-awliyāʾ, Jawāb al-masāʾil allati saʾalahu ahl sarakhs ʿanhā Jawāb kitab min al-rayy. Arabisch-Deutsche Ausg (Beirut: Dār al-Nashr Frānts Shtāynar, 1992) p. 33.

[6] Thibbon, p. 119

[7] Sviri, "Hakim Tirmidhi and the Malamati movement in early Sufism," p. 11. Also see Knysh’s Islamic Mysticism, p. 96.