Muṣṭalaḥāt al-ʿIlm al-Kalām ʿInda al-Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, by Aḥmad ʿAbdulhadī al-Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, 1st Edition, 1430 H/2009 (Beirut, Dār ul-Maḥajjat al-Bayḍāʾ).
I introduced Aḥmad ʿAbdulhādī al-Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s writing in a previous blog post when I was discussing the Shaykhī sources (See: in Pursuit of Originality, published June 30, 2021). To my knowledge, Ṣāliḥ, a native of Qaṭīf, has three more books on Shaykhīsm, including Ijāzat al-ʿAllāmah al-Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī Lil Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Kalbāsī (1431/2010), Masāʾil Ḥawl al-Ḥaqīqat al-Muḥammadīyah: Ajbawat al-Masāʾil al-Mullā Rashīd al-Shaykh al-Awḥad Aḥmad ibn Zayn al-Dīn al-Aḥsāʾī, and Muṣṭalaḥāt al-ʿIlm al-Kalām ʿInda al-Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, which is my concern here.
Researchers will find Muṣṭalaḥāt, a glossary of Aḥsāʾī’s main terms arranged alphabetically, very useful, because it is the only book of this sort which has been published on the terminology of “the Unparalleled Shaykh” and has been very successful in putting together the scattered thoughts of Aḥsāʾī in an orderly manner. As a fan of Aḥsāʾī, I have been reading him for more than a decade, and I have always found his philosophy an often-bumpy terrain of complicated terms and ideas which are untidily compiled. Aḥsāʾī’s style is to move, if not to say jump, from one idea to another, and therefore is not easy to follow his line of thinking and argumentation, and that is why Muṣṭalaḥāt should be regarded as an important addition to the existing scholarship in the Shaykhī studies. To a lesser extent, what the author of Muṣṭalaḥāt has done is comparable to ʿAbdul Razzāq Kāshānī’s (d. 735 H/ 1335?) initiative in composing the three precious lexicons and glossaries on the terminology of ibn ʿArabī, which, as history proves, played a significant role in systematizing the theoretical mysticism of his master and shaping Sufi terminology in later generations.
Pertinent to this is the Shaykhī borrowing of terms such as ḥaqīqat al-Muḥammadīya (pp. 75-76), or wilāya (pp. 150-151), from Sufi terminology, although in the case of wilāya, Aḥsāʾī and his followers contributed to the classic Imamite tradition significantly. As an esoteric school, Aḥsāʾī’s students pushed the conception of wilāya further to the hiddenness of God, mediated by a gate (bāb), or in Kirmānī Shaykhīsm, the office of rukn-i rābiʿ, and by so doing they diverged from their Imamite legacy in which wilāya was typically understood as the face and the outward dimension of Deity. Muṣṭalaḥāt also discusses terms such as rajʿa (p. 84), which is understood ‘differently’ by Aḥsāʾī in order to serve his apocalyptic reading of some Islamic terms. Well-rooted in the Shīʿa culture,[1] rajʿa came to gain a further radical interpretation (and in fact became totally distorted) in the Bābī and Bahā’ī texts, when the followers of Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad Shīrāzī (d. 1850), in the gathering of Bedasht, called themselves the return/rajʿa of Islamic figures, and by doing so, announced the abrogation of the sharia, which was believed to be the qīyāmat of Islam and the birth of a new religion; Bābīsm.
In a similar way, Aḥsāʾī interprets ṭay u-samāwāt of the verse 104 of Sūrat al-Anbīyā, in a non-literal symbolic way as renewal and conversion (yuʿrafu bi tajaddud al-ashyāʾ wa tabaddulihā), which in fact is typical in the Shaykhī interpretation of the Qurʾān. Unlike ṭay ul-ʿarḍ and/or ṭay u-zamān, ṭay u-samāwāt has rarely appeared in previous writings. According to Muṣṭalaḥāt, Aḥsāʾī discusses it in three texts, including Sharḥ al-Fawāʾd (vol. 1, p. 243), Sharḥ ul-ʿArshīya (vol. 1, p. 468), and Mafātīḥ ul-Anwār (vol. 1, p. 177), intending such a conversion by which the innermost (bawāṭin) will be revealed (just like when the uttermost or ẓāhir is being scraped) and a new body (or jasad ul-ākhirāh) is born out of one’s current terrestrial jasad. This is why he argues that “ʾinna jasadaka fi dunyā huwa jasad ul-ākhirah” (p. 94). Needless to say, Aḥsāʾī’s reading of ṭay u-samāwāt as conversion and renewal should be understood in relation to his doctrine of ʿālam-i mithāl (also hūrqalyā, mundus imaginalis), as well as to his discussion of the ajsād and ajsām.[2] Naṭwi a-samāʾ or rolling up the sky is one of the malāḥim and fitan of the End of Time, although in Aḥsāʾī’s philosophy it is read symbolically too, and hence gains a new meaning referring to personal renewal.
Aḥsāʾī is quite innovative in introducing new, if not to say unusual, terms to the existing kalām terminology. As an example, I can mention al-quyūd al-sittah, the six characteristics of the wujūd, including quantity (al-kamm), quality (al-kayf), direction (al-jahat), rank (al-rutba), time (al-zammān), and location (al-makān) (p. 124). And last but not least, although the author of Muṣṭalaḥāt does his best to cover Aḥsāʾī’s terminology in its entirety, he forgets to mention one of the most important terms in Aḥsāʾī’s ontology, qurāʾi ẓāhirah (visible towns); a Qurʾānīc term without which the later developments of the Shaykhī thought are not comprehensible.[3]
[1] - Rajʿa not only has a Qurʾānīc background but is discussed in the Kutub al-Arbaʿa as well. Furthermore, Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī (d. 1699) in the volume 53 of Biḥār ul-Anwār and Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1693) in al-ʾĪqāẓ min al-Hujʿa bil Burhān ʿAla al-Rajʿa delve into its both Qurʾānīc and Shīʿa background in Kutub al-Arbaʿa as well as other Shīʿa ḥadīth compilations. [2] - Vahid Rafati has discussed the issue adequately in the Development of Shaykhi Thought in Shi’i Islam (University of California, Ph.D. thesis, 1979), pp. 108-115. [3] - For an in-depth discussion of qurāʾi ẓāhirah and its further development to the doctrine of rukn-i rābiʿ, see the second chapter of my book, Conceptualization.
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