The ʿārif and ḥakīm of the third century, Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Ḥassan ibn Bishr ibn Hārūn Tirmidhī (d. 295 H/910), was the first person who offered a systematic discussion of the concepts of wilāya, khatm al-wilāya, and khatm al-nubuwwa. Nubuwwa and wilāya possess elements such as revelation, words, and spirit (waḥy, kalām, rūḥ), and the hidden knowledge of God, reality, and tranquility (ḥadīth, ḥaqq and sakīna), respectively, which form their components as well as their functions (Radtke & O’kane, 1996, 112-117). His theory of wilāya is based on the concept of ḥaqq u-llāh, or the absolute right of deity to dominate and rule the cosmos. However, there are only two types of people who observe His right: awlīyā of ḥaqq u-llāh and awlīyā u-llāh; their difference is due to their different spiritual level. The first level is worship of God (ʿibādat), which encompasses Man’s voluntary conduct, chosen by him arbitrarily and out of freedom of will. Here, Man decides to, or not to, perform ʿibādat.
On the other hand, there is ʿubūdīyah, or the unconditional sense of Man’s attachment to deity, which of course contradicts freedom of worship, instead requiring complete reliance on Him. Given this, if a walī expects rewards from Him after ʿibādat, he is awlīyā of ḥaqq u-llāh, but if a walī does not investigate the outcome and simply submits himself to worship, then he reaches the station of qurb al-nawāfil, which is annihilation of self in Him. His heart is now open to divine reflections (tajallīyāt) and his status is that of walī u-llāh, which is higher than that of walī-ya ḥaqq u-llāh (Tirmidhī, 1999, pp. 5-28).
Awlīyā are selected by God to this office and their endeavors in attaining wilāya are not as effective as God’s will in choosing them and bestowing on them cleanliness of heart, knowledge of God’s Oneness (ʿilm al-tawḥīd), and knowledge of His favors (maʿrifat al-ālāʾ) (Radtke & O’kane, p. 153). Since the friends of God are gifted with His benefaction (karam), their miracles are generated from His benefaction and they have unconditional faith in Him (Radtke & O’kane, pp. 163-164). Among these friends there is one (khatm al-awlīyā), who, due to his close proximity to God, is the most honorable, and his sealing is a safe conduit for other awlīyā whose honesty and loyalty to God is imperfect. The seal is the greatest saint and has the highest position among people after the Prophet. Khātam, on the basis of his distinguished essence, is different from others and is called the Mahdi, and he will appear in End Times and will be the proof of God on other awlīyā (Radtke & O’kane, pp. 197-205). As to the necessity of always having a walī, Tirmidhī refers to Imam’s Ali’s khuṭba to Kumayl ibn Zīyād, in which he emphasizes the significance of having a proof (ḥujja) living on earth to prevent the earth from vanishing and annihilation.
Pertinent to this is the modulated nature of the office of wilāya, in which muḥaddithūn occupies the highest position, then comes abdāl (also budalā), consisting of seven substitutes (lit. generous/karīm and nobles/sharīf), then the forty righteous, or ṣiddīqān, who are all members of the spiritual household of the Prophet or his ahl ul-dhikr. Tirmidhī reminds us that his spiritual household consists of his true followers, who have taken refuge in the authentic message of Islam, which is Muhammad’s dhikr. Therefore, the Prophet’s spiritual children, and not his direct progeny, are responsible for protecting the faith from extinction and disappearance (Tirmidhī., Op. cit., pp. 30ff).
Tirmidhī’s conception of wilāya has similarities with that of ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’ (d. 1981) in Ṭarīq-i ʿIrfān (the Path to Mysticism)[1], in which he uses the Quranic term of mukhlaṣ, or the People of Purity (Ahl al-Ikhlāṣ or mukhlaṣūn, also sābiqūn or aṣḥāb al-asrār), which should be distinguished from its pair, mukhliṣ. The latter refers to those who are still at the beginning of the path and worship Him in order to enjoy the blessings, while the former (mukhlaṣ) have already abnegated in Him and reached the status of wilāya (Ṭabāṭabāʾī, 1390, pp. 209-211). Therefore, mukhlaṣūn are awlīyā u-llāh, or those who are able to grasp the true meaning of tawḥīd and worship God not according to their imaginations, but on the basis of their gnosis of God. So, not only is their worship the most purified (because it is founded on gnosis), but also a path for all to know and worship Him in an appropriate manner (Ṭabāṭabāʾī, 1390, pp. 209-210).
Mukhlaṣūn have to walk a number of steps, including repentance, self-assessment, meditation, practicing silence and seclusion, hunger and retirement, and keeping night vigil (tahajjud)in order to attain His gnosis. Since the status of wilāya or ikhlāṣ requires turning face to God, to reach this goal, mukhlaṣ needs to process through all the aforementioned stages of spiritual conduct and become self-abnegated in Him. At the final step, the most beautiful names and attributes of God become manifested in them, and like Him they enjoy the absolute right of acting upon the cosmos (Ṭabāṭabāʾī, 1390, p. 211ff).
Although, unlike his predecessors who used to understand the status of wilāya only in terms of wilāyat al-takwīnīya, Ṭabāṭabāʾī does not use this term at all, but since his perception of wilāya is the ability of walī to act upon the cosmos, his theory automatically embeds such a doctrine. It is to be added that there is a relationship between the idea of wilāyat al-takwīnīya and ghulat, in the sense that wilāyat al-takwīnīya is the crystalized form of ghuluw, which has made its way into the conceptions of wilāya from the school of ibn ʿArabī onward. Wilāya, therefore, came to be understood relative to wilāyat al-takwīnīya; to the extent that other features of wilāya, such as ʿilm, piety, valor, spiritual abstinence and repentance were overshadowed by it. According to this idea, the Imams are vested with supernatural attributes and are regarded as God’s aids in creating the world. One can relate this development to the “popularization of Shīʿīsm” which was realized by Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī in the Safawid era, and “had secured the religious royalty of the masses” (Amir Arjomand, 1984, p. 219) to hierocracy. The incorporation of Shīʿīsm into popular rituals, and the mob’s interest in exotic images and miraculous attributes of imāms, should be understood from this perspective.
Sources:
- Radtke, Bernd & John O’Kane, The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, 1996 (Richmond: Curzon Press).
- Amir Arjomand, Saïd, the Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shiite Iran from the Beginning to 1890, 1984 (Chicago and London: the University of Chicago Press).
- Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Muḥammad Hossein, Ṭarīq-i ʿIrfān (the Path to Mysticism), translated into Persian by Ṣādiq Ḥassanzādih, introduction by Ayatollah Ḥassan Ḥassanzādih Āmulī, 4th edition, 1390 (Qum: Ishrāq).
- Tirmidhī, Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Ḥassan, Khatm ul- Awlīyā, 1420/1999 (Beirut: Dār ul-Kutub ul-ʿIlmīyah).
[1] - Another important text of Ṭabāṭabāʾī, entitled Wilāyat Nāmih (1387), also discusses mysticism from a Quranic perspective.
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