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Women in mystical Islam
Women’s Studies Int.Forum, Vol.5,No. 2, pp.145-151, 1982. Printedin GreatBritain.
0277-5395/82/020145~7$03.00~0 PergmonPressLtd.
WOMEN IN MYSTICAL ANNEMARIE
ISLAM
SCHIMMEL
Middle Eastern Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Biographical
note
Annemarie Schimmel, Dr Phil, Dr Sc Rel, Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture, Harvard University. Born in Germany, she studied Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Islamic Art at Berlin University and held teaching appointments at the universities of Marburg, Ankara (Turkey), Bonn, and Harvard. Author of numerous books in German and English, among them MysticaiDimensions of I&m (1975), Islamic Calligraphy (1970), The Triumphal Sun (a studv of Maulana Rtimi. 1978). GabriePs Wina (a study of the reliaious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iabal. 1963). Islam in thdlndian Subcontinent, 1986, etc. Awards inciude the Sitare-yi &aid-i Azam (Pakistan), honarary degrees from the universities of Sind, Islamabad, and Peshawar, the Friedrich-Rueckert prize for outstanding translations, the Golden Hammer-Purgstall medal, and the Voss-Prize of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Foreign member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Synopsis---Women played a positive role in Sufism. Even though the early ascetics were rather negative in their statements about women, it was a woman who introduced the concept of pure love into Islamic mysticism, and has been venerated for this reason throughout the centuries. One meets women in almost every avenue of Sufism. They act as patrons of Sufi khdnqdhs and as shaykhas of certain convents. They have been venerated as saints and accepted as spiritual guides. The symbol of the woman-soul who embodies the highest ambition of the God-seeking human being, has been popular in the Sufi tradition of Indo-Pakistan. As mothers, many mystically inclined women have deeply influenced their sons who in turn became leading masters of the Path thanks to their early education. The role of women for the expansion of mystically tinged Islamic thought in the countryside and down to the lowest levels of population cannot be overrated; they were the most important depositories of mystical lore and the simple, unassuming faith in God and the Prophet.
In the early 1950’s, a Turkish student came to the University of Marburg where I was teaching, and knowing my interest in Sufism, he began to talk frequently about his ‘mystical aunt’ and urged me to see his family during my next stay in Turkey. I promised him that I would do so and, in fact, found in Ankara his elderly aunt deeply steeped in mystical Islam and constantly engaged in prayer and meditation; but even more, I met through his family a number of young and middle-aged Turks, mainly women, who carried on the tradition of the Rifa’i order. Their center was in Istanbul where Samiha Ayverdi, then in her later forties, acted as the khalSfa, the official successor, of Kenan Rifa’i, a master to whose memory she and three of her friends-ladies from upper class families-had devoted an important book (Kenan Rifa’i, 1951).’ That one of the authors was a Christian, made the situation even more interesting. Samiha Ayverdi excelled as a writer of novels, short stories, and autobiographical books about the past glory of the Ottoman Empire and particularly her hometown Istanbul; her sketches called Istanbul Geceleri, ‘Nights of Istanbul,’ are a delightful tapestry of memories and lyrical descriptions of the various quarters of Istanbul at the beginning of our century.
i See also Schimmel, Annemarie. 1967. Samiha Ayverdi, eine Istanbuler Schriftstellerin. In Hoenerbach, Wilhelm, ed., Festschrift jii Otto Spies. Wiesbaden. 145
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This book, like her other works, is highly charged with emotion and mystical thought, and I loved to listen to her when she spoke in long, musical sentences about the great Turkish Islamic mystical tradition which she and her followers tried to preserve. It seemed not surprising to me that a Turkish lady of noble background should be a practising mystic; for one knows that women had played a certain role in the Turkish dervish tradition. Was not the Bektashi order, founded in the late thirteenth century in Anatolia, known for the free social intercourse between men and women, women participating in all parts of the ritual? This fact has of course given rise to accusations agains the order whose members were considered immoral and prone to obscene behaviour. Incidentally, the relation between the mystical leader, the shaykh or pir, and his female murids was often regarded with severe mistrust by sober critics who tended to interpret the spiritual relationship between master and disciple as something not exactly spiritual-perhaps not always without justification. Yakup Kadri’s novel Nur Baba (1922) depicts with the interest of a psychologist and critic the case of a young woman from Istanbul society who falls a prey to an attractive Bektashi shaykh, and it may well be that this novel was instrumental (among other things) to persuade Ataturk of the necessity of closing the dervish lodges. Later on, other novels took up the same topic in less sophisticated form. But whatever the accusations of alleged libertinism of the Bektashis and other Sufi orders in Turkey may claim, it was and is a fact that women played a certain role in the mystical life of Islam. Indeed, it was Sufism which opened more avenues of life to women than ‘orthodox’ Islam. To be sure, early Islamic asceticism and the mystical writings based on these ascetic ideals were as inimical to women as is any ascetic movement in the world of religion, be it medieval Christianity or early Buddhism. It was easy for the Muslim ascetics of the eighth and ninth centuries to equate woman and nafi, the ‘lower self that incites to evil’ (see Sura 12:59 in the Koran), since the word nafi is feminine in Arabic. Furthermore, as they saw in woman, as it were, the nafs principle personified they also represented (like their Christian colleagues) the world as a hideous ghastly old hag who tends to seduce man and then devours the stupid creatures who followed her invitation to indulgence in sensual pleasures. However the Sufis, in spite of all their theoretical aversion to the nafs-woman in general-rarely used such crude expressions about women as are found in Christian medieval monastic literature. For, the concept of original sin being absent from Islamic dogmatics, they could not blame Eve for being responsible for the all-pervading original sin as did the Christians. Thus, their blame of women is merely ascetic, not metaphysical. Furthermore, according to the Prophet’s example there should be no celibacy in Islam. Marriage was the sunna’ of the Messenger, and even though some Sufis interpreted their married life as a kind of spiritual education in patience and forbearing, or as a kind of substitute for hellfire, they still accepted it because they would not like to act against the Prophet’s example. Also, they had to acknowledge, though grudgingly, that some exceptional women were able to reach the lofty stage of a ‘Man of God.’ Not only was Rabi”a al-cAdawiyya considered to be equal to or even to surpass men, but as late as the eighteenth century the mystical folk poet Shah “Abdul Latif of Bhit in the Indus valley applied the old Indian Sufi saying tnlib al-ma&i mudhakkar (‘He who seeks the Lord is male’) to his heroine. She represented the longing soul which braved all difficulties on the path toward the Divine
’ Sunna is a basis of Islamic Law. It consists of a group of directives originating from the prophet. Following them is commendable; however, ignoring them is not punishable.
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Be10ved.~ For, the true seeker transcends the limits of sex. Similar descriptions are still used in our day when a particularly outstanding woman is to be honored. At a time when the ascetic outlook was prevalent among the pious Muslim seekers of the late Omayyad and early Abbaside period it was a woman (Rabi’a) who was credited with introducing the concept of pure love into the gloomy worldview of ‘those who constantly weep,’ as some of the ascetics were called. We now know that the ideal of the absolute love of God was in the air long before Rabi”a introduced it. It was probably first formulated by Ja’far as-Sadiq (d. 765) whose ideas she may have known. RabiCa al-“Adawiyya or al-Basriyya (d. 801), a freed slave girl in Basra to whom Margaret Smith has devoted a fine study (1928) was the first to sing of her Divine Love in short, unassuming poems. Her love of God was absolute and did not allow room even for love of the Prophet-something that would become unthinkable a few centuries later. The story of her carrying a torch and a ewer through the streets of Basra ‘in order to burn down Paradise and extinguish Hellfire’ has been repeated time and again not only in the Islamic world but also in Europe.4 It was RBbi’a who stressed the importance of the Qur’anic saying ‘He loves them and they love Him (The Koran, Sura 5:59) as the cornerstone of all manifestations of love between God and man. Thus, her name has become a coterminus for Divine Love at its loftiest, for a love that gladly gives up everything but God and wants nothing but God’s eternal beauty. Rabi”a set an example for the generations to come, who elaborated her basic statements into the multifaceted love theories of Sufism. Her little verses have been repeated up to our day. However, she was not the only woman saint in early Islam, as Margaret Smith has shown in her study, and is becoming more evident in the light of recent research. We may particularly mention the name of Fatima of Nishapur, the wife of a well known Sufi. Apparently she was a much stronger personality than her husband whom she guided in spiritual and worldly affairs. She was a woman who, as legend has it, disputed without veil with the great Sufi masters of her time. She deserves an in-depth study both as a historical figure and as a paradigm. The celibate Rabi”a and the married Fatima stand side by side. They were followed by innumerable other women who took to the mystical path. These women apparently participated in the gatherings of the mystics-a Sufi’s daughter in Baghdad died about the year 900 in a gathering where the noted preacher an-Niiri spoke about mystical love (three men too died at that occasion from excitement). They may have taken their places, as they do today, in a special section of the hall, or on the balcony, but they were certainly not excluded from the performances. History indicates that some women were known as benefactors of
3 The saying is ascribed to the Chishti saint Jam%luddInHgnswi (d. 1260); its full text is t&b ad-dunya mu’annath, talib al4ikhira mukhannath,t&b al-mauls mudhakkar,‘Who seeks this world is a female: who seeks the Otherworld, is a catamite; who seeks the Lord, is a Man.’ The last part has several times been applied to pious women in the Indian environment. 4 The story goes that she was seen one day in the streets of Basra, carrying a torch and a ewer, and upon being asked what that meant she answered: I am going to pour water into Hell and set fire to Paradise so that these two veils disappear from the eyes of the believers, and they worship God not out of fear of Hell or hope for Paradise but solely for His eternal Beauty. This story was known all over the Middle Fast, and came to France after the crusade of Louis IX; it appeared in a French treatise on Quietisme, called Caritdeou la uraie Charitb, by Camus, printed in 1640, where even a picture is found, showing an Oriental woman with a torch and a ewer, over whose head a sun is shining with the engraved Hebrew word Yahueh.The story then appears in various guises in European countries, usually shorn of its original context: the last version known to me is by the Austrian writer Max Mell, and is called Die schoenen Haende (The beautiful hands). We published an Arabic translation of this story in our magazine Fikrun wa Farm, Vol. 10 (1969).
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Sufi khdnqrfhs which they endowed with money or regular food rations. In fact, throughout the centuries we find the names of noblewomen-even family members of rulers such as the daughters of the Moghul emperor Aurangzebwho enjoyed building houses, mosques, and schools for renowned mystics of their time and received, in return, their blessings. A careful investigation into inscriptions on religious buildings as well as legal deeds which mention women’s names would probably bring much more information than is presently available about the activities of women in this field.5 These activities were not restricted to a particular country: we find woman patrons of Sufis in India and Iran, in Turkey and North Africa. In medieval Egypt (and possibly in other areas too) even special khdnqdhs for women were erected where they could spend either their whole life or a span of time. For instance, divorced women would retire to such a khiinqdh until they remarried. We know the names of some shaykhas in such places in medieval Egypt. We also know of an Anatolian woman who lived in the late fourteenth century and who was a descendant of Maula% Jaltiuddin Rtimi (d. 1273). This woman was head of a dervish tekke and guided the men. It is worth mentioning that female members of Rtimi’s family worked for spreading his ideas in central Antolia, and that women from various walks of life were among his most faithful disciples.6 Some of them arranged mystical concerts for him in their homes. Furthermore, even though the great mystical poet rarely indulged in the traditional ascetic language when speaking of women, he devoted some beautiful verse to women as mothers and even claimed that a woman could almost be called ‘a creator, not a creature’ (Mathnawi-yi mu’nawi, Book 1, verses 2433-2437). Women also gained a sanctity of their own, as R%bi”adid. Nezihe Araz, a writer from the circle of Samiha Ayverdi, devoted a fine book to the Anadolu EuliyulurT, the Saints of Anatolia. Among these one can find many girls and women whose very names (Pisili Sultan ‘princess with the pussy cat,’ Karyagdi Sultan ‘Princess Snow-has-fallen’ etc.) suggest romantic stories. But again, Anatolia, though particularly fertile in women Sufis, was not the only place where one could find venerated women. In the Maghrib, a considerable number of women saints is known. Indeed, no one less than Ibn ‘Arabi, the mugister mugnus of Islamic theosophical mysticism (d. 1240) studied under two women saints in Spain, among whom FSitima of Cordova must have been a person of extraordinary power. Though more than,90 years old, she still looked like a young girl, and was served by heavenly powers such as the sukinu. It seems highly probable that Ibn ‘Arabi developed some salient features of his mystical thought under the influence of F?&ma as well as of that of a young Persian lady whom he met in Mecca during the pilgrimage and who inspired him to write delicate mystical love poetry. The female element plays an important role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s system so that he even sees in woman the highest manifestation of the Divine. He devoted the final chapter of his book on prophetology, Fugi; al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) to the Prophet Muhammad’s saying: ‘God has made dear to me from your world perfume and women, and my consolation is in prayer.’ That led him to an elaboration of the role of women for the spiritual life of mankind. As the early ascetics had enjoyed playing with the feminine character of the nufs, Ibn ‘Arabi discovered that the word dhcit, ‘essence,’ is feminine and thus gained a feminine aspect for the
5 Some fine examples about the role of women in the environment of the famous Persian Sufi Abti Sa’id-i Abit’lKhair (d. 1049), and in medieval Sufism in general are given in Fritz Meier’sAbti Sa’id-i Abu 1-Khayr, Leiden (1976). 6 For more details see Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun. A Study of the work of Jaldloddin Rwni. London-The Hague (1978).
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life of the deity.’ He also did not exclude the possibility that women might be among the most high-ranking saints in the mystical hierarchy. It would be surprising if Ibn ‘Arabi’s early spiritual education at the hands of a woman Sufi did not play a role in the formation of such speculations. As in Morocco and Spain, we find women saints in Egypt’ and particularly in Muslim India. In India, the lower Indus Valley and the Punjab are dotted with minor sanctuaries of women saints, either single individuals or whole groups (preferably ‘Seven Chaste Ladies’ or so) who are said to have performed some acts of unusual piety. Some are venerated for their chastity, some were blessed with performing miracles and others are noted for their healing properties (thus Mai Suparan in Balochistan cures those bitten by mad dogs). Numerous legends surround them and still today women go to their tombs to hand bunches of bangles at their doors in the hope of having a wish fulfilled. Furthermore, while women are usually excluded from the innermost part of the shrine of a male saint, men are not allowed inside the sanctuaries of a woman saint. Among the more famous women in Indo-Muslim hagiography we may single out Bibi Jamal Khattin (d. 1639), the sister of Mian Mir, to whom the Moghul heir apparent D&a Shikiih (executed 1659) devoted a chapter in his hagiographic work Saktnat al-At&y& One may also think of Dar& elder sister, Princes Jahiinara (d. 1689), who attained such a perfection in mystical experience that her spiritual master, Molla Shah Badakhshi, would have made her his successor if that had been possible in the Qadiriyya order. Princess Jahanara never married-not for religious reasons but because no worthy husband could be found for the princess. After her mother’s death, she remained the active and influential First Lady of the Moghul Empire; but many of the women saints were married and were again mothers of far more famous Sufis. The female visitor to Burhanuddin Gharib’s tomb in Khuldabad (Deccan) will not leave the place before offering Fnri$a at the shrine of the saint’s mother.g Here we touch an important aspect of Sufi life: the biographies of many of the leading mystics throughout the centuries mention that their interest in the spiritual path was kindled by their pious mothers, and sometimes by a ‘mystical aunt.’ Typical of this tradition is the touching story of the saint of Shiraz, Ibn-KhaRf (d. 982 at the age of 104 years). He spent months and months in mortifications in the hope of seeing the Divine light during luilar ulqudr in Ramadan, but all his striving, fasting and his vigils were of no avail.” His simple, pious mother was blessed with the vision of this light. One could easily collect numerous tales about the influence of a pious mother upon her son who then turned into a great saint. We need think only of “Abdul QBdir Gil&i, the founder of the widespread Qadiriyya order, or of inner
’ Ibn ‘Arabi, as quoted by Reynold A. Nicholson in his commentary on the previously mentioned passage in the Mathnuwr (Vol. 8, pp. 155 ff.) thinks: ‘God cannot be seen apart from matter, and He is seen more perfectly in the human materia than in any other, and more perfectly in woman than in man. For He is seen either in the aspect of agens or in that of patiens or as both simultaneously. . God manifested in the form of woman is ugens in virtue of exercising complete sway over man’s soul and causing man to become submissive and devoted to Himself, and He is also patiens because inasmuch as He appears in the form of women He is under the man’s control and subject to his orders: hence to see God in woman is to see Him in all the forms in which he manifests Himself.’ It is understandable that orthodox Islam has accused Ibn “Arabi of the illicit use of ‘parasexual symbolism.’ * gee the analysis of contemporary Arabic novels dealing with this topic by Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, ‘Islam in Modem Egyptian Literature,’ J. Arabic Literature 2 (1971). 9 To offer F&h is to read the first sura in the Koran in the hope that God will show mercy to and bless the dead person. lo Luilat al-q& is a special blessed night during which angels descend to earth and grant any witness of this event his/her wishes. It is said that only very pious people witness this event. Others are made to fall asleep.
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the Chishti saints Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar (d. 1265) and Nizarmrddin Auliya (d. 1325) in India or of Khwaja Mir Dard (d. 1785) in Delhi-again a fascinating topic for someone who carefully studies biographies of medieval and modern Sufis. (There he or she will also find interesting accounts of servant girls who, in the presence of a spiritual guide, matured into fully fledged mystics.) It might be difficult to find many unmarried women who pursued the Path. For, contrary to the Christian ideal of the virgin saint, the nun or recluse who experienced the highest ecstasies in her lonely cell far away from the bonds of husband and children, most of the Islamic women saints were married and usually had a family. It was thanks to them that their children grew up in the atmosphere of perfect trust in God and piety as we can still observe in the villages of Anatolia and Pakistan. As far as we can see there are not many women who excelled as authors of theoretical mystical works, and I do not know of any counterpart of a woman like Hildegard of Bingen in the medieval Islamic world. When they belonged to the upper classes they were able to sing and even compose mystical verse in the classical languages such as Persian and Ottoman Turkish. Also, we know that the classics of mystical education in these languages (in India later also in Urdu translations) were read and taught in the women’s quarters of pious families. But the women were also the addressees of mystical folk poets who were able, particularly in the Subcontinent, to explain the secrets of the mystical path in simple, easy verses which the women could sing while spinning or grinding grain so that their household chores were transformed into symbols of spiritual activities. Just as by unceasing spinning the thread becomes fine and so precious that it can be sold at a high price thus the heart becomes refined by the constant repetition of religious formulas or the names of God so that God will ‘buy’ it at Doomsday for a high price. (The relation between the constant murmuring of the sacred words and the humming sound of the spinning wheel makes this image particularly fitting.) Besides while the ascetics of olden times tended to equate simply the nafs and woman in general, later Sufis in the Subcontinent used the image of the woman-soul who undertakes the difficult journey to the Divine Beloved by spiritualizing the folk tales of Sind and the Punjab so that the loving, daring heroines of these tales stand out as glowing examples of true mystical pursuit, faithful to the Primordial Covenant (The Koran, Sura 7:171) in which they promised eternal love and obedience to the Divine Beloved. Thus in the folk poetry of the Western part of Indo-Pakistan as well as in Bengal and partly in the songs of the Ismaili community women appear as the true depositories of mystical love and yearning. This idea was taken over fromHindu literature but elaborated in a perfect way by the Muslim mystical poets who finally identified themselves with the suffering heroines of their songs. The wisdom which the illiterate women thus learned and memorized thanks to the activities of mystical folk poets constituted a major source of inspiration for the population of the rural areas and brought the ideas of mystical Islam to the masses, women being generally the most devout representatives of this current. ” Rabi”a stands out as an early heroine of
’ i Further details and sources are to be found in Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions oflslum, Appendix II. Chanel i-Ii11(1975). I should also like to draw the attention of scholars to the book by Wiebke Walther, Die Frau iA Is&-i, published simultaneously in 1980 in Leipzig (East Germany) and Stuttgart (West Germany). It gives an excellent survey of the various aspects of women’s life from early Islamic days to their representation in modern novels and activities in various cultural fields. It has a great number of illustrations taken from every sphere of Islamic art, and is the first comprehensive, well written, and informative book on the topic by a woman trained in Arabic and Islamic studies.
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mystical love, but she has had many successors on a smaller scale. What has been remarked about her can be said of all of these: ‘When a woman walks in the path of God she cannot be called a “woman”. ’ One should not be misled by the constant use of the word ‘man’ in the mystical literature of the Islamic languages: it merely points to the ideal human being who has reached proximity to God where there is no distinction of sexes; and RBbi”a is the prime model of this proximity. REFERENCES Ayverdi, Samiha, Araz, Nezihe, Erol, S&ye and Sodi Huri. 1951. Kenan Rijiii ve yimtinci asrin isiginda Miishonanlik. Istanbul. Radawi, Muhammad Mustafa. 1971. Islam in Modern Egyptian Literature. J. Arabic Literature, 2. Karaosmanoglu, Yakub Kadri. 1922. Nur Baba. Istanbul. German translation by Schimmel, Annemarie. 1948. Flamme und Falter. Gummersbach. Meier, Fritz. 1976. Abii Sdid-i Abu I -Khayr. Leiden. Mell, Max. 1969. Die shoenen Haende. Published in Arabic in Fikrun wa Fann, Vol. 10. Rumi, Jalaluddin. 192551940. Mathaawi-yi ma cncwi(eight volumes), Nicholson, Reynold, A. ed., London-L&den. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1967. ‘Samiha Ayverdi, eine Istanbuller SchriRstellerin’. In HOENERBACH, Wilhelm, ed., Festschrift ./ii Otto Spies. Wiesbaden. Schimmel, Ann&narie. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill. Schimmel. Annemarie. 1978. The Trim&al Sun. A Studv of the work of Jalaloddin Rumi. London-The Hague. Smith, Margaret. 1928. Rabbi‘a the Mystic and Her Felliw-Saints in I&m. Cambridge. Walther, Wiebke. 1980. Die Frau im Islam. Leipzig (East Germany) and Stuttgart (West Germany).
0277-5395/82/020145~7$03.00~0 PergmonPressLtd.
WOMEN IN MYSTICAL ANNEMARIE
ISLAM
SCHIMMEL
Middle Eastern Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Biographical
note
Annemarie Schimmel, Dr Phil, Dr Sc Rel, Professor of Indo-Muslim Culture, Harvard University. Born in Germany, she studied Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Islamic Art at Berlin University and held teaching appointments at the universities of Marburg, Ankara (Turkey), Bonn, and Harvard. Author of numerous books in German and English, among them MysticaiDimensions of I&m (1975), Islamic Calligraphy (1970), The Triumphal Sun (a studv of Maulana Rtimi. 1978). GabriePs Wina (a study of the reliaious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iabal. 1963). Islam in thdlndian Subcontinent, 1986, etc. Awards inciude the Sitare-yi &aid-i Azam (Pakistan), honarary degrees from the universities of Sind, Islamabad, and Peshawar, the Friedrich-Rueckert prize for outstanding translations, the Golden Hammer-Purgstall medal, and the Voss-Prize of the German Academy for Language and Literature. Foreign member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Synopsis---Women played a positive role in Sufism. Even though the early ascetics were rather negative in their statements about women, it was a woman who introduced the concept of pure love into Islamic mysticism, and has been venerated for this reason throughout the centuries. One meets women in almost every avenue of Sufism. They act as patrons of Sufi khdnqdhs and as shaykhas of certain convents. They have been venerated as saints and accepted as spiritual guides. The symbol of the woman-soul who embodies the highest ambition of the God-seeking human being, has been popular in the Sufi tradition of Indo-Pakistan. As mothers, many mystically inclined women have deeply influenced their sons who in turn became leading masters of the Path thanks to their early education. The role of women for the expansion of mystically tinged Islamic thought in the countryside and down to the lowest levels of population cannot be overrated; they were the most important depositories of mystical lore and the simple, unassuming faith in God and the Prophet.
In the early 1950’s, a Turkish student came to the University of Marburg where I was teaching, and knowing my interest in Sufism, he began to talk frequently about his ‘mystical aunt’ and urged me to see his family during my next stay in Turkey. I promised him that I would do so and, in fact, found in Ankara his elderly aunt deeply steeped in mystical Islam and constantly engaged in prayer and meditation; but even more, I met through his family a number of young and middle-aged Turks, mainly women, who carried on the tradition of the Rifa’i order. Their center was in Istanbul where Samiha Ayverdi, then in her later forties, acted as the khalSfa, the official successor, of Kenan Rifa’i, a master to whose memory she and three of her friends-ladies from upper class families-had devoted an important book (Kenan Rifa’i, 1951).’ That one of the authors was a Christian, made the situation even more interesting. Samiha Ayverdi excelled as a writer of novels, short stories, and autobiographical books about the past glory of the Ottoman Empire and particularly her hometown Istanbul; her sketches called Istanbul Geceleri, ‘Nights of Istanbul,’ are a delightful tapestry of memories and lyrical descriptions of the various quarters of Istanbul at the beginning of our century.
i See also Schimmel, Annemarie. 1967. Samiha Ayverdi, eine Istanbuler Schriftstellerin. In Hoenerbach, Wilhelm, ed., Festschrift jii Otto Spies. Wiesbaden. 145
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This book, like her other works, is highly charged with emotion and mystical thought, and I loved to listen to her when she spoke in long, musical sentences about the great Turkish Islamic mystical tradition which she and her followers tried to preserve. It seemed not surprising to me that a Turkish lady of noble background should be a practising mystic; for one knows that women had played a certain role in the Turkish dervish tradition. Was not the Bektashi order, founded in the late thirteenth century in Anatolia, known for the free social intercourse between men and women, women participating in all parts of the ritual? This fact has of course given rise to accusations agains the order whose members were considered immoral and prone to obscene behaviour. Incidentally, the relation between the mystical leader, the shaykh or pir, and his female murids was often regarded with severe mistrust by sober critics who tended to interpret the spiritual relationship between master and disciple as something not exactly spiritual-perhaps not always without justification. Yakup Kadri’s novel Nur Baba (1922) depicts with the interest of a psychologist and critic the case of a young woman from Istanbul society who falls a prey to an attractive Bektashi shaykh, and it may well be that this novel was instrumental (among other things) to persuade Ataturk of the necessity of closing the dervish lodges. Later on, other novels took up the same topic in less sophisticated form. But whatever the accusations of alleged libertinism of the Bektashis and other Sufi orders in Turkey may claim, it was and is a fact that women played a certain role in the mystical life of Islam. Indeed, it was Sufism which opened more avenues of life to women than ‘orthodox’ Islam. To be sure, early Islamic asceticism and the mystical writings based on these ascetic ideals were as inimical to women as is any ascetic movement in the world of religion, be it medieval Christianity or early Buddhism. It was easy for the Muslim ascetics of the eighth and ninth centuries to equate woman and nafi, the ‘lower self that incites to evil’ (see Sura 12:59 in the Koran), since the word nafi is feminine in Arabic. Furthermore, as they saw in woman, as it were, the nafs principle personified they also represented (like their Christian colleagues) the world as a hideous ghastly old hag who tends to seduce man and then devours the stupid creatures who followed her invitation to indulgence in sensual pleasures. However the Sufis, in spite of all their theoretical aversion to the nafs-woman in general-rarely used such crude expressions about women as are found in Christian medieval monastic literature. For, the concept of original sin being absent from Islamic dogmatics, they could not blame Eve for being responsible for the all-pervading original sin as did the Christians. Thus, their blame of women is merely ascetic, not metaphysical. Furthermore, according to the Prophet’s example there should be no celibacy in Islam. Marriage was the sunna’ of the Messenger, and even though some Sufis interpreted their married life as a kind of spiritual education in patience and forbearing, or as a kind of substitute for hellfire, they still accepted it because they would not like to act against the Prophet’s example. Also, they had to acknowledge, though grudgingly, that some exceptional women were able to reach the lofty stage of a ‘Man of God.’ Not only was Rabi”a al-cAdawiyya considered to be equal to or even to surpass men, but as late as the eighteenth century the mystical folk poet Shah “Abdul Latif of Bhit in the Indus valley applied the old Indian Sufi saying tnlib al-ma&i mudhakkar (‘He who seeks the Lord is male’) to his heroine. She represented the longing soul which braved all difficulties on the path toward the Divine
’ Sunna is a basis of Islamic Law. It consists of a group of directives originating from the prophet. Following them is commendable; however, ignoring them is not punishable.
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Be10ved.~ For, the true seeker transcends the limits of sex. Similar descriptions are still used in our day when a particularly outstanding woman is to be honored. At a time when the ascetic outlook was prevalent among the pious Muslim seekers of the late Omayyad and early Abbaside period it was a woman (Rabi’a) who was credited with introducing the concept of pure love into the gloomy worldview of ‘those who constantly weep,’ as some of the ascetics were called. We now know that the ideal of the absolute love of God was in the air long before Rabi”a introduced it. It was probably first formulated by Ja’far as-Sadiq (d. 765) whose ideas she may have known. RabiCa al-“Adawiyya or al-Basriyya (d. 801), a freed slave girl in Basra to whom Margaret Smith has devoted a fine study (1928) was the first to sing of her Divine Love in short, unassuming poems. Her love of God was absolute and did not allow room even for love of the Prophet-something that would become unthinkable a few centuries later. The story of her carrying a torch and a ewer through the streets of Basra ‘in order to burn down Paradise and extinguish Hellfire’ has been repeated time and again not only in the Islamic world but also in Europe.4 It was RBbi’a who stressed the importance of the Qur’anic saying ‘He loves them and they love Him (The Koran, Sura 5:59) as the cornerstone of all manifestations of love between God and man. Thus, her name has become a coterminus for Divine Love at its loftiest, for a love that gladly gives up everything but God and wants nothing but God’s eternal beauty. Rabi”a set an example for the generations to come, who elaborated her basic statements into the multifaceted love theories of Sufism. Her little verses have been repeated up to our day. However, she was not the only woman saint in early Islam, as Margaret Smith has shown in her study, and is becoming more evident in the light of recent research. We may particularly mention the name of Fatima of Nishapur, the wife of a well known Sufi. Apparently she was a much stronger personality than her husband whom she guided in spiritual and worldly affairs. She was a woman who, as legend has it, disputed without veil with the great Sufi masters of her time. She deserves an in-depth study both as a historical figure and as a paradigm. The celibate Rabi”a and the married Fatima stand side by side. They were followed by innumerable other women who took to the mystical path. These women apparently participated in the gatherings of the mystics-a Sufi’s daughter in Baghdad died about the year 900 in a gathering where the noted preacher an-Niiri spoke about mystical love (three men too died at that occasion from excitement). They may have taken their places, as they do today, in a special section of the hall, or on the balcony, but they were certainly not excluded from the performances. History indicates that some women were known as benefactors of
3 The saying is ascribed to the Chishti saint Jam%luddInHgnswi (d. 1260); its full text is t&b ad-dunya mu’annath, talib al4ikhira mukhannath,t&b al-mauls mudhakkar,‘Who seeks this world is a female: who seeks the Otherworld, is a catamite; who seeks the Lord, is a Man.’ The last part has several times been applied to pious women in the Indian environment. 4 The story goes that she was seen one day in the streets of Basra, carrying a torch and a ewer, and upon being asked what that meant she answered: I am going to pour water into Hell and set fire to Paradise so that these two veils disappear from the eyes of the believers, and they worship God not out of fear of Hell or hope for Paradise but solely for His eternal Beauty. This story was known all over the Middle Fast, and came to France after the crusade of Louis IX; it appeared in a French treatise on Quietisme, called Caritdeou la uraie Charitb, by Camus, printed in 1640, where even a picture is found, showing an Oriental woman with a torch and a ewer, over whose head a sun is shining with the engraved Hebrew word Yahueh.The story then appears in various guises in European countries, usually shorn of its original context: the last version known to me is by the Austrian writer Max Mell, and is called Die schoenen Haende (The beautiful hands). We published an Arabic translation of this story in our magazine Fikrun wa Farm, Vol. 10 (1969).
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Sufi khdnqrfhs which they endowed with money or regular food rations. In fact, throughout the centuries we find the names of noblewomen-even family members of rulers such as the daughters of the Moghul emperor Aurangzebwho enjoyed building houses, mosques, and schools for renowned mystics of their time and received, in return, their blessings. A careful investigation into inscriptions on religious buildings as well as legal deeds which mention women’s names would probably bring much more information than is presently available about the activities of women in this field.5 These activities were not restricted to a particular country: we find woman patrons of Sufis in India and Iran, in Turkey and North Africa. In medieval Egypt (and possibly in other areas too) even special khdnqdhs for women were erected where they could spend either their whole life or a span of time. For instance, divorced women would retire to such a khiinqdh until they remarried. We know the names of some shaykhas in such places in medieval Egypt. We also know of an Anatolian woman who lived in the late fourteenth century and who was a descendant of Maula% Jaltiuddin Rtimi (d. 1273). This woman was head of a dervish tekke and guided the men. It is worth mentioning that female members of Rtimi’s family worked for spreading his ideas in central Antolia, and that women from various walks of life were among his most faithful disciples.6 Some of them arranged mystical concerts for him in their homes. Furthermore, even though the great mystical poet rarely indulged in the traditional ascetic language when speaking of women, he devoted some beautiful verse to women as mothers and even claimed that a woman could almost be called ‘a creator, not a creature’ (Mathnawi-yi mu’nawi, Book 1, verses 2433-2437). Women also gained a sanctity of their own, as R%bi”adid. Nezihe Araz, a writer from the circle of Samiha Ayverdi, devoted a fine book to the Anadolu EuliyulurT, the Saints of Anatolia. Among these one can find many girls and women whose very names (Pisili Sultan ‘princess with the pussy cat,’ Karyagdi Sultan ‘Princess Snow-has-fallen’ etc.) suggest romantic stories. But again, Anatolia, though particularly fertile in women Sufis, was not the only place where one could find venerated women. In the Maghrib, a considerable number of women saints is known. Indeed, no one less than Ibn ‘Arabi, the mugister mugnus of Islamic theosophical mysticism (d. 1240) studied under two women saints in Spain, among whom FSitima of Cordova must have been a person of extraordinary power. Though more than,90 years old, she still looked like a young girl, and was served by heavenly powers such as the sukinu. It seems highly probable that Ibn ‘Arabi developed some salient features of his mystical thought under the influence of F?&ma as well as of that of a young Persian lady whom he met in Mecca during the pilgrimage and who inspired him to write delicate mystical love poetry. The female element plays an important role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s system so that he even sees in woman the highest manifestation of the Divine. He devoted the final chapter of his book on prophetology, Fugi; al-hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) to the Prophet Muhammad’s saying: ‘God has made dear to me from your world perfume and women, and my consolation is in prayer.’ That led him to an elaboration of the role of women for the spiritual life of mankind. As the early ascetics had enjoyed playing with the feminine character of the nufs, Ibn ‘Arabi discovered that the word dhcit, ‘essence,’ is feminine and thus gained a feminine aspect for the
5 Some fine examples about the role of women in the environment of the famous Persian Sufi Abti Sa’id-i Abit’lKhair (d. 1049), and in medieval Sufism in general are given in Fritz Meier’sAbti Sa’id-i Abu 1-Khayr, Leiden (1976). 6 For more details see Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun. A Study of the work of Jaldloddin Rwni. London-The Hague (1978).
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life of the deity.’ He also did not exclude the possibility that women might be among the most high-ranking saints in the mystical hierarchy. It would be surprising if Ibn ‘Arabi’s early spiritual education at the hands of a woman Sufi did not play a role in the formation of such speculations. As in Morocco and Spain, we find women saints in Egypt’ and particularly in Muslim India. In India, the lower Indus Valley and the Punjab are dotted with minor sanctuaries of women saints, either single individuals or whole groups (preferably ‘Seven Chaste Ladies’ or so) who are said to have performed some acts of unusual piety. Some are venerated for their chastity, some were blessed with performing miracles and others are noted for their healing properties (thus Mai Suparan in Balochistan cures those bitten by mad dogs). Numerous legends surround them and still today women go to their tombs to hand bunches of bangles at their doors in the hope of having a wish fulfilled. Furthermore, while women are usually excluded from the innermost part of the shrine of a male saint, men are not allowed inside the sanctuaries of a woman saint. Among the more famous women in Indo-Muslim hagiography we may single out Bibi Jamal Khattin (d. 1639), the sister of Mian Mir, to whom the Moghul heir apparent D&a Shikiih (executed 1659) devoted a chapter in his hagiographic work Saktnat al-At&y& One may also think of Dar& elder sister, Princes Jahiinara (d. 1689), who attained such a perfection in mystical experience that her spiritual master, Molla Shah Badakhshi, would have made her his successor if that had been possible in the Qadiriyya order. Princess Jahanara never married-not for religious reasons but because no worthy husband could be found for the princess. After her mother’s death, she remained the active and influential First Lady of the Moghul Empire; but many of the women saints were married and were again mothers of far more famous Sufis. The female visitor to Burhanuddin Gharib’s tomb in Khuldabad (Deccan) will not leave the place before offering Fnri$a at the shrine of the saint’s mother.g Here we touch an important aspect of Sufi life: the biographies of many of the leading mystics throughout the centuries mention that their interest in the spiritual path was kindled by their pious mothers, and sometimes by a ‘mystical aunt.’ Typical of this tradition is the touching story of the saint of Shiraz, Ibn-KhaRf (d. 982 at the age of 104 years). He spent months and months in mortifications in the hope of seeing the Divine light during luilar ulqudr in Ramadan, but all his striving, fasting and his vigils were of no avail.” His simple, pious mother was blessed with the vision of this light. One could easily collect numerous tales about the influence of a pious mother upon her son who then turned into a great saint. We need think only of “Abdul QBdir Gil&i, the founder of the widespread Qadiriyya order, or of inner
’ Ibn ‘Arabi, as quoted by Reynold A. Nicholson in his commentary on the previously mentioned passage in the Mathnuwr (Vol. 8, pp. 155 ff.) thinks: ‘God cannot be seen apart from matter, and He is seen more perfectly in the human materia than in any other, and more perfectly in woman than in man. For He is seen either in the aspect of agens or in that of patiens or as both simultaneously. . God manifested in the form of woman is ugens in virtue of exercising complete sway over man’s soul and causing man to become submissive and devoted to Himself, and He is also patiens because inasmuch as He appears in the form of women He is under the man’s control and subject to his orders: hence to see God in woman is to see Him in all the forms in which he manifests Himself.’ It is understandable that orthodox Islam has accused Ibn “Arabi of the illicit use of ‘parasexual symbolism.’ * gee the analysis of contemporary Arabic novels dealing with this topic by Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, ‘Islam in Modem Egyptian Literature,’ J. Arabic Literature 2 (1971). 9 To offer F&h is to read the first sura in the Koran in the hope that God will show mercy to and bless the dead person. lo Luilat al-q& is a special blessed night during which angels descend to earth and grant any witness of this event his/her wishes. It is said that only very pious people witness this event. Others are made to fall asleep.
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the Chishti saints Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar (d. 1265) and Nizarmrddin Auliya (d. 1325) in India or of Khwaja Mir Dard (d. 1785) in Delhi-again a fascinating topic for someone who carefully studies biographies of medieval and modern Sufis. (There he or she will also find interesting accounts of servant girls who, in the presence of a spiritual guide, matured into fully fledged mystics.) It might be difficult to find many unmarried women who pursued the Path. For, contrary to the Christian ideal of the virgin saint, the nun or recluse who experienced the highest ecstasies in her lonely cell far away from the bonds of husband and children, most of the Islamic women saints were married and usually had a family. It was thanks to them that their children grew up in the atmosphere of perfect trust in God and piety as we can still observe in the villages of Anatolia and Pakistan. As far as we can see there are not many women who excelled as authors of theoretical mystical works, and I do not know of any counterpart of a woman like Hildegard of Bingen in the medieval Islamic world. When they belonged to the upper classes they were able to sing and even compose mystical verse in the classical languages such as Persian and Ottoman Turkish. Also, we know that the classics of mystical education in these languages (in India later also in Urdu translations) were read and taught in the women’s quarters of pious families. But the women were also the addressees of mystical folk poets who were able, particularly in the Subcontinent, to explain the secrets of the mystical path in simple, easy verses which the women could sing while spinning or grinding grain so that their household chores were transformed into symbols of spiritual activities. Just as by unceasing spinning the thread becomes fine and so precious that it can be sold at a high price thus the heart becomes refined by the constant repetition of religious formulas or the names of God so that God will ‘buy’ it at Doomsday for a high price. (The relation between the constant murmuring of the sacred words and the humming sound of the spinning wheel makes this image particularly fitting.) Besides while the ascetics of olden times tended to equate simply the nafs and woman in general, later Sufis in the Subcontinent used the image of the woman-soul who undertakes the difficult journey to the Divine Beloved by spiritualizing the folk tales of Sind and the Punjab so that the loving, daring heroines of these tales stand out as glowing examples of true mystical pursuit, faithful to the Primordial Covenant (The Koran, Sura 7:171) in which they promised eternal love and obedience to the Divine Beloved. Thus in the folk poetry of the Western part of Indo-Pakistan as well as in Bengal and partly in the songs of the Ismaili community women appear as the true depositories of mystical love and yearning. This idea was taken over fromHindu literature but elaborated in a perfect way by the Muslim mystical poets who finally identified themselves with the suffering heroines of their songs. The wisdom which the illiterate women thus learned and memorized thanks to the activities of mystical folk poets constituted a major source of inspiration for the population of the rural areas and brought the ideas of mystical Islam to the masses, women being generally the most devout representatives of this current. ” Rabi”a stands out as an early heroine of
’ i Further details and sources are to be found in Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions oflslum, Appendix II. Chanel i-Ii11(1975). I should also like to draw the attention of scholars to the book by Wiebke Walther, Die Frau iA Is&-i, published simultaneously in 1980 in Leipzig (East Germany) and Stuttgart (West Germany). It gives an excellent survey of the various aspects of women’s life from early Islamic days to their representation in modern novels and activities in various cultural fields. It has a great number of illustrations taken from every sphere of Islamic art, and is the first comprehensive, well written, and informative book on the topic by a woman trained in Arabic and Islamic studies.
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mystical love, but she has had many successors on a smaller scale. What has been remarked about her can be said of all of these: ‘When a woman walks in the path of God she cannot be called a “woman”. ’ One should not be misled by the constant use of the word ‘man’ in the mystical literature of the Islamic languages: it merely points to the ideal human being who has reached proximity to God where there is no distinction of sexes; and RBbi”a is the prime model of this proximity. REFERENCES Ayverdi, Samiha, Araz, Nezihe, Erol, S&ye and Sodi Huri. 1951. Kenan Rijiii ve yimtinci asrin isiginda Miishonanlik. Istanbul. Radawi, Muhammad Mustafa. 1971. Islam in Modern Egyptian Literature. J. Arabic Literature, 2. Karaosmanoglu, Yakub Kadri. 1922. Nur Baba. Istanbul. German translation by Schimmel, Annemarie. 1948. Flamme und Falter. Gummersbach. Meier, Fritz. 1976. Abii Sdid-i Abu I -Khayr. Leiden. Mell, Max. 1969. Die shoenen Haende. Published in Arabic in Fikrun wa Fann, Vol. 10. Rumi, Jalaluddin. 192551940. Mathaawi-yi ma cncwi(eight volumes), Nicholson, Reynold, A. ed., London-L&den. Schimmel, Annemarie. 1967. ‘Samiha Ayverdi, eine Istanbuller SchriRstellerin’. In HOENERBACH, Wilhelm, ed., Festschrift ./ii Otto Spies. Wiesbaden. Schimmel, Ann&narie. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill. Schimmel. Annemarie. 1978. The Trim&al Sun. A Studv of the work of Jalaloddin Rumi. London-The Hague. Smith, Margaret. 1928. Rabbi‘a the Mystic and Her Felliw-Saints in I&m. Cambridge. Walther, Wiebke. 1980. Die Frau im Islam. Leipzig (East Germany) and Stuttgart (West Germany).