CHAPTER XIII
SUHRAWARDY[54]
(1153-1191 ad)
Very few remains in writing, except their Persian poems, have come down to us from the older Pantheistic mystics. In the Kingdom of the Caliphs heretical books were suppressed by stronger measures than being placed on the Index. To express views openly at variance with the established religion was to imperil one's life. The Persian Sufis, therefore, who in their mystical works generally used Arabic, veiled their views in a sort of technical language, which was quite unintelligible to the uninitiated. Still some works are preserved which give us an insight into their tendencies.
The Sheikh Suhrawardy, who was a martyr to his convictions, must be regarded as the chief representative of this freethinking tendency in Sufism. His works have been more appreciated by the Persians and Turks than by the Arabs, among whom copies of them are no longer to be found, while they may be met with in Turkish libraries.
Suhrawardy belonged to the orthodox school of the Shafiites, and gained a great reputation for his learning. He studied jurisprudence in Maraghah, then went to Ispahan, and later to Bagdad and Aleppo, where he occupied himself chiefly with philosophical studies. He gave himself the title "Disciple of the Spirit-world." In the Arabic biographies of him, his teaching is said to have aimed at overthrowing Islam; this, however, is always said of anyone who ventures to oppose the dominant orthodox party. As a matter of fact, he founded a sect who bore the name Ishrakiyya—"The Illumined." For them he composed a work, "Hikmat al Ishrak," i.e., "The philosophy of illumination," containing mystical and fantastic teaching. In Aleppo, where he finally took up his abode, he seems to have exercised a powerful influence on Prince Malik Zahir, the son of the famous Saladin. The orthodox party persuaded the latter to pass sentence of death on him as a heretic, which sentence Malik Zahir caused to be carried out (1191 a.d.), but not till he had received a threatening letter from his father for his dilatoriness. Suhrawardy is said when he heard the sentence, to have quoted a Persian verse:
"It is not worth while to draw the sword."
By his own consent, he was then shut up in a separate chamber and deprived of meat and drink till he passed into the world for which he longed. His tomb is still preserved in Aleppo, where the memory of him as "the murdered Suhrawardy" has by no means faded. The inhabitants say that no tree or shrub will grow in the tomb-enclosure. His real character has, for the most part, been forgotten, and he is represented as a magician and sorcerer who possessed the philosopher's stone, and knew how to make gold. Many even believe that he was never killed at all, but disappeared, while a phantom was put to death in his place. They say that at night weird sounds are heard from his grave.
These popular legends give us reason to suppose that Suhrawardy's life and death in Aleppo really made an extraordinary impression on the people, and that his teaching penetrated more deeply than Muhammedan writers find convenient to admit. Suhrawardy's writings were preserved from entire destruction by the Persians and Turks. The most important of them are the above-mentioned Hikmat al Ishrak, Haikal-un-nur (The Temple of Light) and others. From the two first a few passages may be quoted, which suffice to show that the theosophy of this Persian Sufi took a much bolder flight than that of the Arabian Sufis, and that for it Islam was a mere outward form.
In the Hikmat al Ishrak we find the influences of two entirely different schools of thought fantastically blended into an extraordinary compound of philosophy and mysticism. In this, Neo-platonic ideas are brought into connection with a theory of light obviously derived from Zoroastrian doctrine, and both are variously modified by the influence of Islamic monotheism and presented in the abstract terminology of the Arabic Sufis. With these last, Suhrawardy found himself in harmony with regard to their "ecstatic" stages and arrival at the knowledge of God by way of intuition. He also betrays the influence of the Perso-Shiite dogma of the hidden spiritual Imams, of whom only one is believed to be on earth at any given time, and he is the highest spiritual and religious authority among his contemporaries.
The following is an abridged translation of the preface to the "Hikmat al Ishrak": "Long have ye, O worthy friends and companions—may God protect you!prayed me to write for you a book wherein I should describe what has been revealed to me by way of inspiration in my lonely contemplations and soul-combats. Spiritual science is no class privilege reserved for the elect, behind whom the doors of the spirit-world are closed, and thereby he who would learn somewhat of the supernatural is excluded. Nay, He who graciously granted us this knowledge, He, the Horizon of Illumination, is not miserly with the secrets of the other world. The worst of all ages is that in which the carpet of free spiritual investigation is rolled up, the wings of thought are cramped, the gates of intuition closed and the road of contemplation barricaded.