O heart! wert thou pure from the body’s dust,
Thou shouldest soar naked spirit above the sky;
Highest heaven is thy native seat—for shame, for shame,
That thou shouldest stoop to dwell in a city of clay!
We must remember all this when we come to the disputations of Henry Martyn with the doctors of Shiraz and Persia. They, and some fifteen millions out of the hundred and eighty millions of Islam in the world, are Shi’ahs, or ‘followers’ of Ali, whom, as Mohammed’s first cousin and son-in-law, they accept as his first legitimate imam, kaliph, or successor; while they treat the de facto kaliphs of the Soonni Muslims—Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman—as usurpers. The Persians are in reality more tolerant of the Christians, the Jews, and even the Majusi (Magi), or fire-worshippers, all of whom are people of the Book who have received an inspired revelation, than of their Soonni co-religionists. The people—though not of course their ruler, who is of Turkish origin—are more tolerant of new sects, such as that of Babism, and even their spiritual guides or the more respectable among these are in expectation of a new leader, the twelfth, the Imam-al-Mahdi, who has once before been manifested, and has long been waiting secretly for the final consummation.
We must also realise the extent to which Soofi-ism had saturated the upper classes and the Moojtahid order, who sought out Henry Martyn, and even recognised in him the Divine drunkenness, so that they always treated him and spoke of him as a merdi khodai, a man of God. The first Soofi—a name taken either from the word for the woollen dress of the Asiatic or from that for purity—was Ali, according to the Shi’ahs; but this form of philosophical mysticism, often attended by carnal excesses through which its devotees express themselves, is rather Hindu in its origin. The deepest thought of the Asiatic, without the revelation of Jesus Christ, is for Brahman and Buddhist, Sikh and Soofi, Hindu and Mohammedan, this absorption into the Divine Essence, so as to lose all personality and individual consciousness. That Essence may be the sum total of all things—the materialistic side; or the spirit underlying matter, the idealistic side, but the loss of individuality is the ultimate aim. But such absorption can be finally reached only by works—asceticism, pilgrimage, almsgiving, meditation—and by cycles of trans-migrations to sublimate the soul for unconsciousness of all that is objective, and of self itself. Hafiz is as full of wine and women in his poems as Anacreon or the worst of the Latin erotic poets; but the Soofis, who revel in his verses, maintain that they ‘profess eager desire with no carnal affection, and circulate the cup, but no material goblet, since all things are spiritual in their sect; all is mystery within mystery.’
What Henry Martyn learned to find, in even his brief experience of the Aryan Shi’ahs, to whom he offered the love of Christ and through the Son a personal union with the Father, is best expressed in this description by the most recent skilled writer on the people, before referred to:
Persia is the one purely Mohammedan country which, in the process of a national revolt against the rigid hide-bound orthodoxy of Islam, has only succeeded in wrapping more closely round its national and political life the encircling folds of that ‘manteau commode, sous lequel s’abrite, en se cachant à peine, tout le passé.’ Under the extravagances and fanaticism of the Shi’ah heresy, the old Zoroastrian faith lives on, transformed into an outward conformity to the forms of the Moslem creed, and the product is that grotesque confusion of faith and fanaticism, mysticism and immorality, rationalism and superstition, which is the despair and astonishment of all who have looked beneath the surface of ordinary everyday life in Persia. Soofi-ism, with its profound mysticism and godless doctrine, has found a congenial home in Persia, often, indeed, blossoming into beautiful literary form such as is found in the Rubaiyāt of Omar Khayyam, or in the delightful pages of the Gulistan of Sheikh Sadi, or in the poems of Hafiz.
Soofi-ism is the illegitimate offspring of scepticism and fanaticism. It is tersely described by one Persian writer as ‘a sensual plunging into the abyss of darkness’; by another as ‘a deadly abomination’; and by a third as ‘the part of one who goes raving mad with unlawful lusts.’ Nevertheless, as Professor Kuenen has well observed, the true Soofi is a Moslem no more.
All Martyn’s experience among the Wahabees of Patna and the Shi’ahs of Lucknow had fitted him for the discussions which were almost forced upon him in Persia, for he went there to translate the New Testament afresh. But he had, in his reading, sought to prepare himself for the Mohammedan controversy. When coasting round India, he made this entry in his Journal: ‘1811, January 28.—Making extracts from Maracci’s Refutation of Koran. Felt much false shame at being obliged to confess my ignorance of many things which I ought to have known.’ Soofi-ism met him the day after he reached Shiraz, on the first visit of Seyd Ali, brother-in-law of his host, Jaffir Ali Khan. Thus:
June 10.—He spoke so indistinctly, and with such volubility, that I did not well comprehend him, but gathered from his discourse that we are all parts of the Deity. I observed that we had not these opinions in Europe, but understood that they were parts of the Brahmanic system. On my asking him for the foundation of his opinions, he said the first argument he was prepared to bring forward was this: God exists, man also exists, but existence is not twofold, therefore God and man are of the same nature. The minor I disputed: he defended it with many words. I replied by objecting the consequences, Is there no difference between right and wrong? There appeared a difference, he said, to us, but before God it was nothing. The waves of the sea are so many aspects and forms, but it is still but one and the same water. In the outset he spoke with great contempt of all revelation. ‘You know,’ said he, ‘that in the law and Koran, etc., it is said, God created heaven and the earth,’ etc. Reverting to this, I asked whether these opinions were agreeable to what the prophets had spoken. Perceiving me to be not quite philosophical enough for him, he pretended some little reverence for them, spoke of them as good men, etc., but added that there was no evidence for their truth but what was traditionary. I asked whether there was anything unreasonable in God’s making a revelation of His will. He said, No. Whether a miracle for that purpose was not necessary, at least useful, and therefore credible? He granted it. Was not evidence from testimony rational evidence? Yes. Have you then rational evidence for the religion of Mohammed? He said the division of the moon was generally brought forward, but he saw no sufficient evidence for believing it; he mentioned the Koran with some hesitation, as if conscious that it would not stand as a miracle. I said eloquence depended upon opinion; it was no miracle for any but Arabs, and that some one may yet rise up and write better. He allowed the force of the objection, and said the Persians were very far from thinking the eloquence of the Koran miraculous, however the Arabs might think so. The last observation he made was, that it was impossible not to think well of one by whose example and instructions others had become great and good; though therefore little was known of Mohammed, he must have been something to have formed such men as Ali. Here the conversation ceased. I told them in the course of our conversation that, according to our histories, the law and Gospel had been translated into Persian before the time of Mohammed. He said they were not to be found, because Omar in his ignorant zeal had probably destroyed them. He spoke with great contempt of the ‘Arab asses.’
June 13.—Seyd Ali breakfasted with us. Looking at one of the plates in Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary, where there was a figure of a fountain produced by the rarefaction of the air, he inquired into the principle of it, which I explained; he disputed the principle, and argued for the exploded idea that nature abhors a vacuum. We soon got upon religion again. I showed him some verses in the Koran in which Mohammed disclaims the power of working miracles. He could not reply. We talked again on the evidence of testimony. The oldest book written by a Mohammedan was the sermons of Ali. Allowing these sermons to be really his, I objected to his testimony for Mohammed, because he was interested in the support of that religion. I asked him the meaning of a contested passage; he gave the usual explanation; but as soon as the servants were gone he turned round and said, ‘It is only to make a rhyme.’ This conversation seemed to be attended with good. Our amiable host, Jaffir Ali, Mirza Jan, and Seyd Ali seemed to be delighted with my arguments against Mohammedanism, and did not at last evince a wish to defend it. In the evening Jaffir Ali came and talked most agreeably on religious subjects, respecting the obvious tendency of piety and impiety, and the end to which they would lead in a future world. One of his remarks was, ‘If I am in love with any one, I shall dream of her at night; her image will meet me in my sleep. Now death is but a sleep; if therefore I love God, or Christ, when I fall asleep in death I shall meet Him, so also if I love Satan or his works.’ He could wish, he said, if he had not a wife and children, to go and live on the top of a mountain, so disgusted was he with the world and its concerns. I told him this was the first suggestion in the minds of devotees in all religions, but that in reality it was not the way to escape the pollution of the world, because a man’s wicked heart will go with him to the top of a mountain. It is the grace of God changing the heart which will alone raise us above the world. Christ commands His people to ‘abide in Him’; this is the secret source of fruitfulness, without which they are as branches cut off from the tree. He asked whether there was no mention of a prophet’s coming after Christ. I said, No. ‘Why then,’ said he, ‘was any mention made of Ahmed in the Koran?’ He said, ‘One day an English gentleman said to me, “I believe that Christ was no better than myself.” “Why then,” said I, “you are worse than a Mohammedan.”’
June 24.—Went early this morning to the Jewish synagogue with Jaffir Ali Khan. At the sight of a Mohammedan of such rank, the chief person stopped the service and came to the door to bring us in. He then showed us the little room where the copies of the law were kept. He said there were no old ones but at Baghdad and Jerusalem; he had a printed copy with the Targum, printed at Leghorn. The only European letters in it were the words ‘con approbazione,’ of which he was anxious to know the meaning. The congregation consisted chiefly of little boys, most of whom had the Psalter. I felt much distressed that the worship of the God of Israel was not there, and therefore I did not ask many questions. When he found I could read Hebrew, he was very curious to know who I might be, and asked my name. I told him Abdool Museeh, in hopes that he would ask more, but he did not, setting me down, I suppose, as a Mohammedan.