Abú Sulaymán († 830 a.d.), the next great name in the Ṣúfí biographies, was also a native of Wásiṭ, but afterwards emigrated to Syria and settled at Dárayá (near Abú Sulaymán al-Dárání († 830 a.d.). Damascus), whence he is called 'al-Dárání.' He developed the doctrine of gnosis (ma‘rifat). Those who are familiar with the language of European mystics—illuminatio, oculus cordis, &c.—will easily interpret such sayings as these:—
"None refrains from the lusts of this world save him in whose heart there is a light that keeps him always busied with the next world.
"When the gnostic's spiritual eye is opened, his bodily eye is shut: they see nothing but Him.
"If Gnosis were to take visible form, all that looked thereon would die at the sight of its beauty and loveliness and goodness and grace, and every brightness would become dark beside the splendour thereof.[727]
"Gnosis is nearer to silence than to speech."
We now come to Dhu ’l-Nún al-Misrí († 860 a.d.), whom the Ṣúfís themselves consider to be the primary author of their Dhu ’l-Nún al-Misrí († 860 a.d.). doctrine.[728] That he at all events was among the first of those who helped to give it permanent shape is a fact which is amply attested by the collection of his sayings preserved in ‘Aṭṭár's Memoirs of the Saints and in other works of the same kind.[729] It is clear that the theory of gnosis, with which he deals at great length, was the central point in his system; and he seems to have introduced the doctrine that true knowledge of God is attained only by means of ecstasy (wajd). "The man that knows God best," he said, "is the one most lost in Him." Like Dionysius, he refused to make any positive statements about the Deity. "Whatever you imagine, God is the contrary of that." Divine love he regarded as an ineffable mystery which must not be revealed to the profane. All this is the very essence of the later Ṣúfiism. It is therefore desirable to ascertain the real character of Dhu ’l-Nún and the influences to which he was subjected. The following account gives a brief summary of what I have been able to discover; fuller details will be found in the article mentioned above.
His name was Abu ’l-Fayḍ Thawbán b. Ibráhím, Dhu ’l-Nún (He of the Fish) being a sobriquet referring to one of his miracles, and his father was a native of Nubia, or of Ikhmím in Upper Egypt. Ibn Khallikán describes Dhu ’l-Nún as 'the nonpareil of his age' for learning, devotion, communion with the Divinity (ḥál), and acquaintance with literature (adab); adding that he was a philosopher (ḥakím) and spoke Arabic with elegance. The people of Egypt, among whom he lived, looked upon him as a zindíq (freethinker), and he was brought to Baghdád to answer this charge, but after his death he was canonised. In the Fihrist he appears among "the philosophers who discoursed on alchemy," and Ibnu ’l-Qifṭí brackets him with the famous occultist Jábir b. Ḥayyán. He used to wander (as we learn from Mas‘údí)[730] amidst the ruined Egyptian monuments, studying the inscriptions and endeavouring to decipher the mysterious figures which were thought to hold the key to the lost sciences of antiquity. He also dabbled in medicine, which, like Paracelsus, he combined with alchemy and magic.
Let us see what light these facts throw upon the origin of the Ṣúfí theosophy. Did it come to Egypt from India, Persia, or Greece?
Considering the time, place, and circumstances in which it arose, and having regard to the character of the man who The origin of theosophical Ṣúfiism. bore a chief part in its development, we cannot hesitate, I think, to assert that it is largely a product of Greek speculation. Ma‘rúf al-Karkhí, Abú Sulaymán al-Dárání, and Dhu ’l-Nún al-Miṣrí all three lived and died in the period (786-861 a.d.) which begins with the accession of Hárún al-Rashíd and is terminated by the death of Mutawakkil. During these seventy-five years the stream of Hellenic culture flowed unceasingly into the Moslem world. Innumerable works of Greek philosophers, physicians, and scientists were translated and eagerly studied. Thus the Greeks became the teachers of the Arabs, and the wisdom of ancient Greece formed, as has been shown in a preceding chapter, the basis of Muḥammadan science and philosophy. The results are visible in the Mu‘tazilite rationalism as well as in the system of the Ikhwánu ’l-Ṣafá. But it was not through literature alone that the Moslems were imbued with Hellenism. In ‘Iráq, Syria, and Egypt they found themselves on its native soil, which yielded, we may be sure, a plentiful harvest of ideas—Neo-platonic, Gnostical, Christian, mystical, pantheistic, and what not? In Mesopotamia, the heart of the ‘Abbásid Empire, dwelt a strange people, who were really Syrian heathens, but who towards the beginning of the ninth century assumed the name of Ṣábians in order to protect themselves from the persecution with which they were threatened by the Caliph Ma’mún. At this time, indeed, many of them accepted Islam or Christianity, but the majority clung to their old pagan beliefs, while the educated class continued to profess a religious philosophy which, as it is described by Shahrastání and other Muḥammadan writers, is simply the Neo-platonism of Proclus and Iamblichus. To return to Dhu ’l-Nún, it is incredible that a mystic and natural philosopher living in the first half of the ninth century in Egypt should have derived his doctrine directly from India. There may be Indian elements in Neo-platonism and Gnosticism, but this possibility does not affect my contention that the immediate source of the Ṣúfí theosophy is to be sought in Greek and Syrian speculation. To define its origin more narrowly is not, I think, practicable in the present state of our knowledge. Merx, however, would trace it to Dionysius, the Pseudo-Areopagite, or rather to his master, a certain "Hierotheus," whom Frothingham has identified with the Syrian mystic, Stephen bar Sudaili (circa 500 a.d.). Dionysius was of course a Christian Neo-platonist. His works certainly laid the foundations of mediæval mysticism in Europe, and they were also popular in the East at the time when Ṣúfiism arose.
When speaking of the various current theories as to the origin of Ṣúfiism, I said that in my opinion they all contained Ṣúfiism composed of many different elements. a measure of truth. No single cause will account for a phenomenon so widely spread and so diverse in its manifestations. Ṣúfiism has always been thoroughly eclectic, absorbing and transmuting whatever 'broken lights' fell across its path, and consequently it gained adherents amongst men of the most opposite views—theists and pantheists, Mu‘tazilites and Scholastics, philosophers and divines. We have seen what it owed to Greece, but the Perso-Indian elements are not to be ignored. Although the theory "that it must be regarded as the reaction of the Aryan mind against a Semitic religion imposed on it by force" is inadmissible—Dhu ’l-Nún, for example, was a Copt or Nubian—the fact remains that there was at the time a powerful anti-Semitic reaction, which expressed itself, more or less consciously, in Ṣúfís of Persian race. Again, the literary influence of India upon Muḥammadan thought before 1000 a.d. was greatly inferior to that of Greece, as any one can see by turning over the pages of the Fihrist; but Indian religious ideas must have penetrated into Khurásán and Eastern Persia at a much earlier period.