He declares, in effect, that audition is neither good nor bad, and must be judged by its results.
“When an anchorite goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his cell, but when a wine-bibber goes into a cell, that cell becomes his tavern.”
One whose heart is absorbed in the thought of God cannot be corrupted by hearing musical instruments. So with dancing.
“When the heart throbs and rapture grows intense, and the agitation of ecstasy is manifested and conventional forms are gone, this is not dancing nor bodily indulgence, but a dissolution of the soul.”
Hujwīrī, however, lays down several precautionary rules for those who engage in audition, and he confesses that the public concerts given by dervishes are extremely demoralising. Novices, he thinks, should not be permitted to attend them. In modern times these orgiastic scenes have frequently been described by eye-witnesses. I will now translate from Jāmī’s Lives of the Saints the account of a similar performance which took place about seven hundred years ago.
“There was a certain dervish, a negro called Zangī Bashgirdī, who had attained to such a high degree of spirituality that the mystic dance could not be started until he came out and joined in it. One day, in the course of the samāʿ, he was seized with ecstasy, and rising into the air seated himself on a lofty arch which overlooked the dancers. In descending he leaped on to Majduddīn of Baghdād, and encircled with his legs the neck of the Sheykh, who nevertheless continued to spin round in the dance, though he was a very frail and slender man, whereas the negro was tall and heavy. When the dance was finished, Majduddīn said, ‘I did not know whether it was a negro or a sparrow on my neck.’ On getting off the Sheykh’s shoulders, the negro bit his cheek so severely that the scar remained visible ever after. Majduddīn often used to say that on the Day of Judgment he would not boast of anything except that he bore the mark of this negro’s teeth on his face.”
Grotesque and ignoble features—not to speak of grosser deformities—must appear in any faithful delineation of the ecstatic life of Islam. Nothing is gained by concealing their existence or by minimising their importance. If, as Jalāluddīn Rūmī says:
“Men incur the reproach of wine and drugs
That they may escape for a while from self-consciousness,
Since all know this life to be a snare,