mystical dimensions of islam; the sufi orders in islam; what is sufism?

Vol. 4, No. 3 I July 1978 Religious Studies Review / 171

one can only say that personal favorites always seem important to us when we do not find their names included. Why Clara Barton, unaffiliated with religious institution, and not (or rather than) Jane Addams or Dorothea Dix, humanitar- ians equally as significant? Or more to the point, why not Margaret Fuller? These, however, are minor cavils. For humanitarianism is represented, though by a male sectar- ian; and if Fuller is omitted, Frederick Henry Hedge speaks for the transcendentalists. Catherine Beecher is missing, but Harriet is there. More to the point, there are unex- pected subjects such as the introduction of Francis Hodur, bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church, and Ralph Waldo Trine, who found the infinite in flowers as well as thunderstorms.

Bowden has done us a service, and we remain in his debt.

REFERENCES

BOWDEN, HENRY WARNER

MCCLENDON, JAMES WILLIAM, JR.

PAYNE, WILL

SPRAGUE, WILLIAM B.

197 1 Carolina Press.

1974 Biography as Theology. Abindgon.

1928 “Where You From?” Saturday Evening Post, April 14.

1857 Annuls of the American P d f i t . Vol. 1. Robert Carter & Brothers (New York). Reprinted, Arno Press, 1969.

Church History in the Age of Science. University of North

MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM Annemarie Schimmel Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975 Pp. xxi + 506. $14.50 THE SUFI ORDERS IN ISLAM J. Spencer Trimin ham New York: Oxfor di University Press, 1971 Pp. 333. Paper, $2.95 WHAT IS SUFISM? Martin Lings Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977 Pp. 133. Paper, $2.45

Reuiewer: Bruce B . Lawrence Duke University Durham, NC 27706

The three books under consideration are the latest and best sampling of Western scholarship in English on the mystical aspect of the Islamic tradition better known as Sufism. Sev- eral books and articles have been written which address Sufism in a subordinate context, relating it, for instance, to a general treatment of Islamic history (Hodgson, 1974) or toa psychological study of mysticism (Naranjo and Ornstein, 1971) or to a topical survey of Islamic civilization (Meier, 1976). Such books and articles are important, and they will be considered in due course, but the primary focus of our attention will be the volumes by Schimmel, Trimingham and Lings, each of which is concerned solely with Sufism.

However, Sufism, like Islam, is multifaceted: it is an historical movement; it is a mystical system; it is a literary

legacy. Above all, it is pluralistic, encompassing residents of Africa and Indonesia, India and the Middle East and, therefore, finding expression in numerous languages and cul- tural traditions. How can any one book or any three books do justice to such a diverse phenomenon (which, moreover, prides itself on concealing the Truth from any except the committed enquirer)? It (they) cannot. And the books under consideration merely attempt to portray some but not all aspects of Sufism. Schimmel’s is the most comprehensive, Lings’s the narrowest, Trimingham’s the most specialized. None of them provides an integrally historical analysis of the Sufi movement (comparable, e.g., to that broached in Hodgson, 1974, Vol. 2). But Schimmel and Trimingham do have a common topical core: they both describe the rise of the orders and their influence on medieval and (to a lesser extent) modern Islam. Questions of ritual, organization, and metaphysical speculation among Sufis are also considered, with extensive documentation from source material (in Schimmel’s case, almost invariably from primary sources in the original languages; in Trimingham’s case, largely from secondary sources in a derivative language). In spite of the overlapping subject matter, Lings’s book has little in common with either Mystical Dimensions or Sufi Orders. It is also a thin essay of some 130 pages. For both reasons What is Sufzm? will be considered last and in the least detail.

1 The message of every book is illumined by an awareness of the background and presuppositions of its author. All three of the writers under consideration are or have been academics: Schimmel has taught in both European and American as well as Turkish universities. Trimingham was for a number of years Professor at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon. And Lings, though his official title was Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts and Prints at the British Museum, also had an informal connection with the School of Oriental and African Studies where, for instance, he supervised the monumental dissertation of Naguib al- Attas (see al-Attas, 1970, xi). All three have had intimate connections with the Middle East and with Islamic countries. Schimmel lived in Turkey for five years and has traveled to the Asian continent on numerous occasions. Trimingham’s association with North Africa goes back to the 1930s and has been continuous from that time until the publication of his book. Lings spent long periods of his life in Algeria learning about Shaykh Ahmad al-‘Alawi, about whom he wrote an earlier, widely acclaimed book (Lings, 1961). All three have been personally touched by Sufism: Lings himself is a convert to Islam and a practising Sufi, who also writes under his Muslim name, Abu Bakr Siraj al-Din. Schimmel is not an official convert, but her fervor for the classical Sufi poet-saints, particularly Jalal al-din Rumi, is open and unabashed. Trimingham, on the other hand, is highly critical of organized Sufism, the topic of his book, and though he concludes with a resounding affirmation that “the vision of the few.. . remains vital for the spiritual welfare of mankind” (259), he repeatedly libels the order- leaders, scoring their mystical writing as derivative and authority-obsessed (144) in contrast with the ecstatic treatises from the golden age of mysticism (103). If Lings and Schimmel are co-travelers along the Sufi path, Trim-

172 / Religious Studies Review Vol. 4, No. 3 1 July 1978

ingham is an unfriendly enquirer into the nature of the Sufi orders.

2 As an introductory text to the numerous aspects of Sufism, Schimmel’s book is clearly superior to the other two. It reflects her consummate skill as a literary critic, especially in tracing thematic continuities or discontinuities across several cultures and usually several languages. Schimmel’s lin- guistic competence is staggering: not only is she a poetess in her native tongue, but she has rendered poetry from numerous Islamic languages into German verse. In addition to her mastery of the European languages (Dutch, Czech, and Swedish as well as French and Italian), she comfortably reads, writes, and speaks Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi, and Pashto. T h e intensity of her attention to literary sources was evident in her early work on Muhammad Iqbal (Schimmel, 1963) and more recently in her study of the eighteenth-century poet-saints, Abdul Latif Bhitai and Khwaja Mir Dard (Schimmel, 1976). In Mystical Dimensions the focus on sources is concealed (but only slightly) by her system of source notation: the thirty-two works which she most frequently cites throughout the book are abbreviated at the outset (xiii-xv), and of them eighteen are poetical collections or literary compositions in Islamic languages (principally Persian) that derive from the classical period of Sufism.

Mystical Dimensions also provides a generous insight into Schimmel’s esthetic refinement. Her work on Islamic calligraphy (Schimmel, 1970) and her coeditorship of Fikrun wa Funn (Hamburg, 1963-73) have already been hailed as distinctive contributions to our understanding and appreciation of Islamic decorative art. Mystical Dimensions may now be added to the list of her visual accomplishments. The cover of the book is a piece of calligraphy, familiar to students of Islamic art, and each chapter begins with a variant calligraphic representation of the opening phrase of the Qur’an: bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. Six illustrative plates are spaced throughout the book in such a way that they both fit the content of particular chapters and also make an implicit comment on the relationship of Sufism to pictorial art, e.g., through Persian miniatures (63,201, 269, 349), through portrait painting (Rembrandt’s recreation of a Mughal masterpiece, 232), and through photography Uan Marek’s picture of a Pakistani woman with child chanting before a saint’s tomb, 151). The illustrations, like the chapter markings, lend a visual dimension to Schimmel’s book which is absent from the other two under review: while both Trimingham and Lings have Islamic covers (Trimingham: unidentified dervishes swooning in sama‘; Lings: a star-like mandala suggestive of Arabic letters), neither relates to the crucial artistic and also architectural expression of Sufism (see Ardalan, 1973).

Unfortunately, the format of Mystical Dimensions is overly determined by Schimmel’s classroom experience as a university professor. As she herself says in the foreword, the book evolved out of “notes that formed the basis of several courses on Sufism.. . notes that consist both of literary evidence and of personal experiences with numerous friends in the Islamic East, mainly in Turkey and in Pakis- tan” (xviii). Mystical Dimensions is, therefore, really a course on Sufism reproduced in book form by one of the ranking

Islamicists of the world. It constitutes an ersatz experience for those who do not or cannot have the privilege of taking a course directly with her. But the result is, for that very reason, disappointing as an historical survey of Sufism. It suffers from deficiencies of both style and content. Foot- notes are minimized, usually providing explication of points in the text (lecture) or adding bibliographic references. There are no citations of relevant articles in either edition of the Encyclopaedia oflslam, as she herself admits (xiii), and the bibliography, though enormous (437-67), has some curious omissions of primary as well as secondary sources. (To mention but a few, ‘Abd al-Jalil’s lengthy edition and translation of ‘Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadani’s Shakwa’l-gharib ‘an al-awtan ila ‘ulama al-buldan, in Journal Asiatique 216 [1930], 1-76, 193-297; James Robson’s edition and translation of Ahmad Ghazzali’s Bawarzq al-ilma‘: Tracts on Listening to Music [Lon- don, 19381, 63-184; and numerous Persian works by Gesu Daraz which have been published and to which allusion is made in Chapter 8 [351].)

More important, however, is the influence of its pedagogical origin on the content of Mystical Dimensions. The book consists of eleven self-contained units: nine chapters and two appendices. The conceptual thread linking them to one another is very loosely tied. Only the second, fifth, and eighth chapters may be said to contain a chronologically defensible exposition of the history of Sufism. Since two of these chapters bear close comparison with Trimingham’s book, they are worth examining in ex- tended detail to understand the variant emphases of both authors. (In Lings’s case, it is only the final chapter, “Sufism throughout the Centuries,” that attempts a too-cursory survey [28 pages] of historical Sufism: see below.)

Chapter 2 of Mystical Dimensions, “Historical Outlines of Classical Sufism,” has no parallel in Trimingham and no antecedent in English-language scholarship on Sufism un- less it is Arberry (see Arberry, 1950, chs. 3-7). Schimmel, after having presented a chronology of Western and Islamic approaches to Sufism in chapter one, proceeds in chapter two to construct a biographical profile (gleaned from Sufi sources with the occasional interpolation of a Western scholarly perspective) of all the major mystical figures in the first 500 years of Islamic history, from the Prophet Muhammad to the Proof of Islam, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (d. 1111). Ghazzali’s writings, in the view of Schimmel and many Western scholars (see, e.g., Watt, 1962, and Lings, 1977, 11 0-1 l) , are interpreted as the culmination of the earliest phase of Islamic thought and, in particular, the catalytic agent responsible for wedding Sufism to or- thodox or externalist Islam and vice versa. Yet Schimmel demurs from enthroning Ghazzali at the front rank of Sufi luminaries, Following Mole (1963, 201), she views Abu Hamid as a lesser mystic than the other Ghazzali: “neither in depth of experience nor in beauty of language can he com- pete with his younger brother Ahmad” (294). However,

Vol. 4, No. 3 /July 1978 Religious Studies Review / 173

unlike MolC (1963, 93-97) and also Lazarus-Yafeh (1975, ch. 4), she downplays the significance of Abu Hamid’s late and speculative treatise, Mishkat al-anwar (96). Her final judgment on the older Ghazzali’s role in Islamic intellectual history is tentative, ending, as does her analysis of Ibn ‘Arabi (273-74), with a series of rhetorical questions (97).

Chapter five of Mystical Dimensions (“Sufi Orders and Fraternities”) scarcely mentions either Ghazzali or Ibn ‘Arabi, presumably because Schimmel concurs with Trimingham (whose book she praises in a footnote; 228, n. 5) that both these giants of medieval Islamic thought influenced the metaphysical content but not the organizational structure of the orders. The chapter consists of two parts: a prolegomenon and a selective overview of early order founderdleaders.

The former is cursory, setting forth without question or comment the institutional features of Sufi brotherhoods: the khanqahs or hospices which housed a master, along with his family and disciples; the silsilah or genealogical tree which was scrupulously traced by most Sufis; the initiation ceremonies; the procedure for succession; and the mass appeal emanating from the tombs of deceased masters. Each feature bristles with underlying problems of origin and legitimation that are never addressed. Concerning succession, for instance, we are told that initially the dying Shaykh appointed a khalafah or successor whom others had to accept but that the office later became hereditary and devoid of true spirituality (236). Trimingham ( 1 73-74) gives more examples of hereditary succession than does Schim-

mel, but both scholars fail to scrutinize the pattern of conflict between biological and spiritual descendants of a Sufi master which, as Meier has elsewhere noted (Meier, 1976, 12 l), was frequently complex.

In the latter part of chapter five Schimmel describes Abu Sa‘id b. Abi’l-Khayr and the following order founders/ leaders: Abu Najib and Abu Hafs Suhrawardi, along with their still more famous twelfthcentury Baghdadian contemporary, ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani; another Iraqi, Ahmad ar- Rifa‘i; two Egyptian masters of the thirteenth century, Ahmad al-Badawi and Abu al-Hasan Shadhili; the fourteenth-century Andalusian Ibn ‘Abbad; and, finally, the Central Asian Shaykh, Najm al-din Kubra, who before his death at the hands of the Mongols in AD 1220, produced a number of illustrious and influential disciples.

All these Sufi masters are important, yet one must ask: why were they selected, while others were excluded from, or minimized in, Schimmel’s list of major early Sufi Shaykhs? Both the Naqshbandis and the Chishtis, for instance, are unrepresented, while Sayyid ‘Ali Hamadani, the prolific author, distinctive theoretician, and influential Kubrawi Shaykh of fourteenth-century Kashmir (see Mole, 196 1, 1 10-21), is briefly introduced only at the end of the chapter. Moreover, in chapter eight, which is devoted entirely to the exposition of Sufism in Indo-Pakistan (but not in Bangladesh), ‘Ali Hamadani is also deemphasized (see the single parenthetical aside on 363). Several other notable South Asian Sufis, medieval and modern, are similarly ig- nored or slighted in this chapter, perhaps because the chap-

CRUCIFIXION In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross 1977 $4.50 Paperbound

CHRIST AND POWER 1977 $3.25 Paperbound

THE SON OF GOD The Origin of Christologv and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion 1976 $3.75 Paperbound

PROPERTY AND RICHES IN THE EARLY CHURCH Aspects of a Social History of Early Christianity 1974 $2.95 Paperbound

JUDAISM AND HELLENISM Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period 1974 2 Volumes $34.00 Clothbound

VICTORY OVER VIOLENCE Jesus and the Revolutionists

$2.50 Paperbound 1973

WAS JESUS A REVOLUTIONIST? (Facet Books-Biblical Series)

$1.50 Paperbound 1971

Write for latest Fortress Press catalog with complete A uthorlTitle listing.

3 FORTRESS PRESS 2900 QUEEN LANE, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19129 In Canada: G. R. WELCH CO.

174 I Religious Studies Review Vol. 4, No. 3 I July 1978

ter lacks a distinctive focus. Its three subsections are juxta- posed without being thematically interrelated: “the Classical Period,” the Naqshbandi Reaction,” and “Khwaja Mir Dard” do not constitute an obvious or balanced sequential overview of South Asian Sufism. (A fourth subsection on “Mysti- cal Poetry in the Regional Languages-Sindhi, Panjabi and Pashto” forms an addendum; see below.) “The Classical Per iod consists of names, anecdotes, and brief selections from writings by or about pre-Mughal and Mughal rulers/ mystics/poets whom Schimmel herself has treated in great- er detail elsewhere (Schimmel, 1973b). “The Naqshbandi Reaction” and “Khwaja Mir Dard” pose a methodological minefield.

Chronologzcally the scheme is wrong because the Naqsh- bandis, who were not discussed in chapter five, even though their founder, Baha al-din Naqshband (d. 1389), was as early and as important a master as the fourteenth-century Egyptian saints who are discussed in that chapter, have now to be introduced. The narrative then leads from Baqibillah and Ahmad Sirhindi (the first Indian Naqshbandis) to the four-qayyum theory before neatly turning back to literary Sufism since many of the major eighteenth-century Indian Naqshbandis, including Dard, were Persian/Urdu poets of wide renown. Dard is then singled out and treated in an independent subsection after the successors to Shah Waliul- lah have received mention by name alone (372).

Conceptually the scheme is wrong because it accords an emphasis to Dard which simply cannot be sustained. He is not equivalent to all the Sufi masters and poets of the Classi- cal Period, nor does he represent the epitome of the Naqsh- bandi reaction. There are other, many other, South Asian Shaykhs who clamor for recognition. The sixteenth-century Sabiri Chishti author and organizer, ‘Abd al-Quddus Gan- gohi, for instance, is too tersely described (357 and n.; see Digby, 1975), while Mazhar Jan4 Janan, the major North Indian bilingual poet and Naqshbandi theoretician, is mentioned only in passing (see M. Umar, 1969, and Friedmann, 1975). Moreover, Shah Waliullah, whom many consider to be the principal spiritual leader of the Indo-Persian ruling elite of eighteenth-century Delhi, is alloted but one footnote (369) and one page (372). As magnificent as are Dard’s poetical outpourings, it would seem preferable to have them reduced to four or five pages (especially since they have appeared elsewhere in print; Schimmel, 1973a) and the space devoted instead to a discussion of the multi-leveled influence of Shah Waliullah and his successors, especially among the Deobandis (see Metcalf, 1973). Still more surpris- ing is Schimmel’s failure to give a focused assessment of Muhammad Iqbal and his ambivalent relationship to Sufism: she cites Iqbal repeatedly throughout the book; she herself has written a monumental study on him (Schimmel, 1963); and yet she excludes him from chapter eight where he properly belongs, opting instead to recapitulate his views in the Epilogue (405-06).

3 From the titles of his previous books-Zslam in the Sudan, Islam in Ethiopia, Islam in West Africa, A History of Islam in West Africa, Islam in East Africa, and The Znfuence of Islam Upon Africa-one might reasonably have hoped that Trimingham in the volume under review would have complemented Schimmel precisely in the geographic and temporal spheres

of Sufism where she is weakest: the role of Sufism in African Islam and the impact of the orders on contemporary Islamic society. The hope is soon muffled, however, and trans- formed into disappointment by the time one has finished reading the final Appendix (H: on the Rifa‘i ta’ifahs in the Arab world; 280-81). Whether one looks at Appendix A on the early silsilahs or Con the Suhrawardi silsilahs or D on the Qadiriya or E on the Badawiya and Burhaniya or F on the Maghribi Shadhiliya or G on the Egyptian and Syrian branches of the Madyaniya/Shadhiliya or H, the impression is the same: Trimingham has substituted charts and lists for a substantive analysis of the various orders. Not only the Appendices (except for Appendix B on the important issue of nonaffiliated Sufis known as Malamatis and Qalandars, though Trimingham treats the topic less well than does Mole, 1965, 72-78, or Digby, forthcoming), but virtually every chapter in the book is rife with serially arranged schemata that are as barren of meaning as they are glutted with trivia: they say much but reveal little about the vital issues in the organizational diffusion of Sufism. The surfeit of detail in Sufi Orders would have been acceptable, however unpleasant and prosaic i t renders the format of the book, had Trimingham at least expounded the African context in a manner that allowed the reader to understand the organic interconnection or phenomenological parallelism between African and non-African Sufi orders.

Let us briefly examine the Maghribi tariqahs: the Madyaniya, Rifa‘iya, and Shadhiliya. They are more fully treated in Trimingham’s work (44-51, 84-89, 106-15, 255- 57) than in Schimmel’s (249-54), but how are they treated? Biographies of the principal saints in the Shadhili order, for instance, are mechanically reiterated from secondary sources. A pen portrait of the founder is offered in a single paragraph (48), and then Trimingham adds: “It is usually impossible to pierce through the mists of pious legend to the real men beneath.” Is it? Why are there no contemporary Moroccan sources providing “factual” information on both Shadhili and his master Ibn Mashish? Another modern scholar has asked just this question and reverses Triming- ham’s logic by reasoning that “the obscurity which sur- rounds the figure of al-Shadhili . . . may perhaps be ex- plained by the fact that the Shadhiliyyah movement, not- withstanding the Moroccan origin of its leader, did not assume historical significance until the close of the seventhithirteenth century when its main seat of activity shifted to Egypt” (Mackeen, 1971, 478).

. It would be a catastrophe if Trimingham’s book, be-

cause of its seemingly authoritative, scholarly format, were accepted as a satisfactory, albeit provisional, assessment of Sufi orders which are too obscure to attract independent investigation by another modern scholar. Consider the Khalwatiya. Though enormously important in medieval Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, they are scarcely mentioned in


Mystical Dimensions (46,342) but are apparently given their due in Sufi Orders when Trimingham devotes five pages to an explanation of their origin, growth, and dissemination (74-78) and elsewhere makes several references to aspects of their devotional and ritual observances. But the dynamic of this popular, early silsilah is lost amid the clutter of names and dates which too neatly circumscribe its organizational outreach: one list (75-76) gives the nine Anatolian Khalwati ta’ifahs or sub-orders; the other enumerates the ten branches and sub-branches of the Egyptian Khalwati ta’zfahs. We learn nothing about why the Khalwati tariqahs developed along this particular pattern nor do we learn much about what characterized the various ta’ifahs. Triming- ham’s data are not only derived from but modeled after DOhsson’s enormous Tableau general de l‘empire ottoman. (Elsewhere he adheres with equal rigidity either to other European sources or to late, often stereotyped, Arabic handbooks.) Omitted from his consideration is Kissling’s penetrating study (1953), which he cites in the bibliography (292) but fails to use in the body of his text. On the Khal- watiyya in Egypt there is E. Bannerth‘s study (1964-66), which Trimingham does not even cite. Primary sources neglected are still more numerous; they, together with an abundance of related material, are given in B. G. Martin’s superlative article (1972) which has now been expanded into a book (1977). One sentence from Martin’s article (1972, 275-76) will suffice to show the banality of Trimingham’s generalized assessment of the Khalwatiya: The historical development of the Khalwati order may be conve- niently divided into two periods, the first dating from the time of its origins and diffusion in the Caucasus, Anatolia and Azarbaijan from the late fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century, the second from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century in Egypt and Muslim Africa.

Not only does Trimingham fail to specify two phases of the Khalwati dispersal, but he mentions a revival among the Egyptian Khalwatis in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a mechanical recurrence “not to be taken as a symptom of new life since fission was an ever-recurring process in this order” (123-24). He then proceeds to enu- merate without comment five new t a ’ i f i of the Khalwatiya that were formed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In view of Martin’s assertion, how can we be certain that they are “not to be taken as a symptom of new life”?

Trimingham’s approach to the status of the orders in modern Islamic life is similarly myopic. He is obsessed with what can only be termed a compulsion to interpret the evolution of Sufism (and, in fact, Islam itself) as subject to an unchanging law of irreversible decline. The decline, for Trimingham, does not begin in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; its seeds are already planted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at the time when the major orders are founded. “This development into orders, and the integral association of the saint cult with them, contributed to the decline of Sufism as a mystical Way. Spiritual insight atrophied and the Way became paved and milestoned” (70). Later (103), he elaborates this inductive bias into a threefold scheme, almost in mockery of the Sufi proclivity for triadic enumeration: khanqahs, tariqahs, and tu’ifahs. The schemati- zation supports Trimingham’s hypothesis that Sufism suf-

fers from institutional sclerosis, or what Wilfred Cantwell Smith would term “reification.” Each stage represents a quantum decline from the stage which preceded it. The khanqahs or religious hostels for Sufis predominated in “the golden age of mysticism” (AD 900-1 100); their rules of life were “undifferentiated and unspecialized.” The tariqahs (AD 1100-1400) represent a “bourgeois movement” in which “standards of tradition and legalism” became im- posed on the common life, while the ta’ifah stage (AD 1400 to the present) witnessed the initial ascendancy and subsequent decline of Sufism as a popular movement (102).

This periodization, with its concomitant devaluation of institutional Sufism, is absurd. Khanqahs have existed throughout the later phases of mystical Islam (though one would like to know more about the distinguishing features of khanqahs in various periods of Islamic history; with reference to India, e.g., see Nizami, 1957,69). Tariqah and ta’ifah, further, are so closely related as technical terms in the Sufi tradition that both “can be applied to Sufism as a whole and later to separate orders within it” (Meier, 1976, 120). Trimingham does admit that the development he traces is “no more than a generalization of trends, and that in the final stage the three continued to exist contemporaneously” (1 02). However, even as a generalization his tripartite analysis fails to account for either the antiquity or the adapt- ability of institutional Sufism, as Digby has aptly noted (1973, 137).

In dealing with the contemporary situation of the orders, Trimingham again resorts to a threefold schematiza- tion. In his view, there are three major religious groupings in nineteenth-century Islam: the Wahhabis, the Mahdists, and the Tariqah revivalists (245). He describes the first briefly, omits the second altogether, and dismisses the third as a hopeless cause: except for the Tijaniya (107-lo), the Darqawiya (1 11-14), and the Sanusiya (1 18-20, 257)-a11 North African groups-there were, in Trimingham’s view, no notable Islamic revivalist groups in nineteenthcentury Sufism! What he fails to perceive is the intimate relationship between all three forms of nineteenthcentury Islamic religious activity and European colonialism. The beginning of colonial expansion actually predates the nineteenth century, and the persistent intrusion of mercantile minded afrangi (“foreigners”) into what had once been the domain of Islamic monarchs, from North Africa through Turkey, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Indonesian ar- chipelago, constitutes one of the major transitions in world history. Trimingham ignores it. He neither acknowledges the existence of colonialism (except for a solitary paragraph on 105) nor does he attempt to assay its impact on every group in Islamic society, including the religious brotherhoods. (See Martin, 1977, for the Khalwatiya reaction to colonialism in nineteenthcentury Africa; Schimmel, 405, n. 5, also cites examples from the Sudan and India.)

4 Both Trimingham’s Sufi OrdQrs and Schimmel’s Mystical Dimensions contain a wealth of material that does not pertain to the historical reconstruction of Sufism. It is worth examining briefly.

In Trimingham’s case, these chapters are of mixed value. They comprise the middle section of his book (chs.

176 / Religious Studies Review Vol. 4, No. 3 /July 1978

5-8). They deal with the theosophy of the orders (ch. 5), their organization (ch. 6), their ritual and ceremonial aspects (ch. 7), and their role in the life of Islamic society (ch. 8). The last is the most adequate: its topical scope is genuinely comprehensive. Yet Trimingham uses no Persian sources; he quotes travelogues, especially Ibn Battuta’s Rihla, far too often; and he tends to apply conclusions about the African experience to the entire Muslim world. Chap- ters six and seven also reveal the unevenness of Triming- ham’s source material: though he uses authentic works (Hujwiri and Suhrawardi) in delineating organizational features of the orders, he quotes a nineteenthcentury work (Salsabil by as-Sanusi) as the consummate authority on ritual. Ironically, chapter five on theosophy has been hailed by one reviewer as “a background and appreciation of its [Sufism’s] ideological basis” (Esposito, 1971, 106). Yet it trivializes the intricate relationship between Sufism and Shi‘ism (133-37), libels the mysticism of the orders as “stereotyped” (145, 154) without qualification, and resorts to a banal cat-and-mouse explanation of the interchange between Sufis and ‘ulama: the former are said to have avoided pantheistic utterances that would provide the latter with “the opportunity to condemn for which they were always waiting” (162). Brown, among others, has pointed out, however, that in pre-Wahhabi North Africa “the attempt to understand God’s will through the mystical ritual (dhikr) of religious brotherhood was not seen as being in conflict with the formal requirements of Islamic law (shari’a). It was simply another and complementary manner in which finite man attempted to establish a proper relationship with his God” (Brown, 1972, 81-82). The possibility of cooperation, or at least mutual toleration, between Sufis and ‘ulama has been preemptively-and incorrectly-ruled out by Trimingham.

In Schimmel’s case, some of the nonhistorical chapters are the best in the entire book. The treatment of Rumi in chapter seven, for instance, is at once comprehensive and evocative. Schimmel offers a brilliant selection from both the Diwan-i Shams and the Mathnawi to intimate the continuous drama which supplies the background for the haunting beauty of the Mawlana’s verses. Chapters three and four, as well as the addendaof chapters seven and eight, together with the two appendices of Mystical Dimensions, are also replete with anecdotes and poetical citations that exemplify Schimmel’s refined literary sensibilities.

Chapter three is notable because of its vivid exposition of the Sufi path, i.e., the discipline sanctioned by Sufis, usually but not exclusively under the direction of a physi- cally present master, to attain heightened spiritual awareness. In discussing the Sufi emphasis on fasting, she quotes from Rumi’s Mathnawi:

Gabriel’s food was not from the kitchen,

Likewise this food of the men of God it was from the vision of the Creator of Existence.

is from God, not from food and dish. ( 1 16)

It is a perfect conundrum: food which is not food which is food, an idea captured by Rumi’s ecstatic verse better than it could be expounded in a manual on Sufi dietary rites. Or again, to depict the state in which the Sufi adept struggles to withdraw into his innermost self, she cites the single line from ‘Attar’s Mwibatname: to be constrained “is to make

one’s home in a needle’s eye” (129). Equally deft is her analysis of the Sufi contribution to the now commonly accepted practice of venerating the Prophet Muhammad (see ch. 4, “Man and His Perfection”). The mawlid celebrations, the elaboration of the ascension event (despite its slim Qur’anic basis), the composition of qasidahs sung in the Prophet’s praise (such as the famous Burdah of Busiri), and fantastic interpretations of the questionable hadith qudsi “I am Ahmad without the mim”-all are woven together in a study of the interrelationship between Sufi speculation and popular piety that Schimmel alone is qualified to construct. (The conclusion to chapter four is too cursory, but it can now be supplemented by her article on modern Islamic interpretations of Muhammad; see Schimmel, forthcoming.)

Both the last half of chapter seven and the last half of chapter eight constitute addenda dealing with popular mysticism in Turkey and Pakistan respectively. In the entire book they are probably the most original pieces of scholarly research. Schimmel has worked harder than any major in- vestigator of Sufism to understand the nature of Islamic folk literature. Her treatment of Yunus Emre in the spectrum of Turkish popular mysticism and Sachal Sarmast in Sindhi mystical poetry provides rare insight into the linkage between classical Persian vocabulary and regional dialects. Some of the latter, e.g., Sindhi, reflect persistent non- Islamic beliefs. Nowhere is the accommodative power of Sufi metaphysics more cogently displayed than in the cita- tion from Sachal’s Risalo Sindhi: it illustrates the Unity of Being by paralleling the scriptural and symbolic authorities of Islam and Hinduism in a manner reminiscent of the fifteenth-century North Indian poet-saint Kabir:

He is Abu Hanifa and He is Hanuman He is the Koran and He is the Vedas. He is this and He is that. He is Moses and He is Pharaoh. (394)

The two appendices are plausible pastiches of disparate citations on two major subcategories of mystical Islam: letter symbolism and the feminine element in Sufism. The multi- ple indexes (on the Qur’an, Hadith, Places, and Names and Subjects) also merit mention since they are as reliable as they are extensive, whether one is trying to trace a theme or merely to locate a passage dimly recollected.

5 It is theosophical Sufism which presents problems for Schimmel as it had for Trimingham. Her treatment of the metaphysical component of the Sufi movement is far more satisfactory than Trimingham’s, but it still suffers from biographical restrictions and thematic disjunctures that skew the reader’s vision of Sufi speculation. Chapter six of Mystical Dimensions is devoted entirely to “Theosophical Sufism.” It treats five Sufi theoreticians: Suhrawardi Maq- tul, Ibn ‘Arabi, Ibn Farid, Shabistari, and Jili. Since the first anticipates the second, and the third, fourth, and fifth all poeticize as well as popularize the concepts of the second, the chapter is, in effect, on Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ‘Arabi. Unquestionably Ibn ‘Arabi looms as the major figure in Sufi speculative thought, but the way in which he relates to mystical and nonmystical developments in Islamic intellectual history is more complex than Schimmel intimates. In- stead of assessing his influence solely with reference to those


who admired and even emulated him, she might have opted to discuss him in comparison with another major Muslim thinker of different suasions. MolC, for instance (1965, ch. 4), notes that there are two principal phases in what he terms the mature period of Sufism: the fourth-century AH whose literary giants were Qushairi, Sulami, and Abu Hamid Ghazzali; and the latter sixth century AH when Suhrawardi Maqtul, Najm al-din Kubra, and Ibn ‘Arabi flourished. Though his treatment is too cursory, MolC attempts to trace the developments from, and reactions to, both Kubra and Ibn ‘Arabi, citing, e.g., the correspondence between ‘Ala al-dawlah Simnani and ‘Abd al-razzaq Kashani to which Schimmel makes but a brief allusion (257, n. 46), perhaps because the major article on it by Landolt appeared only after her book had already gone to press (see Landolt, 1973).

An even broader assessment of Ibn ‘Arabi is to be found in Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture ofIslam, Volume 2, chapter four, entitled “The Sufism of the Tariqah Orders.” Hodgson first describes the social context of the major orders and the characteristics of Sufi speculation, beginning with the myth of the microcosmic return and the concept of the qutb or pole so central to Sufi adepts. Only then does he turn to the thought worlds of Suhrawardi Maqtul and Ibn ‘Arabi, but not before a prolegomenon in which he differen- tiates both men from Abu Hamid Ghazzali, scoring their lack of historical commitment at the same time that he lauds their attempt to be faithful to certain “mystical” portions of the Qur’an, e.g., the famous Light verse (Q. 24, 35f.). In labeling Suhrawardi’s speculation as the metaphysics of light and Ibn ‘Arabi’s as the metaphysics of love, Hodgson both parallels and contrasts their doctrinal systems. He is ingenious in summarizing Fusus al-hikam as “in effect, a Qur’an commentary ordered not by surah chapters but by the various prophets mentioned in the Qur’an” (241).

Hodgson, however, does not trace the influence of Ibn ‘Arabi on the Sufi orders or brotherhoods, as Schimmel does briefly with reference to the Indian context in chapter eight (357; see also Nizami, 1950). Unfortunately, neither Hodgson nor Schimmel discusses in detail the seminal impact of Ibn ‘Arabi’s vast literary output on Shi‘a Islam (see Nasr, 1963). A fuller assessment of theosophical Sufism is still awaited.

6 Lings’s book exhibits a clarity of focus that cannot be matched in either Sufi Orders or Mystical Dimensions. He intends to present Sufism as it really is, with the intensity of a convert, the certainty of a believer, and the finesse of a literary craftsman. He minimizes footnote references, though quite often he uses primary Arabic manuscript sources which he is apparently translating for the first time. He delves into a range of comparative religious metaphors, drawing parallels between Sufism and Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and even Taoist thought with ease and confi- dence. Much of Lings’s own presuppositions may be gauged from two Western authors of Sufi inclination whom he approvingly quotes: Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon. Both have contributed to the Western understanding of Sufism as a perennial (and, by implication, transhistorical) mystical system. The success of this approach in convincing even tough-minded academics to consider Sufism primarily

as an emotively present and pervasively real spiritual force is evidenced by Danner’s review of What is Sufism? (Danner, 1977). Though Danner claims that Lings’s attitude is “rigor- ously objective,” he also notes that the book portrays Sufism as “a reality that is here and now, and not a historical phenomenon of the past.” But how can one overlook the history of Sufism in a book which asks the question, “What is Sufism?” According to Danner, “while Lings does not ig- nore the historical approach (as witness chapter nine of his book), he does succeed in giving the reader a strong awareness of the transhistorical realities that Sufism really stands for” (italics mine).

Danner’s logic accurately mirrors Lings’s, but both are mistaken. T o argue that Sufism is a transhistorical reality is to broach the possibility that Sufism may be interpreted as a trans-Islamic reality. Idries Shah, of course, has taken precisely this step. While Lings does not quote him by name, one senses it is to Idries Shah and like-minded “Sufis” that he is referring in the following polemic: As to the thousands of men and women in the modern Western world who, while claiming to be “Sufis,” maintain that Sufism is independent of any particular religion and that it has always existed, they unwittingly reduce i t . . . to a network of artificial inland waterways. (16)

In support of his claim that Sufism is at once transhistorical and Islamic, Lings repeatedly quotes from the Qur’an to illustrate the various points of Sufi teaching that he elaborates in the first eight chapters of his book. But the historical context of Sufism is not discussed until chapter nine, where it is summarized in a scant twenty-eight pages. To substan- tiate the particularity of Sufism as the Islamic brand of mystical belief and practice the ninth chapter should be the first: it should serve as the framework within which every facet of Sufi teaching is expounded.

Lings’s chapter on historical Sufism is problematic for other reasons than its length and location. It offers a simplis- tic hypothesis to explain the origin, early development, and organizational formation of Sufism. Muhammad, it is argued, was “the first Sufi Shaykh in all but name” (101), and his immediate successors emulated him in integrating the political and military but also the legal, theological, and mystical aspects of Islam into their own highly charismatic persons. But the period of triumphant leadership ended with ‘Ah; after his time, Islamic spiritual powers became compartmentalized, and the first Sufis began to appear as spokesmen for the mystical (as distinguished from the legal or theological) element in the Muslim community. The most important of these early Sufis, according to Lings, were Hasan, Rabi’a, Junayd, and Hallaj (104-10). They were fol- lowed, in the second period of the development of classical Sufism, by Imam Ghazzali and ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani ( 1 10-12). All these names are, however, only names, with brief biographies and occasional anecdotes. The true significance of historical Sufism for Lings is the preamble that it provides to the organizational formation of the major Maghribi orders linked to Abu Madyan Shu‘ayb. The remainder of chapter nine in What is Sufism? amounts to an elaboration of the influence of Abu Madyan’s successors (from Ibn Arabi [!I

178 / Religious Studies Review Vol. 4, No. 3 1 July 1978

and Ibn Mashish down to al-Wakili, al-Buzidi, and Lings’s own master, al-‘Alawi) on the subsequent spiritual development of both mystical and nonmystical Islam. This chapter, like Lings’s entire book, is masterfully articulate; moreover, Lings’s affirmation that Sufism is very much alive intro- duces a healthy corrective to the negativizing undercurrent that too often characterizes scholarship on Sufism, e.g., Trimingham’s. Still, Lings’s emphasis on Abu Madyan reflects a personal preference, not an historical reality. Trimingham, by contrast, extols Abu Madyan as the great- est of the early Maghribi Sufis (46) but does not venture to compare him with his mystical contemporaries elsewhere in the Muslim world, while Schimmel quotes the famous anec- dote from Jami‘s Nafahat al-‘uns, according to which Abu Madyan as Shaykh of the West acknowledges the spiritual authority of ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, the Shaykh of the East (247)!

Even chapter nine in Lings’s book, therefore, is mis- leading in its historical claims. There is no objectivity, only a passionately argued point of view.

7 All three books may finally be summed up with reference to the image of journeying. Inasmuch as Sufism is often de- picted as a path, we may ask of each book on the Sufi tradition: How far does it lead us down the path to understanding the innermost matrix, the core of mystical Islam? Trimingham offers a road map, with too many detours and unintended deadends, but still a road map that details the interlocking structures of organizational Sufism. Schimmel provides an illustrated travel guide, in several languages and with appropriate legends, that includes glowing de- scriptions of places to visit and experiences to be enjoyed. Lings opts to submit a field report, describing the one place, the one man, and the one vision that inspired him to cast off the role of distant observer and become an active participant in Sufism.

Sufi Orders is intended for academic aficionados, Mysti- cal Dimensions for serious students, What is Sufism? for eager enquirers. Only Mystical Dimensions is appropriate for classroom use at the introductory level, perhaps because i t evolved out of a situation in which its author was attempting to marshal the vast literary legacy of Sufism into a propae- deutic format for the benefit of undergraduates.

Collectively all three books share deficiencies that can only be remedied by consulting other books on Sufism. None offers a definition of Islamic mysticism that relates it to the topic of mysticism in general. Lings implies that there is a common inwardness in all mystical experience and that Sufism is the Islamic means of relating to the perennial Truth underlying every religion. Yet mysticism itself is not a univocally clear phenomenon enjoying a single, commonly agreed upon definition. R. C. Zaehner, in his two major works pertaining to the theory of mystical experience (Zaehner, 1957, 1960), has laid himself open to the charge of inductive reasoning. Is there a distinction between monis- tic and theistic mysticism, as Zaehner has tried to argue (and as his critics, e.g., Smart, 1962, 1965, have denied)? And if SO, how does the history of Islamic mysticism either substan- tiate or refute this distinction? None of the books under review addresses such a question with attention to both its theoretical and practical implications.

All three writers also disregard or minimize the grow- ing number of anthropological studies of present-day mystical orders, based on field experience in several parts of the Muslim world. Most significant are the works of Dermen- ghem (1954), Geertz (1960, 1968), Crapanzano (1972, 1973), Gellner (1969, 1972) and Gilsenan (1973). Schimmel cites Geertz in a footnote (405, n. 4), but his approach, like that of other anthropologists, does not mesh comfortably with her own orientation to Sufism, which is literary and esthetic rather than social scientific, medieval more than modern. But Trimingham, because the topic of his book is the Sufi orders, ought to have included more extensive references to Dermenghem (see footnotes on 204,216) and at least mention of both Geertz’s and Gellner’s early works. (Lings, of course, has no interest in anthropology, since it attempts to make an objective, dispassionate study of religious [including mystical] phenomena in corporate, societal con texts.)

Geertz is one of the major and most controversial theoreticians of Islamic religious life. Even his review of The Venture of Islam is boldly frontal: it assails Hodgson for establishing a mood that relies too heavily on the unde- fined connotations of mysticism and, therefore, fails to deal with the immediacies of historical experience. “Mysticism,” according to Geertz, “will simply not do when it has to cover Moroccan miracle-workers, Anatolian poets, and Punjabi cosmologists” (Geertz, 1975, 21). Yet Geertz himself is all but absent from the books under consideration, perhaps in part because he represents a geographic area of the Islamic world which is similarly neglected. Trimingham skirts In- donesian Sufism except for a skimpy two and one-half pages (130-32); Schimmel omits it altogether, even though she twice (123, 354) quotes the Malaysian author, Naguib al- Attas (1970); and Lings goes only as far as India (16) and Dara Shikoh (99) in establishing his version of the universal- ity of Sufism. Also omitted from all three books is anything more than a passing reference to Bangladesh: like In- donesia, it is one of the most populous Muslim countries in the world, and like Indonesia, its traditions have been deeply influenced by a syncretistic blending of Sufistic and indigenous practices (see Roy, 1970).

To assess the nature of Islamic mysticism in either Bangladesh or Indonesia, one would have to study the process of Islamization and address a topic almost as slippery in its definitional variables as “mysticism,” namely, “conversion.” Neither Schimmel, who might have done so, nor Trimingham, who should have done so, attempts to describe what conversion to Islam entails and how the Sufi Shaykhs function, not only as mystical adepts, but also as promulgators of the faith. A major work addressing this very question has just been published (Levtzion and At- more. 1978).

Finally, one would like to have seen Lings or Schimmel openly confront the popular studies of Sufism that emanate from Idries Shah and like-minded “Sufis.” Lings refers to them by indirection, as we mentioned earlier. Schimmel dismisses them in a footnote (9, n. 5). (Even Trimingham may be alluding to them when he chastises “western stu-


dents of Sufism” for their pantheistic tendencies (137, 145). What is needed, however, is a reflective, detailed assessment of their inadequacies that will also give them credit for bringing Sufism to the attention of a wide circle of curious Westerners who otherwise would know neither the name nor the reality of mystical Islam.

REFERENCES

AL-ATTAS, SYED MUHAMMAD NAGUIB

ARBERRY, A. J.

ARDALAN, NADER, and LALEH BAKHTIAR

1970 The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri. Kuala Lumpur: Univer- sity of Malaya Press.

1950 AnAccountof theMysticsofIslam. London: Allen & Unwin.

1973 The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture. University of Chicago Press.

196466 “ L a Khalwatiyya en Egypte, quelques aspects de la vie d’une confrerie.” MIDEO (Cairo) 8, 1-74.

1972 N. R. Keddie (ed.), 1972, 47-91.

1972 “The Hamadsha.” In N. R. Keddie (ed.), 1972,327-48. 1973 The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethmpsychiatry. Uni- versity of California Press, Berkeley.

1977 American Oriental Society 9714 (1977), 608-09.

1954 Le culte des saints duns I‘Islam mughrebin. Paris: Gallimard.

1973 Review of J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. In Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 36, 136-39. 1975 “‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456-1537 A.D.): The Per- sonality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi.” In K. A. Nizami (ed.), Medieval India:-A Miscellany, Vol. 3, 1-66. Delhi: Asia Publishing House. Forthcoming (1979) “Qalandars and Social Disorder in the Delhi Sultanate.” To appear in R. Israeli (ed.), Islam in Asia. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

ESPOSITO, J. L. 1975 Review of J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. In Journal of the American Academy of Religion 431 1, 106-08.

FRIEDMANN, Y. 1975 “Medieval Muslim Views of Indian Religions.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 9512 (1975), 214-21.

GEERTZ, C. 1960 The Religion of Java. Chapters 20-21. The Free Press. 1968 Islam Obserued: Religious Development in Morocco and In- donesia. University o f Chicago Press. 1975 “Mysteries of Islam.” Review of M. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam. In The New York Review of Books, December 11, 18-26.

1969 Saints of the Atlas. University of Chicago Press. 1972 “Doctor and Saint.” In N. R. Keddie (ed.), 1972, 307-26.

1973 Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: A n Essay in the Sociology of Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

1974

1972 East since 1500. University of California Press.

BANNERTH, E.

BROWN, LEON CARL

CRAPANZANO, VINCENT

“The Religious Establishment in Husainid Tunisia.” In

DANNER, VICTOR

DERMENGHEM, EMILE

DIGBY, SIMON

Review of M. Lings, What is Sufism? In Journal of the

GELLNER, E.

GILSENAN, MICHAEL

HODCSON, MARSHALL

KEDDIE, NIKKI R. (ED.) The Venture of Islam. 3 vols. University of Chicago Press.

Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Institutions in the Middle

KISSLING, H. J. 1953 “Aus der Geschichte der Chalvetijje-Ordens.” Zeitschriyt der o!eutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 103, 233-319.

1973 “Der Brief’wechsel zwischen K5BrTni und Simnani uber Wahdat al-wuRild.” Der I.tlam 5011, 29-81.

1978 The Rose and the Rock: Mystical and Rational Elements in the Intellectual History of South Asian Islam. Monograph 15. Duke University: Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia.

1975 Studies in al-Ghazzali. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.

1978 Conversion to Islam. Holmes and Meier.

1976 The World of Islam. London: Thames and Hudson.

1961 A Moslem Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi. London: Allen & Unwin.

1971 American Oriental Society 91/4, 477-86.

1972 “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes.” In N. R. Keddie (ed.), 1972, 275-305. 1977 Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa: Social and Political Aspects of Eight Muslim Brotherhoods in the Nineteenth Cen- tury, Emphasizing their Role in Reaction to European Imperialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1976 “The Mystic Path.” In B. Lewis (ed.), 1976, ch. 4 (1 17- 28).

1973 The Compleat ‘Alim: Muslim Religious Leadership in the Late 19th Century. Occasional Paper. University of Chicago South Asia Committee.

M o G , MARIJAN 1961 “Les Kubrawiya entre Sunnisme et Shiisme aux huitieme et neuvieme sikcles de l’hegire.” Revue des Etudes Islamiques 29, 61-142. 1963 “La danse exstatique en Islam.” Sources Orientales 6, 145- 280. 1965 Les mystiques musulmuns. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

1971 O n the Psychology of Meditation. Viking Press.

1964 Three Muslim Sages. Harvard University Press.

1950 “Hadrat Shaykh-i Akbar Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabi aur Hindustan.” Burhan 34, 9-25. 1957 “Some Aspects of Khanqah Life in Medieval India.” Studia Islamica 8, 51-69.

ROY, ASIM 1970 “Islam in the Environment of Medieval Bengal.” Unpub- lished Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Australian National Uni- versi ty.

1963 Muhammud Iqbal. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1970 1973a on India, Vol. 1, 279-93. Varanasi. 1973b tory of Indian Literature, Vol. 7. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz. 1976 Eighteenth-Century Muslim Indza. Leiden: E. J . Brill.

LANWLT, H.

LAWRENCE, B. (ED.)

LAZARUS-YAFEH, HAVA

LEVTZION, N., and A. ATMORE (EDS.)

LEWIS, BERNARD (ED.)

LINGS, MARTIN

MACKEEN, A. M. MOHAMED

MARTIN, BRADFORD G.

“The Rise of al-Shadhili (d. 656/1256).” Journal of the

MEIER, FRITZ

METCALF, BARBARA

NARANJO, CLAUDIO, and ROBERT ORNSTEIN

NASR, SAYYID HUSAIN

NIZAMI, K. A.

SCHIMMEL, ANNEMARIE Gabriel’s Wing: A Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir

Islamic Calligraphy. Leiden: E. J . Brill. “Khwaja Mir Dard, Poet and Mystic.” In G e m n Scholars

“Islamic Literatures of India.” In J. Gonda (ed.), A His-

Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of

180 / Religious Studies Review Vol. 4, No. 3 /July 1978

Forthcoming “The Chain of Sincere Muhammadans.” In B. Lawrence (ed.), 1978.

SMART, N. 1962 “Mystical Experience.” Sophza 1, 19-25. 1965 “Interpretation and Mystical Experience.” Religious Studies 1, 75-87.

TRIMINGHAM, J. S. 1949 Islam in the Sudan. London and New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press. 1952 Islam in Ethiopia. London and New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press. 1959 Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1962 A History ofislam in West Africa. London: Oxford Univer- sity Press (for University of Glasgow). 1964 Islam in East Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1968 T h Injluence of Islam Upon Africa. London: Longmans Librarie du Liban.

1969 “Mirza Mazhar Janjanan, a Religious and Social Re- former of the Eighteenth Century.” Studies in Islam 6 , 118-54.

1962 Islamic Philosophy and Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

1957 Mysticism Sacred and Profane. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1960 Hindu and Muslim Mysticism. London: Athlone Press.

UMAR, MUHAMMAD

WATT, W. M.

ZAEHNER, R. C.

ETHICAL ISSUES IN DEATH AND DYING

James F. Childress Kennedy Institute of Ethics Washington, DC 20057

Just a few years ago it was fashionable to say that death is to contemporaries what sex was to the Victorians: a taboo subject. Even if this cliche was accurate then-which is doubtful-it is certainly inappropriate now as the recent spate of books and articles on death and dying demon- strates. This review essay will focus on books and a few articles published from 1974 to early 1978 which deal with ethical issues in death and dying.

VEATCH AND RAMSEY

Within thelast two years Yale University Press has published perhaps the two most important recent books on ethical issues in death and dying: Death, Dying, and the Biologzcal Revolution: Our Last Quest for Responsibility ( 1976) by Robert M. Veatch, and Ethics at the Edges of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections (1978) by Paul Ramsey. I shall concentrate on them at the outset, indicating the most important differ- ences in their perspectives, arguments, and conclusions. I shall then examine some key issues also treated by other authors.

Major additions to the burgeoning literature in biomed- ical ethics, these two books are the most comprehensive and rigorous treatments of ethical issues in death and dying in the context of medical care. While they cover most of the same topics, each includes topics not found in the other. Veatch has two chapters on the definition of death (which Ramsey treated in The Patient as Person) and chapters on

truth-telling, the use of the newly dead for organs, and natural death. Ramsey devotes over one-third of his book to issues in implementing the 1973 abortion decisions, and gives more space to the treatment of defective newborns.

In Ethics at the Edges of Life, Ramsey mentions the humor of someone introducing a woman as “his first wife,” implying that there are more to come; there is also the humor of Ramsey’s introduction of this volume as his “last book in medical ethics,” implying that there are no more to come! Given Ramsey’s arguments, which reflect great moral passion as well as his usual rigorous analysis, it is not likely that he will be able to observe the continuing battles as a spectator. Whatever one thinks about its conclusions, Ethics at the Edges of Life is surely one of his most powerful books. He develops his thesis through a tough and incisive analysis of various ethical and legal materials, a project marred only by excessive attention to some materials that do not merit it and by overly detailed and sometimes tedious discussions of minor points. By contrast, Veatch’s analysis of ethical and legal issues is not as close or detailed. He does, however, offer excellent summaries of various ethical and legal arguments and presents his own proposals. His discussion is generally clear and readable.

Both books seek to combine theoretical and practical interests, including a concern for public policy. Veatch moves from more theoretical reflection through “a maze of technical medical and legal factors toward examination of alternative public and personal policy” (1976, vii). Ramsey interweaves ethical, medical, and legal materials, identifying their intersections. Ramsey’s legal analyses are detailed and careful. Not only does he offer an incisive ethical critique of legal reasoning, he also treats the law and legal process as “mirrors” reflecting trends in our social ethos. His aim is to elevate as well as to assess that discourse.

While both authors are interested in public policy, Veatch offers more complete discussions of policy formulations, particularly procedures for decision-making. Ramsey, on the other hand, emphasizes substance rather than procedure. Indeed, he primarily wants to analyze and reform the ethos and state of moral discourse in our society. For him the ethicist’s main task is not to formulate policies but to set out the moral constraints on policy-making. Veatch wants to determine “who decides”; Ramsey wants to determine the rightness or wrongness of decisions. While Veatch wants to design procedures to guarantee that the locus of decision- making will be the patient and the patient’s agent, Ramsey wants to establish moral constraints that physicians, policy-makers, and other interested agents should not transgress.

Also at stake is the question of the most adequate con- ception of the patient-physician relationship: should that relationship be conceived mainly in contractual terms, as Veatch proposes? If so, the physician is primarily, though not exclusively, a servant of the patient’s interests and wishes; the physician does, of course, have the option of not entering or of withdrawing from the contract rather than violate his or her conscience. Or should the relationship be conceived to impose certain duties on the physician regard- less of the interests and wishes of the patient? Ramsey, for example, affirms a duty (not an absolute one) to prolong the lives of nondying patients that is not reducible to their

mystical dimensions of islam; the sufi orders in islam; what is sufism?

Documents