When I landed I made contact with a young friend, Jan Mohamed Koul, a student at the University of Kashmir who lived with his family in a spacious wooden house in a wooded area near Nagin Lake, which was named Koul Wari, after his clan, who had been high caste Hindus that converted to Islam centuries before. I asked him if he could help me find a Sufi and he became excited, exclaiming that his brother was a disciple of one of the great Sufis of Kashmir and that he would try to arrange a meeting. The Pir lived in a village some distance from Srinagar where he was the imam of the local mosque. As part of a press delegation, my schedule was very full and I only managed to find time for the excursion on the day before we were scheduled to fly to Ladakh on the next leg of our tour. We set off for the village in the late-morning and arrived just after the noon prayer. We found the Pir alone in his mosque. I told him that I had come from Makkah and that my Shaykh had inspired me to seek him out. He said to me that he did not conduct what he called "spiritual conversation" until after midnight and asked me to remain in the village until then so that we could meet. I told him that this was impossible; that I had to take a flight at dawn the next day. He said, "As you are from Makkah, I will come down to Srinagar in your honor and we can meet there after midnight.”
We returned to the city and I went back to the hotel to pack my bags, prepare for travel and meet with my colleagues. Late at night Jan Mohamed picked me up at the hotel and we made our way to his brother’s house where a number of disciples had gathered to meet their master. He greeted me warmly. We drank tea and ate a late night meal. I was full of questions and had anticipated a fascinating "spiritual conversation". Instead, once the meal had been cleared away, the Pir initiated me into the order’s core practice. It was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced in classical western Sufism.
It was a meditation reminiscent of a Hindu breathing practice. The Pir had me place my fingers in my ears and press against my eyelids and breathe through my nose. He explained that the exercise focused on the hearing. In the beginning, he said, I would hear the buzzing of bees. Eventually this would be replaced by the ringing of bells. Ultimately, hearing and seeing would merge and the sound would become a light and from the light the Prophet Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, would appear. His disciples all looked to me with passionate enthusiasm and shared some of their spiritual experiences that resulted from the practice.
This was all so alien that I felt deeply uncomfortable, but I had asked for the meeting and the Pir had come all the way to Srinagar to accommodate me so I followed his instructions. Lo and behold, when I covered my eyes and began breathing, a powerful sound of buzzing bees filled my ears. I have to admit it was intoxicating. My misgivings receded. He drilled me on the practice for a half an hour or so. Then he said to me: "Can you give me 5 hours a day for this practice?"
I shook my head in disbelief: "Absolutely not!"
He asked, "Can you give me 3 hours a day?"
"Never!"
"Can you give me 2 hours a day?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Can you give me one hour a day?"
I relented doubtfully. "I will try."
Newly initiated, I departed in the early hours of the morning in time for two hours sleep before leaving for the airport and the flight to Ladakh.
In Ladakh, in Delhi and back in Makkah I made a brave attempt to perform this practice as I had promised the Pir. I never again heard the buzzing of bees and, eventually, abandoned the exercise. It was just too strange.
Sometime later I was sitting with my Shaykh Ahmed Mash-hour Al-Haddad and a group of his disciples, one of whom was from India, and I mentioned this episode and the practice I’d been initiated into without going into too much detail. I wanted to understand what it was I’d experienced and whether it was authentic.
When I started describing the meditation, a look of consternation passed through the gathering. The disciple from India said reproachfully, "This is a Hindu meditation." Others shook their heads, disapprovingly. I was embarrassed.
Habib listened, frowning intently and without comment. Then, as if a light had been turned on, he said, "I know what this is, Haroon! (my Muslim name) This is shughul (work). This is an exercise for disciples who have a lot of time on their hands. You have to spend a lot of time doing this to get results. Haroon, look at you. You are travelling all over the place. You work all the time. You don’t have the time for this.”
It made perfect sense. The disciples of the Kashmiri Pir were locked away in their homes during the long, snowbound winters. They had weeks and months to work on this meditation. But the practice was legitimate.
A veil of understanding had been lifted through the depth of insight and breadth of knowledge of my Shaykh, may God cover him with Mercy and bless the Kashmiri Pir and all the saints and people on the Way, wherever they may be.
“And make your work (shughlun)
the invocation of God...”
Shaykh Mohamed ibn Al-Habib*
PLAY
He would hold informal court every evening between the sunset prayer and the night prayer in the Holy Mosque in Makkah, overlooking the mataf between the Yemeni Corner and the Black Stone. Sitting magisterially above the marble stairway leading up to the raised Sinan Pasha Mosque that surrounded the mataf, his station was directly beneath the elevated sound booth (muqabiliyah) from where the mu’adhin would call the prayer. Draped in brilliant white Sudani robes, head wrapped in a flamboyant voluminous turban, his black beard flecked with grey, his handsome face luminous, his smile dazzling, he was an imposing, romantic figure.
Every habitué of the Haram Sharif in Makkah knew Shaykh Ismail. He was hard to miss; a magnetic presence, attracting worshippers and seekers of all kinds. One would rest awhile in the pleasure of his company between the prayers. The atmosphere around him was informal, almost playful. I would always greet him when I passed by and would sit with him from time to time.
It was said that he knew the sciences of the unseen and sometimes cured those afflicted by mental illnesses, possession and magic. He was among the few who the conservative religious authorities allowed to openly practice this science, even though his Sufism was anathema to them.
If I remember correctly, he was a Shaykh of the Idrissi Order in Sudan. He lived across from the Souq Al-Lail in a simple flat on Gazah Street. He had students and the occasional patient and spent his days in worship and study.
On one occasion I introduced the Shaykh to a group of visitors from the U.S. He invited us to his home for supper after the night prayer. Several members of the group were Shia Muslims. Although a Sunni, Shaykh Ismail spoke with great learning on Shia doctrine, mentioning that whereas Sufism evolved as a separate strand within Sunni Islam that Sufism is completely integrated into Shia canonic law (Shariah). One of the most striking characteristics of the great Sufi scholars I have been able to meet is their inclusiveness and acceptance of all professions within Islam.
On the other hand, hypocrisy, falsehood and lying are universally condemned. He once told me, apropos of nothing in particular at the time, "The worst human being on earth is the man of false claims. There is nothing worse than this.” He added further that anyone who openly claimed to be a shaykh, in the sense of being a spiritual master, was automatically a liar.
We were sitting together after the sunset prayer. He knew I was from America but nothing more. He began to ask me about myself. I told him that I was of Arab extraction but had been orphaned as an infant and never knew my birth parents. I was not raised as a Muslim but had embraced Islam as a young adult. He asked me if my birth father was a Muslim. I told him that I knew he was from Syria but had always assumed that he was Christian because many Syrian Christians emigrated from Syria and settled in America in the years after the First World War.
When I said this, Shaykh Ismail reached over and placed the fingers of his right hand on my throat, just above my esophagus, touching my jugular vein. He closed his eyes and with his outspread hand touching
my throat, he recited an invocation for a long time. When he finished, he took his hand away, flashed a huge smile and said emphatically, "Your father was a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. His father was a Muslim and his father was a Muslim!"
I walked away from this encounter skeptical, to say the least. I am wary of spiritual guides who resort to theatrical gestures of this sort. I didn’t give much thought or credence to the exchange but later on, mostly to satisfy my curiosity, I asked my shaykh Sayyid Omar Abdullah to come with me to the Holy Mosque to meet Shaykh Ismail. I told Sayyid Omar about the previous exchange I’d had and I wanted his insight.
After the sunset prayer I led Sayyid Omar to Shaykh Ismail’s maqam (his established place in the mosque). When Shaykh Ismail saw him approaching with me he cried out "Abshir! Abshir!" (Good news! Good news!), as if he was greeting a dear long-lost friend. The two men sat together and spoke at length, thoroughly enjoying one another’s company. When we left Shaykh Ismail’s circle, and descended the marble stairs to cross the mataf, I asked Sayyid Omar what he made of the Sudanese shaykh. Sayyid Omar shook his head with awe. "He is Wasil,” he said. "He has arrived. He is so advanced that he can play. His knowledge is very, very great.”
There is a saying, "Blood will tell" (al ‘iraq dassas). It seems my blood told Shaykh Ismail a story. But God knows best.
“The Wasil (those joined to God)...are perfect.
The Wasil are those near to God (Muqarrab)
and those gone before others (Sabiq) in faith.”
Shaykh Shahab-u’d-din As-Suhrawardi*
THE LORD OF
THE MIDDLE ATLAS
I led a small group to a settlement in the Middle Atlas in Morocco to learn horsemanship and the hadra (sacred dance) from a group of Berber fuqara from a branch of the Darqawiyya Sufi order famed for their equestrian skills, descendents of the fearless riders depicted by Delacroix in the 19th century. The fathers and grandfathers of many of these men had fought the French occupation during the colonial period and had left a rough and ready legacy of Sufi practice. We took a bus from Khenifra to a small town called Zawiya Sheikh. We then set out on foot for the settlement of Sidi Saleh, built upon a plateau in the foothills of the Middle Atlas. We arrived unannounced after sundown. We came upon a simple long building from which the droning sound of a Sufi litany (wird) could be heard in progress. We entered the large room. A circle of men, most of very advanced years, several blind, scarred or missing limbs, sat on the far left of the room.
I was acutely aware that we were uninvited guests and wanted to give the best possible impression. When we entered the zawiya we immediately approached the fuqara and passed swiftly counter-clockwise around the circle, kissing each faqir’s right hand in the traditional greeting. We then moved as a group to the far side of the zawiya to make two cycles of prayer to greet the mosque and then completed our sunset prayers. I glanced over at the circle and saw that the old fuqara were nodding to each other in approval of our observance of the Sunna and Sufi protocols. We then joined the recitation of the wird.
Stepping into their circle of dhikr was like stepping into a time warp. One was transported to another century. The modern world seemed far removed from the lives of these gnarled, weather-beaten Berbers. Traditionally most awrad take between ten to forty minutes to complete. The wird these men recited took nearly 3 hours and they recited with great speed. When the wird was finally completed, the assembly rose and performed the night prayer. After the prayer I was able to introduce our small company. The conversation was pleasant and desultory. We’d been sitting for several hours already and everything seemed so inconclusive. Were we to be welcomed and put up for the night? Did these men have supper? Nothing seemed to be happening.
One member of our group was a precocious, funny and incredibly handsome young boy of about 11 years old whose mother was a formidable woman with a great heart and piercing intelligence. Hasan was like the barometer of the group. He kept looking at me as if to say, "What’s going on here?" We waited patiently. I was beginning to think that we were going to have to traipse back down the mountain in the dead of night and find someplace else to stay. Finally, after another hour or so, a young boy beckoned us to follow him. We went outside the zawiya and were taken around to the back of the building, which was a long room identical to the front half of the structure.
Standing to one side of the room was the strange, majestic figure of Sidi Saleh, the founder of his eponymous community, the shaykh of this extraordinary Sufi order and spiritual lord of the Middle Atlas. He was an incredibly romantic figure, conjuring images of Orson Welles in "The Black Rose". His most striking feature was his huge, oriental, kohl-laden eyes. His face was luminous and quite beautiful but also slightly odd. He moved with the languid ease and authority of a king, which, I suppose, is close to what he was in this district, yet his gestures had a jerky quality that I attributed to his mountain Berber upbringing. He welcomed us warmly.We sat and, finally, were served milky coffee and Moroccan biscuits.
I told him that we’d been sent to learn horsemanship and the sacred dance, the hadra (also called imara) of his Sufi order. The moment I mentioned "imara”, Sidi Saleh’s eyes lit up, he clapped his hands twice and, suddenly, the entire assembly of about 30 men leapt to their feet, formed a huge circle and instantaneously began the most extraordinary hadra I have ever seen or experienced. It was a complex and pulsating dance with an incredible double bounce. To use the parlance of my American generation, it rocked.
Young Hasan was in the circle with us. On the outside of the circle children about his age or younger gathered. They were a strange looking collection, many with their heads shaved, presumably against lice, but with tufts of hair left intact, sticking out in odd places from their bald scalps, apparently a pre-Islamic Berber custom. These children, eyes closed, were swaying and rocking and bouncing at the back of the circle. It was an utterly bizarre sight. I glanced over at Hasan who was looking at these rapturous rocking children with wide-eyed wonder.
When the hadra was over, we were all reeling, intoxicated and exhausted. And then a magnificent feast was served; a sheep upon a huge bed of couscous garnished with fresh vegetables. While we were eating, bathed in the illuminated backwash of the hadra, it dawned on me why we’d been waiting for hours. When we arrived unannounced, Sidi Saleh had ordered that a sheep be slaughtered and a feast prepared in our honor.
With this overwhelming reception, Sidi Saleh ordered his fuqara to make us comfortable in the zawiya. We were all given mattresses to sleep on and a vast Berber hanafiya carpet was draped over us all to serve as a single, expansive blanket against the frigid mountain air.
The people of Sidi Saleh had withdrawn from the world into their haven of sanity. One only had to travel down to the tawdry village of Zawiya Sheikh to understand what they were escaping from. They spoke a patois of Shilha, the Berber dialect, Arabic and a smattering of French. They were living a life that revolved around the remembrance of God.
At dawn we were awakened. We made wudhu and prayed the dawn prayer after which the litany began. Again, it lasted for hours, until long after sunrise. I calculated that the awrad alone these men recited took up about six hours of every day.
We then had breakfast, which consisted of freshly baked bread and freshly pressed olive oil from the orchards that surrounded the village. The cold pressed olive oil was like a meal in itself. It was the finest olive oil I have ever tasted and upon my departure I took away a bottle of this nectar with me.
The morning was languorous. Some of the younger men set up piles of stones and threw other stones at them to dislodge the piles. They played this aimless game for hours. I asked about the possibility of learning horsemanship from these famed riders, but was told that their horses were out to pasture.
On the morning of the first day, I was driven down the hill to Zawiya Shaikh to pay the obligatory visit to the qaid, the district head-man. These visits were necessary in those days to reassure the local authorities that
there was nothing subversive in visits from foreigners. At the time Moroccans had to carry an official laissez-passeré to travel outside their home districts. I resented being taken away from the sanctity of Sidi Saleh to be interrogated by the official but knew that this protected the community from what could be an intrusive police inquisition. I walked in with a chip on my shoulder. While the qaid was not exactly wreathed in a halo, he was also not a particularly objectionable character. He looked at me with an amused smile. Arrogant and hotheaded American that I was, I upbraided him for dragging me down the hill for interrogation. He was patient, asked me a few questions and, seemingly satisfied that I was harmless, excused me and sent me on my way back up the hill.
After the noon prayer we were once again feasted. No one seemed to work in this village. Yet we were eating like kings. I was curious. I asked one of the fuqara how much land they owned. His arm swept across the panoramic view of the plains which stretched out from the foothills as far as the eye could see. He smiled and said, "Everything you see!"
So that was it. They were incredibly wealthy but eccentric landowners, agricultural barons.
I later learned that they had nothing. The younger men worked harvesting crops. Some left to work in the cities. In times of dearth they would sometimes go for weeks living off bread and oil. The feasts we were treated to were from the colossal hospitality of these generous Berbers who went out among their community to find the provisions to feed us.
Signs on the Horizons Page 6