When we entered, Sayyid Attas was already sitting with a seeker from Indonesia who was asking him to transmit the Talqin to him. Talqin is the direct oral transmission of the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith – "I witness that there is no god but God and I witness that Mohamed is the Messenger of God” (ash-hadu an la ilaha illa llah wa ash-hadu anna Mohamedan Rasulullah) - from person to person tracing all the way back to the tongue of the Prophet Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon him. It is very rare to find anyone with this unbroken chain of transmission. The Indonesian was pleading with Sayyid Attas to receive Talqin. At first Sayyid Attas was reluctant. He said he didn’t feel ready to transmit the Talqin. The Indonesian persisted, swearing that he had travelled all the way from Indonesia specifically to receive Talqin from Sayyid Attas. Finally, Sayyid Attas relented. When this happened, Sayyid Omar gripped my leg and whispered urgently, "You must repeat exactly what he says! This is very important." Sayyid Attas transmitted Talqin to our small group, intoning the first part of the Shahadah slowly and we repeated the formula. He then intoned the second part and we followed.
That was it. I had never seen Sayyid Omar as intensely engaged in anything as with this ritual. When we left the house of Sayyid Attas I asked Sayyid Omar why Talqin was so important. He said, "It makes the Shahadah easy on the tongue at the moment of death.”
A few years later my friend passed away and it is my hope that this unexpected gift from Sayyid Attas eased his passing. May God have mercy on him and be well pleased with Sayyid Attas Al-Habshy.
I received Talqin on one other occasion, this time from the lips of my Shaykh Habib Ahmad Mashhur Al-Haddad. I was sitting in a small gathering of disciples at his home in Bani Malik in Jeddah. Suddenly, out of the blue, Al-Haddad transmitted the Talqin to our group with the same simplicity. May God accept our affirmation and forgive us for our wrong actions.
“Oh Lord of Majesty and Gifts,
make us die on the religion of Islam.”
A supplication*
THE CURE
The Tijani zawiya of Shaykh Mohamed Al-Hafez Al-Tijani in Cairo attracted thousands of devotees year round who came to sit at the feet of this great scholar and spiritual master. Students, visitors and Tijani fuqara from across Africa, the Arab world, Southeast Asia and even from Europe came to meet him. By the time I met the Shaykh in 1976 he was very advanced in years and completely blind but continued to meet his many visitors and offer teaching and counsel to all.
In his time, he and the other shaykhs of his order, had the greatest following of any Sufi tariqa on earth. Their disciples around the world numbered in the tens of millions. The Tijaniyya Sufi Order is one of the largest Sufi orders in Africa, founded by the 18th century Shaykh Sidi Abbas Ahmad ibn Mohamed Al-Tijani Al-Hassani, who is buried in the city of Fes in Morocco.
Shaykh Mohamed Al-Hafez was, as his name suggests, hafiz of (one who has completely memorized) Qur'an and considered one of the world’s greatest living authorities on hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him. He had committed hundreds of volumes of hadith, commentary and poetry to memory. His memory was the stuff of legend. Thousands of books filled one wall of his zawiya from floor to ceiling. One could only reach the top shelves with a ladder. He remembered every word in most of the books in his library. Once, a student asked him about obscure references to truffles. The Shaykh directed the student to the bookshelf, giving the titles of the books with references to truffles and exactly where these volumes were located, on such and such a shelf so many volumes to the right, etc. When the volumes were located the Shaykh told the student on which page the reference was located and the exact line, reciting the sentences before and after the reference. The student followed his instructions and found all the references.
I witnessed this astonishing gift at first hand. One afternoon I was sitting in the Shaykh’s company with an Italian disciple who was attempting to translate an obscure poem by Shaykh Al-Akbar Muhyid’din Ibn Al-Arabi into Italian. He had a French translation of the poem but the published Arabic version he had seemed to be missing a stanza. He asked his Shaykh if he knew of the poem. The Shaykh instructed him to read the stanza before and the stanza after the missing verse. He did so. On hearing the two verses Shaykh Al-Tijani immediately and effortlessly dictated the missing verse to the disciple.
I first met Shaykh Mohamed Al-Hafez at his zawiya in Cairo during Ramadan. I had accompanied a group of friends who were all studying at the Madinat Al-Buhooth Al-Islami, which was a school established to prepare foreign students for higher studies at Al-Azhar University. We visited the Shaykh at fast breaking and remained through the night prayer and prayed the tarawih behind him. When the tarawih prayers were completed we came forward as a group to greet the Shaykh. He shook our hands as we were briefly introduced by name and he welcomed us all. Then he retired to his apartments. That was that.
I had only recently settled in Egypt and was having enormous trouble adjusting. I had been accustomed to the rarified company of Sufis and the relatively pristine romantic ambience of Moroccan Sufi Islam. Suddenly I was thrown into the rough chaos of Cairo, with its crowds, cacophony, craziness and reeking streets. I attended night classes at Madinat Al-Bohooth Al-Islami, in which the exhausted teacher – on his third job for the day – would put up an exercise on the chalkboard and then fall fast asleep at his desk.
During the days I taught English literature at what was then Egypt’s premiere private school. To get there I would have to take the horrifically crowded Bab Al-Luk train from Sakinat station near my flat to Bab Al-Luk Station in the center of town and then take a bus from Tahrir Square to the school in Zamalek. Young men wouldn’t wait for the train to stop on the platform but would leap through open windows to get a seat. Surrealistic fist fights broke out in the over-packed train on a daily basis. In the mornings and evenings people would hang off the sides of the train and clamber up on top for a treacherous free ride. I witnessed many accidents and several fatalities during this time. On one occasion a young man was hit head-on by the train and his body flew past my window. The man sitting beside the window next to me saw the mutilated flying corpse and blanched in horror. Then he turned to me with a resigned shrug. "Ma’alesh,” he said. "Oh well."
I finally snapped one day when a sweating middle-aged fat man elbowed past a young woman who was ascending the steps to the bus in front of me, crushing her against the door and nearly pushing her off into the street, just to get a seat. Outraged, I approached him and told him his behavior was the same as an animal's. (I didn't think he understood English.) He grabbed my arm. "I weell keell you!" he hissed, squeezing the button off my shirt cuff. The other passengers separated us – they had seen what he had done to the young woman. The bus driver apologized profusely and refused to take a fare from me. The passengers were very kind, but I had reached the end of my tether. The city was grinding me down.
The daily struggle of surviving the public transport system, the begging, the stench of uncollected garbage and deteriorated infrastructure finally got to me. As a spoiled American I was simply not ready for all the anarchy and pandemonium of Cairo. I went into deep culture shock. I started to hate Egypt and Egyptians.
Finally I became violently ill. I was convinced that my bad thoughts had poisoned me and made me sick. I suffered for three days with a high fever and agonizing pains throughout my body. I confessed to my wife that I was certain this was from the really venomous thoughts that had overcome me.
On the third day, we received a knock on the door. It was Shaykh Al-Tijani’s son Ahmed. He was about 30 years old. He had come all the way out to Sakanaat from Cairo by train. In those days the journey would have taken at least one hour each way, if not longer. He asked for me. I appeared at the door. He said, "My father has sent me to you. He said, 'Haroon is sick. You must go to him and give him this."' Despite our fleeting group encounter a week earlier, we had never had any other exchange. I had no idea the blind Shaykh was even aware of my existen
ce. I don’t know how he knew that I was ill. His son handed me an envelope and immediately excused himself to make the long journey back to Cairo. When I opened the envelope I found it contained enough money to live on for a month. This sudden and unexpected act of generosity had a sublimely therapeutic affect on me. I had let bad thoughts overwhelm me and had conceived of a loathing for Egyptians. Yet here was an Egyptian that had suddenly, without warning, reached out to someone he didn’t know with a simple, transcendent gift.
When I awoke the next morning, my illness disappeared, my health was restored and, most importantly, my heart was cured.
“They are the skilful physicians whom God has assisted with a spirit from Him, so that they treated the diseases of hearts with wisdom, and poured guidance into pleasant and permissible moulds in order to take the ordinary people along the road of their desires to the desired truth…”
Al-Habib Ahmad Mashhur Al-Haddad*
MAJESTY
His presence was majestic. His face was inexpressive. I never once saw him smile, although I’m sure he must have. He seldom betrayed emotions except when he made supplication to God. His extended supplications following a night of invocation drove his listeners to tears. His heartrending cry to the Lord of All Being for help and succor swept his audience along like a flood tide. Devotees would converge on gatherings just to hear his supplications seal an evening.
Habib Abdul Qadir Al-Saqqaf would often attend gatherings with my shaykh Habib Ahmed Mashhur Al-Haddad, his spiritual brother. Together they seemed to form a delicate balance. Al-Saqqaf embodied Majesty (Al-Jalal) while Al-Haddad embodied Beauty (Al-Jamal). Gatherings with these men were suffused with blessing.
He was a spiritual lord who commanded enormous influence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against all odds, for Sufism was banned and supressed by the religious authorities and Al-Saqqaf was one of the world's preeminent Sufi masters.
One day my shaykh Sayyid Omar Abdullah returned from a visit to Al-Saqqaf at his home in Jeddah. His visit had produced an unveiling. "I realized," he said with grave certainty, "that Al-Saqqaf has reached the station of baqa (subsistence in God). He has been completed.” Sayyid Omar rarely discussed the spiritual stations of his peers. The supreme stations of knowledge (ma’rifa) on the Sufi path are fana and baqa, referred to in Sura Rahman (55:26-27):
"All that is on the earth shall pass away (faan)
And the Face of your Lord will abide forever (yabqa),
full of Majesty and Generosity.”
The twin doctrines of fana and baqa were first articulated by the 9th century Baghdadi saint Abu Sa’id Al-Kharraz who wrote, "Fana is annihilation of consciousness of ‘ubudiyyat, (human individuality as a servant of the Lord) and baqa is subsistence in the contemplation of ilahiyyat (divinity). According to 'Ali bin Uthman Al Hujwiri in Kashf Al Mahjub, this means that "it is an imperfection to be conscious in one’s actions that one is a man, and one attains real manhood when one is not conscious of them, but is annihilated so as to not see them, and becomes subsistent through beholding the action of Allah… Abú Ya’qúb Nahrajúrí says: A man’s true ‘ubúdiyyat (servitude) lies in fana and baqa’…”*
To an ordinary person these exalted stations are incomprehensible. Yet, through observation, through subtle indications, one might sense the marks of attainment.
At one point I had reached a crisis regarding my residency in Saudi Arabia. I tried to solve the problem through ordinary channels but without success. I had reached a bureaucratic impasse. I mentioned this to Sayyid Omar and he immediately suggested that we refer this problem to Al-Saqqaf. The idea of approaching this great saint with something as trivial and mundane as my residency problem seemed completely inappropriate but my teacher insisted and he was far wiser than I. In the event it afforded me a glimpse of Habib Abdul Qadir in action.
Al-Saqqaf was the preeminent Sufi in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and many of the country's wealthiest and most influential citizens were numbered among his thousands of disciples, including the general in charge of the immigration authority. So one morning we drove from my home in Makkah to Al-Saqqaf's large home in Jeddah. On the road between Makkah and Jeddah, Sayyid Omar spoke of Al-Saqqaf's dramatic rise to the position of spiritual authority he enjoyed in Saudi Arabia in spite of the fact that the practice of Sufism (Tasawwuf) was suppressed by the Kingdom's religious authorities. Behind the affluence and influence he enjoyed was a quarter century of abasement and service on the Path in Hadramaut where he reached an exalted spiritual station. With the Communist takeover of South Yemen, he was forced into exile in the Western Province of the Kingdom, where he was greeted as a spiritual master.
When we arrived at the Shaykh’s home he was already seated in his majlis, attending to the individual needs of a procession of students, disciples and petitioners. Sayyid Omar brought me near to Al-Saqqaf and I was able to observe his audiences at close range. One wealthy merchant came to the Shaykh with a large sum of money, bundled in stacks of high denomination notes wrapped in clear plastic. I watched with fascination as the disciple handed over what must have amounted to a hundred thousand Saudi riyals to Al-Saqqaf. Habib Abdul Qadir took the package without a change of expression, invoked a blessing on the merchant and without looking at the package casually tossed it over his shoulder and turned to his next visitor. The whole transaction didn’t last more than about one minute.
Although we were sitting beside the Shaykh, each transaction was carried out with a great sense of intimacy between disciple and master with most conversations inaudible. Men came with questions, problems and simply for the blessing. After some time had passed a young man approached the Shaykh, clearly in distress. We watched as he explained his need. Habib Abdul Qadir called upon one of his assistants and directed him to bring the package of cash he had tossed aside a half hour earlier. The assistant handed the package to Al-Saqqaf who passed it on to the young man. He had never even looked at the contents. He was like a spiritual filter through which the world flowed.
When our time came, Sayyid Omar greeted his old friend and explained my predicament. Al-Saqqaf took out a phone contact book, thumbed through it and reached for the phone sitting on the floor beside him. He dialed a number from the book. When the party on the other end answered he said brusquely without any introduction, "Yusuf, Sayyid Omar and Haroon are coming to you. See to their needs,” and hung up. He had just delivered a blunt order to a high-ranking Saudi general. He sent us off to the Passport Office. The General saw us and solved my problem on the spot.
The last time I saw Al-Saqqaf was at the memorial for my beloved Shaykh Habib Ahmed Mashhur Al-Haddad, held in an empty lot covered with carpets outside the Al-Haddad family home in Bani Malek. He was, by this time, seriously ill and had to be carried to the gathering. With the passing of Al-Haddad and the infirmity of Al-Saqqaf the world seemed an infinitely more precarious place.
May God protect us from the turmoil and temptations of this world and bring us near to His Friends in the next.
Habib Abdul Qadir Al Saqqaf passed away in 2010 (1431AH) at the age of 100, may God be pleased with him.
“He whom God has illuminated sees Him in all things.”
Muhyid’din Ibn Al ‘Arabi*
RIVER OF HEAVEN
When I first sat in his company he was living in a large room in the Al-Azhar Mosque complex in Cairo. He had been the Imam of the Holy Mosque in Makkah Al-Mukarramah and was among the favorite scholars of His Majesty King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who would invariably sit in his company when he visited the Holy Mosque. In his later years he retired to Egypt from Saudi Arabia and became an Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque from where he would give discourse and oversee circles of remembrance twice weekly, on Sundays and Thursdays. On these evenings, every visitor was fed. During the month of Ramadan he would preside over a fast-breaking meal every evening open to all. Hundreds attended. Many were visibly very poor.
Shaykh Saleh Al-Ja'fari was an orator of immense power, a great Sufi scholar i
n a world that had largely turned its back on Sufism. He would sit majestically erect upon a raised platform and begin to speak to whoever gathered in his presence. His discourse was so compelling that hundreds would assemble to hear him. His speech was like a wide, slow-flowing river, like the Nile, a river of heaven. His voice was resonant and forceful, his knowledge deep and broad. He had written hundreds of odes (qasa’id) on the Way. His talks were vibrant and animated and one could be forgiven for mistaking the power of discourse for physical power. He was, in fact, very frail and had to be supported to and from his seat in Al-Azhar Mosque.
He did not countenance pietism. Once a member of his audience asked him a pretentious religious question about whether or not it was permissible to look at women, to which he responded in his booming voice, "Don't ask me this question! You already know the answer. I will give you more useful advice. Next time you’re sitting in a qahwa (traditional Arab cafe) smoking shisha (hubbly bubbly, nargilah or water pipe) and a young girl passes by and you undress her with your eyes – and you will without any doubt do that – just say, "Astaghfirullah! (I ask forgiveness of God).”
On another occasion during his discourse, a member of the audience cried out the Name of God, "Allah!", as if he was awestruck, whenever the Shaykh said anything profound. After several ejaculations from the listener, Shaykh Saleh stopped his discourse and said, "Tell this man to be quiet. Stop crying out like this!"
During the 1970s there was a modest revival of interest in Sufism in Egypt. Two of Egypt's most influential scholars were Sufis, the Shaykh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Abdul Halim Mahmoud, and the Arab world’s most popular orator, Shaykh Metwally Sha’rawi, who was a disciple of the great Algerian Sufi Shaykh Mohamed Bil Qaid. There was an emerging fascination in the mystical aspects of the Path, which included the hidden spiritual hierarchy of saints that had been described in classical Sufi literature. Many Sufi orders were claiming that their shaykh was the "Qutb” or Pole of the Universe, a reality which is, in this wayward age, irrelevant to ordinary people. One afternoon my wife and I attended one of Shaykh Saleh’s discourses in Al-Azhar. He spoke about the Qutb, saying, "All these shaykhs are claiming to be Qutb! We know that there is only one Qutb at any time. What's going on? Are these men lying? No. They believe they're the Qutb because they have reached the Maqam Al-Qutubiyya - the Station of being Qutb. They have mistaken the station with the role. They are mistaken.”
Signs on the Horizons Page 9