"In my view, no one can become a Muslim just once. He becomes a Muslim, then he becomes an unbeliever, then again he becomes a Muslim, and each time something comes out of him. So it goes until he becomes perfect.”*
Indeed, this was the meaning of my dream and the words of comfort from my shaykh direct from Paradise.
I had a third dream of Ibn Al-Habib. In it he counseled me on weeping. "Turn your tears inward," he said. "Let your tears water your heart so that it will be nourished.”
I passed before the tomb of the Messenger of God for the first time and stepped away from the procession of visitors being herded by the Salafi guards stationed before the cast brass grill to prevent any open demonstrations of love for the Prophet. This was in 1980 and at this point their traffic control was less intrusive than it eventually became. I sat unobtrusively with my back to the qibla facing the tomb. And I silently recited the Prayer on the Prophet, peace be upon him, revealed by the Messenger of God to Shaykh Mohamed ibn Al-Habib, may God be well pleased with him, as he sat many years before not far from where I was sitting:
“Oh God, send blessings and salutations through all Your Perfections and in all Your Revelations to our Master and Guardian Mohamed, First of the Lights overflowing from the Seas of the Majesty of the Essence, the one who realizes in both the inward and outward domains, the meanings of the Names and Qualities. He is the first of those to praise and worship through all the modes of worship and means of approach, the one who helps all that exists in the Two Worlds of spirit and form, and upon his family and companions, which unveil to us his noble face, both in dream visions and awake. And bestow upon us direct knowledge of You and of him at every level of the Way and every realm of Your presence. And we ask You, O our Guardian and Protector, by his honor, that Your Infinite Kindness be ever with us in our movement and rest, our glances and thoughts.”
I repeated this prayer again and again, as a parade of worshippers passed before me, longing for intimacy, longing to be included in the presence of the Messenger.
I sat, back to qibla, trying not to attract the attention of the Salafi sentries upbraiding worshippers for any emotional displays, moving the crowds swiftly past the brass grill. I silently repeated Ibn Al-Habib’s blessing on the Prophet, hands raised in supplication, knocking at an invisible door, longing for one undeserved salutation from our Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, who was so close, yet so far from me. Gradually, a hand of light reached inside of me. The flood gates opened. My heart overflowed. Tears spilled. I felt as if the Messenger had touched my heart, my salutation was returned. I bowed my head, covered my eyes with one hand and watered my heart with tears from the salutation of the Prophet Mohamed, may God bless him and give him peace, through the sacred blessing revealed to Shaykh Mohamed ibn Al-Habib, may God be pleased with him.
I lived for a time in the attic of a brown shingle house in Berkley, California and celebrated one Ramadan there. During the month of fasting I prayed behind the Messenger of God in my dream. I did not see his face, peace be upon him. I could only see the back of his head and his black cloak. Many years later I asked my shaykh Sayyid Omar Abdullah, may God be well pleased with him, the meaning of the dream. He said, "It means that you are trying to follow the Sunna of the Messenger.”
“He who has seen me in a dream has seen me in reality for the devil cannot take my form.”
The Prophet Mohamed*
IN TRANSIT
In 1976 I was on my way to Cairo from London. I was to change planes in Damascus for the connection to Cairo. When we landed at dawn, I grabbed my bag and went to the transit desk. The Syrian Air ground staffer looked at my ticket and told me that I had no reservation for the flight to Cairo and that the flight was full. I told him I had to get on the flight. He said it was impossible. I asked when the next flight would be. He told me it was in five days. Five days?! "I can't wait here for five days! I have to get on the flight tonight. Who can I talk to?" He told me I would have to go to the ticket office in Damascus.
I caught a taxi into town with a Jordanian girl who had been studying abroad and who was on her way to Amman for the holidays. There had been another upheaval in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the city was filled with Palestinian refugees. Hotels were full. With the help of my taxi-mate, I managed to find a cheap hotel in town where I left my bags and set off to find the Syrian Air office. It was early morning and it was Ramadan. The streets were empty except for a few soldiers and students who all seemed to be in military uniform.
When I arrived at the Syrian Air office it was still closed but a long line was already forming. I took my place in the queue. When the doors opened I went to a desk manned by an expressionless young woman. I explained that I had a ticket with a reservation to Cairo that had not been confirmed and that I had to get the connecting flight this evening. She looked at me impassively and pointed across the room to another desk. I walked over and repeated my story. He listened and directed me across the room to another desk. I walked over, waited in line and then repeated my story. I was directed to another desk. And so it went until I had been sent full circle back to the expressionless young woman. I said, "Excuse me but where can I find the manager?" Silently, she pointed to a desk at the corner of the room surrounded by people yelling at a harried mustachioed fellow who was engaged in an intense discussion with one of several agitated customers.
I waited at the back of the circle and while this animated interchange was going on I tapped the man in front of me on the shoulder. He looked around. I said quietly, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" He said he did, so I asked him if he could do me a favor and explain my predicament, which I retold for about the tenth time. He was very polite and when there was a momentary lull in the heated exchange, he caught the attention of the manager who looked around exasperated, saying, "hah?" (translation: "what do you want?"). My interlocutor quickly explained my situation to the manager who listened intently. He then barked out a brief response and returned to the defense of his realm against a phalanx of frustrated customers. I eagerly asked my kind representative what he had said. He turned to me ruefully. "He said... he doesn't want to know."
I left the Syrian Air office with the grim prospect of staying in a fleabag hotel in a conflict zone for five long days in Ramadan without knowing a soul. I had days to kill so I decided to visit the tomb of Shaykh Al-Akbar, Muhyid’din ibn Al-Arabi, the Seal of the Saints, may God be well pleased with him. His tomb was on a hill above the city. I walked up the hill until I found the mosque. After making two cycles of prayer greeting the mosque and reading from the Qur'an, I repaired to the tomb of Ibn Al-Arabi. I recited Sura Ikhlas, prayed for the shaykh and asked God to help me on my way. I was fasting and exhausted from a long journey. I reclined by the tomb and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I woke up I knew with a sense of calm certainty that I had to return to the airport. I prayed for Shaykh Al-Akbar and asked forgiveness for my wrong actions. I returned to the fleabag hotel, retrieved my suitcase and caught a taxi back to Damascus Airport. I went to the check-in desk with my unconfirmed ticket, was checked in without question and made the flight to Cairo. Perhaps it would have happened anyway, but at the very least the serenity of the tomb of the Seal of the Saints gave me the clarity I needed to stay on course.
“Travel not from creature to creature,
otherwise you will be like a donkey at the mill:
Roundabout he turns,
his goal the same as his departure.
Rather, go from creatures to the Creator.”
Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari*
PERFUME
Shaykh Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari, author of Al-Hikam, Taj Al-Arus and other seminal Sufi treatises, is one of the greatest Sufi saints in history. He is buried in the City of the Dead, the vast cemetery that stretches for miles along the Northern edge of Cairo embracing the tombs of some of the most illustrious saints and scholars of Islam, including Imam Shafi'i, Dhu'l Nun Al-Misr, Ibn Al-Farid, Muhammad Wafa, Ali Wa
fa, and many, many others. As with so many of the tombs in this awesome burial ground, Ibn Ata’illah’s grave site had deteriorated almost to the point of being lost. There was a broken down marker in the general area where the saint was supposed to be buried but no indication of an actual tomb.
During his tenure as Shaykh Al-Azhar, Dr. Abdul Halim Mahmoud, may God be well-pleased with him, dispatched a search party to the general area where the Shaykh was interred to try to re-locate the exact grave site and erect a proper memorial for the great saint. The area was a scene of total desolation, forgotten and neglected for many decades, if not centuries. The group spread out and began sifting through the rubble and ruins without success until, suddenly they caught the scent of a unique, unworldly fragrance. They followed the perfume until it was overpowering and began to clear the stones and debris and dug down until they found the body of Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari perfectly preserved, as if he were asleep, wreathed in an intoxicating celestial perfume.
Abdel Halim Magahed was a wealthy merchant who had made his fortune selling construction machinery. As a pious Muslim, he decided that the time had come for him to build a mosque. Many Muslims who attain wealth in life aspire to build a mosque in response to the Prophetic recommendation.
Abdel Halim Megahed was not a Sufi. In fact, he was a Salafi who was against the practice of Sufism. But he had a business acquaintance that encouraged him to consult with the Shaykh of Al-Azhar before deciding on where to build his mosque. When they met, Shaykh Al-Azhar immediately recommended that the businessman build a mosque beside the newly re-discovered tomb of Ibn Ata’illah. Abdel Halim came away from the meeting with profound misgivings and went back to his Salafi friends who talked him out of building a mosque beside the tomb of a Sufi.
Then he had a vivid dream. In the dream he was standing before the famous Mosque of Abul Abbas Al-Mursi in Alexandria. Abul Abbas Al-Mursi, the heir of Imam Al-Shadhili, was Ibn Ata’illah’s spiritual master and predecessor. In the dream Shaykh Abul Abbas was standing in front of the mosque and holding the hand of Shaykh Ibn Ata’illah. He addressed Abdel Halim, saying, "They have built this mosque for me. I would like for you to build a mosque for my brother.” Abdel Halim reported this dream to Shaykh Al-Azhar, who was delighted. He said, "This means you must build this mosque."
Despite his qualms Abdel Halim proceeded with design and construction. He put all the funds required to build the mosque into a safe in his office. Before construction began he withdrew a large sum of money from the safe to pay the first installment to his contractors, recording his sums in a ledger. The first phase of building commenced. When the time came for him to pay the second installment Abdel Halim opened his safe to withdraw the funds and found that he had exactly the same amount of money he had before he made the first withdrawal. At first he assumed that he had made an accounting error. When he returned the next month to withdraw the third installment again the same amount of money was in the safe as before the beginning of the project.
Abdel Halim began to worry that he might be losing his mind. He thought that perhaps the Salafis who warned him about building a mosque near a tomb had been right. He went to Shaykh Al Azhar in a state of high anxiety and told him what was happening. Shaykh Al-Azhar beamed ecstatically and told him that this was from the blessing of Shaykh Ibn Ata'illah. "If you had kept this miracle to yourself, it would have continued until the mosque was completed," the Shaykh said. "Now that you have shared this, you’ll have to use your funds.” And this is what happened.
When I first lived in Egypt during the 1970s, just after the completion of the Mosque of Ibn Ata’illah, I came to know Abdul Halim Megahed. My wife was pregnant at the time with our first child. As young first time parents we were both apprehensive. Before leaving Egypt I visited him in his office in Bab Al Luk and mentioned this to him. Abdul Halim gave me a talisman for my wife to read during her labor. She did and found that when she gazed at the talisman during her contractions her birth pains disappeared.
The mosque of Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari is a magnet for wayfarers today and I pray that Abdel Halim, may God have Mercy on him, is resting peacefully in his house in Paradise.
“If anyone builds a mosque for God,
God will build a house for him in Paradise.”
The Prophet Mohamed*
TRANSFIGURED NIGHT
I led a group of about ten Sufi novices on horseback and donkey from the Moroccan city of Larache into the Rif Mountains toward the tomb of Moulay Abdul Salaam bin Mashish, the spiritual master of Imam Abul Hassan Al-Shadhili, may God be well pleased with them. In Morocco visiting the tomb of this great saint was called "The Pilgrimage of the Poor" (Hajj Al-Fuqara) because the devout who couldn't afford to make the Hajj would make a visitation (ziyara) to Jabal Alam, the mountain of Moulay Abdul Salam.
Moulay Abdul Salam ibn Mashish was born in the village of Aghyul in either 1146 or 1148 AD. His father Moulay Slimane Mashish was a descendent of the Prophet Mohamed, may God bless him and give him peace, and a great saint who is buried beside the Mashishiya Zawiya across the valley from his son’s haunting primordial tomb on the high tor. It was said that by the age of seven Moulay Abdul Salam had become utterly God intoxicated (majdhoub). He studied the religious sciences in Northern Morocco, settled in Ceuta to teach children the Qur'an and joined the Almohad army in Andalucía before withdrawing from the world to a cave in Jabal Alam to spend the last twenty years of his life in remembrance and contemplation.
Abul Hassan Al-Shadhili traveled across the world to meet Ibn Mashish and became his only disciple.
"When I drew near him, he was living in Ghumara in a lodge on the top of a mountain. I bathed at a spring by the base of that mountain, forsook all dependence on my own knowledge and works, and went up toward him as one in need. Just then he was coming down toward me, wearing a patched cloak, and on his head a cap of palm leaves. ‘Welcome to 'Ali ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd Al-Jabbar,' he said to me, '0, 'Ali, you have come up to us destitute of your knowledge and works, so you will receive from us the riches of this world and the next.’
"Awe of him seized me. So I remained with him for some days until God awakened my perception, and I saw that he possessed many supernatural powers (kharq al-‘adat).”
This fabled meeting produced one of the most powerful and enduring Sufi traditions in the world. The Shadhiliya Order and its many branches extend across North Africa and throughout the Middle East and to Asia. At the age of 63, Ibn Mashish was murdered by Ibn Abi Al-Tawajin and is buried on the mountaintop, above the cave in the cliff face that was his home.
We rode up the winding pathways to the summit of Jabal Alam retracing the steps of Imam Shadhili. We drank from 'Ayn Al-Shadhili, the spring that burst forth from beneath the saintly wayfarer’s feet so that he could make the ritual ablution before approaching his spiritual master. As we came closer to the plateau, the mountain became increasingly verdant. Springs flowed from the mountain sides.
When we reached the summit in late afternoon, young Berber children ran to greet us. At first I thought that this was mountain hospitality until I felt their hands. They were cold, stiff, outstretched, mendicant hands. These young children had the faces of hardened beggars looking for small change. It was jarring. We tethered our animals and spread out across the open-air mosque which extended across the plateau from the ancient whitewashed tomb.
A floor of smooth white cork tiles surrounded a primitive white mud brick structure built around an ancient, gnarled oak tree with bare sagging branches marking the burial site of the saint. The cork floor extended out from the tomb toward the direction of prayer (qibla) which ended in a sheer precipice, dropping suddenly into space, facing a vast panorama of the green gorge one thousand feet below with cultivated fields sweeping for miles to the rising peaks of the Rif range on the horizon.
After greeting the tomb and taking in the breathtaking view, we repaired to a primitive mosque – nothing more than a plain white room with straw matting – set at
a short distance from the grave site, and prayed the sunset prayer. After the prayer the Imam began making supplication in exchange for money. It was like selling indulgences. Members of the assembly would hand him cash and he would pray for them. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I was told that this was a mountain Berber custom. Custom or not, I found the practice repellent and led my group outside into the cold evening air.
It was the night of Mawlid An-Nabi - the birth of the Prophet Mohamed, may God give him peace. We formed a circle and began reciting prayers on the Prophet, including the famous prayer of Ibn Mashish:
“First! O Last! O Manifest! O Most Hidden! Hear my call as You heard the call of your servant Zakariyya and grant me victory through You, for You and support me through You, for You, and join me to You and come between myself and anything other than You…”
By the time we disbanded, each to our own private devotions, night had fallen. An immense white moon high in the crystal sky radiated an ethereal canopy of light above the Rif Valley. In the bracing icy air I walked across the white cork floor, glowing in moon-wash, to the edge of the mosque. The floor ended abruptly – a sheer drop into the abyss. But the valley had filled with clouds to the very edge of the floor, creating a vast carpet illuminated by the piercing white moon, extending from the white mosque floor of Moulay Abdul Salam to the distant peaks at the far perimeter of the valley.
Signs on the Horizons Page 15