known as Maimonides) once told one of his friends that al-Farabi’s works on logic were ‘finer than flour’ and urged him not to bother consulting the works of other logicians.
Unlike al-Ghazali and many other prominent Islamic thinkers, al-Farabi considered philosophy to be entirely unified. He argued that both Plato and Aristotle expounded the same truth. As a devout Muslim and also a practicing Sufi, al-Farabi focused more on the spiritual, than on the practical, dimension of things.
Al-Farabi was in his early seventies when political instability began to spread across Baghdad, and this prompted him to move to Damascus in 942. Here he worked as a gardener for a period before moving to Egypt, only to return to Damascus again in 949. A year later, he died at the age of eighty and was buried in Damascus following a simple funeral led by Sayf al-Dawlah himself. Al-Farabi’s works influenced prominent Jewish and Christian thinkers like St Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Musa bin Maimon (Maimonides) and Leo Strauss among others.
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Al-Hafiz, Amin (1921-2009): Syrian politician, president 1963-1966. The son of a Sunni policeman in Aleppo. Hafiz became a noncommissioned officer in the French Syrian Social Forces during the Second World War. After his release from jail in June 1967 he went into exile in Lebanon. When the Afaw led faction of the Baath party seized power in Iraq about a year later, he moved to Baghdad. Hafiz continued his anti Assad activities, later heading the National Alliance of the Liberation of Syria, an umbrella body of various anti Assad factions.
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Al Hakim, Tawfiq (1898-1987): Egyptian writer Born of a Turkish father and an Egyptian mother in Alexandria al Hakim secured a law degree from Cairo University. In 1925 he went to Paris to obtain a doctorate in law. Instead of concentrating on his studies, he soaked himself in the cultural, artistic and theatrical life of the city. By then his literary career was well established. Having attempted light entertainment in Ali Baba, al Hakim opted for authoring intellectual plays fill of ideas and philosophic reflections. At the time of the 1952 revolution, al Hakim was director of the National Library in Cairo He supported the new regime. After Nasser’s death in 1970 al Hakim criticized him in his booklet. The return of consciousness (1975).
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Al-Hallaj (858-922): The origin of Sufism (or the mystical dimension of Islam) is often traced back to the Qur’an and the normative practice (sunnah) of the Prophet by its adherents. Thus, far from being an alien intrusion into the Muslim world, Sufism embodies the very heart and soul of Islam as a religion and way of life. Like the Prophet and his close companions, the early Sufis, like Hasan al-Basri, Ja’far al-Sadiq and Rabi’a al-Adawiyyah renounced worldly pleasures and engaged in devotional activities and did so without wearing the label of Sufi. Scores of outstanding Sufi personalities like Dawud al-Ta’s, Shaqiq al-Balkhi, Habib al-Ajami, Ibrahim ibn Adham, Maruf al-Karkhi, Hasan al-Basri and Rabi’a al-Adawiyyah emerged to warn both the rulers and the people of the dangers of excessive materialism. Al-Hallaj was probably one of the most prominent exponents of this strand of Sufism.
Abul Mughith Hussain ibn Mansur ibn Muhammad al-Hallaj was born at Tur near al-Bayda in the Persian province of Fars. According to one account, his ancestors were originally Zoroastrians (followers of Zoroaster, the ancient Persian prophet and sage). His father, Mansur, was a devout Muslim who earned his living as a wool-carder; hence the title ‘al-Hallaj’. Encouraged by his father, young al-Hallaj committed the entire Qur’an to memory as a child and then pursued further education in Arabic and traditional Islamic sciences. Thereafter, he travelled to the Iraqi city of Wasit where he completed his higher education under the tutelage of its leading scholars. Founded in 702 by Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the governor of the Umayyad ruler Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Wasit became a prominent center of Islamic learning and scholarship in Iraq.
After completing his higher education, al-Hallaj left Wasit and moved to Basrah, which was also the home of Hasan al-Basri and Rabi’a al-Adawiyyah, and there he married the daughter of a local Sufi. From Basrah, he went to Makkah where he became renowned for his devotional and ascetic practices. After completing the sacred hajj (pilgrimage), he went to Baghdad which at the time was one of the Muslim world’s foremost centers of Islamic learning and spirituality. Here he became a student of Abul Qasim al-Junayd al-Baghdadi (also known as al-Junayd al-Baghdadi), who was a Sufi scholar of considerable influence.
Al-Hallaj left Baghdad and became a wandering Sufi. During his travels in and around Khurasan he gathered around him a sizeable following and eventually went to Makkah to perform his second pilgrimage. From Makkah he went to Turkistan and from there he reportedly travelled to India and as far as the borders of China. He became familiar with the Hindu mystical concepts of ‘self-annihilation’ and ‘extinction’ which, in turn, influenced his own mystical views. He returned to Baghdad when he was about fifty and a large following gathered around him. He became such an outspoken exponent of Sufism that even the Mu’tazilites considered him to be an opportunist and charlatan. This prompted the ruling Abbasid elites to expel him from Baghdad, after which he again returned to Makkah and performed yet another pilgrimage. After completing this third pilgrimage, he returned to Baghdad completely transformed.
Al-Hallaj ignored the advice of his fellow Sufis and began to advocate the need for spiritual and moral reformation in Baghdad. He was eventually apprehended by the Abbasid authorities and imprisoned for nine years. The Abbasid elites promptly put him on trial charged with blasphemy and treason. The trial was no more than a show; thus everyone expected him to be found guilty. Mocked, vilified and branded a heretic by the orthodox religious scholars, and also shunned and excommunicated by his fellow Sufis, al-Hallaj was sentenced to death by hanging.
As one of the Muslim world’s most radical and controversial mystical thinkers, al-Hallaj’s life and thoughts are riddled with contradictions, paradoxes, and unusual insights into Islamic spirituality and gnosis. Following in the footsteps of Abu Yazid al-Bistami (who was one of the first Sufi thinkers to argue that ‘self-annihilation and extinction’ represented the peak of mystical experience), al-Hallaj became one of the most eloquent and bravest revealers of mystical secrets and truths. Central to al-Hallaj’s mystical philosophy was the concept of love (mahabbah). Like Rabi’a al-Adawiyyah, he advocated the pursuit of disinterested love, that is to seek the Beloved only for His sake, rather than out of fear of eternal damnation or promise of reward. Al-Hallaj’s expression of spontaneous, disinterested love proved hugely controversial because he claimed to have experienced the ‘essence of union’ (Ayn al-jam), where the lover and the Beloved became one (ittihad); thus he blurred the crucial distinction between the Creator and His creation.
Al-Hallaj expressed his mystical ideas and experiences in beautiful, unforced and refreshing poetic couplets. He composed around forty-six books and treatises on different aspects of Islamic mysticism.
‘I do not cease swimming in the seas of love, rising with the wave, then descending; now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it; love bears me away where there is no longer any shore.’ (Diwan al-Hallaj). (Kitab al-Tawasin): ‘I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart, and I said: ‘Who are you?’ He said: ‘You.’
Taken literally, these mystical utterances and outburst are indeed heretical and blasphemous. Al-Hallaj argued that he was neither a heretic nor a blasphemer; rather he was an exponent of mystical experience in its highest form.
He was sentenced to death at the age of sixty-four for preaching ‘heretical’ ideas. His persecutors severely tortured and flogged him, before amputating his limbs one by one. His body was then cremated and his ashes scattered in the Tigris.
Other equally renowned Islamic scholars and Sufis, like Abu Bakr al-Shibli, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Fakhr Rumi and Sir Muhammad Iqbal, have exonerated him of the charge of self-deification and belief in monism. True to form, nearly eleven centuries after his death, al-Hallaj
