SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Chapter I. A summary account of his life based chiefly on (a) A short autobiography about the earlier part of ending at his forty-first year in 1910. (b) A collection of letters written by his disciples and others about various contacts they had between 1915 (approximately) and 1925. (c) An article about him from Revue Africaine (1936) by A. Berque, who knew him during the last fourteen years of his life (1020-34). (d) Memoirs about same period by Marcel Garret who was his doctor. (a) and (d) are translated almost in full. Chapter II. Translations from his answers to attacks on Sufism ending with extracts from his anthology of pronouncements about Sufism by various eminent Moslem jurists and theologians, from the first century of Islam until the present day. Chapter III .A consideration, by myself, of the divergence of opinion between Sufis and Orientalists as regard the origins of Sufism, and an attempt to do justice to the opinions of the Sufis by placing them in a somewhat new light. Chapter IV. A definition of the doctrine of Oneness of Being. (wahdat al-wujud, that is, what most Western scholars call "Pantheism" or "Monism"), with quotations from the earlier Sufis, leading up to the Shaikh al-Alawis, own exposition of this doctrine. Chapter V. His definition of the highest spiritual state, with special reference to (a) the difference and identity between Prophets and Saints as regards that state, (b) its simultaneity of drunkenness and sobriety, (c) how far it is possible for the eye of the flesh to see the Divinity. Chapter VI. His exposition of the highest meaning of the Islamic rites of purification by water and earth, and of the various movements of the ritual prayer. Chapter VIII. Extracts from hi poetry. Appendix A. A list of his writings with short notes on those not described or quoted in the body of the thesis. Appendix B. The tree of his spiritual lineage Appendix C. A note on the initiatic chain(silsilah).