AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

122

Arthur F. Buehler

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

A r t h u r F. B u e h l e r Victoria University, Wellington

Abstract
This article revises current understandings of the Indian Naqshbandi Shaykh, Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624). It moves analytically beyond the pioneering and balanced scholarly accounts of Yohanan Friedmann and J.G.J. ter Haar, directly addressing the issues that Sirhindis modern scholarly detractors have considered his most alarming statements and alleged exaggerated claims. Looking sociologically at Sirhindis ashraf i social context and his role as a sufi teacher the article demonstrates the logic of many of his shocking statements, some of which involve personal issues that have yet to be discussed in western scholarly literature. Finally, the so-called controversy generated between two perspectives of unity (wahdat-i wujud and wahdat-i shuhud) has been vastly overstated in the scholarly literature. The overall sufi consensus is that there is no real controversy. Indeed, both Ibn alArabi and Sirhindi agree that these two valid modes of unity are simply two ways of perceiving the One.

Introduction1 Twenty-first century scholarly commentary still continues to judge Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624 Sirhind) in a simplistic manner. This situation is partially a result of prior scholarship not considering the social and praxic context in which Sirhindi lived and taught. This article seeks to

The issues briefly discussed in this article are only a small sample of those covered in more detail throughout the numerous introductory essays to selected translated letters in Sirhindi, a monograph to be published by Paulist Press in 2012. Each letter has a separate detailed introduction and is translated completely. These translated letters comprise 13 % of the 1263 pages in the Makt uba t. See Ahmad Sirhindi, Makt uba t-i Im a m-i Rabba n i, ed., Nur Ahmad, 3 vols. (Karachi: Educational Press, 1972).
Der Islam Bd. 86, S. 122141 Walter de Gruyter 2011 ISSN 0021-1818 DOI 10.1515/ISLAM.2011.017

1)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

123

enlarge the context of inquiry to include Sirhindis ashraf i social milieu and to include Sirhindis contemplative practices in the larger context of his suf i training. By examining these two distinct spheres of Sirhindis life, this article revises current understandings of Sirhindi by moving analytically beyond the pioneering and balanced scholarly accounts of Yohanan Friedmann and J.G.J. ter Haar.2 Part of this enterprise involves directly addressing the issues that Sirhindis modern scholarly detractors have considered his most alarming statements, for example, his comparing the common people to cattle, suggesting that one treat Hindus like dogs, or his allegedly self-inflating and smugly self-righteous claims. The most balanced scholarship has sidestepped these issues, glossing them over because Sirhindi was basically a suf i, or because these kinds of utterances occurred very infrequently in letters written to influential Mughal officials. I invite the reader to bracket any prior assumptions about Sirhindi and consider looking at him in a fresh manner. For those unacquainted with Ahmad Sirhindi, his best-known writings are his collected letters, Makt uba t, the vast majority of which discuss contemplative practice and related suf i concerns. Using the contemplative exercises outlined in these letters, Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi teaching spread quickly throughout the eastern Islamic world. The historical record shows that these contemplative methods supplanted almost all prior Naqshbandi practices worldwide within two generations. The lineage Sirhindi founded, the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, is still vibrantly active today. At the same time, this dynamic, seventeenth-century Naqshbandi suf i made his mark as a controversial figure when Jahangir imprisoned Sirhindi for what he considered to be religiously arrogant claims. In the scholarly literature, Sirhindi continues to draw a disproportional share of off-the-cuff criticism than any other suf i. This article explores to what extent he deserves this kind of attention. There is sufficient historical evidence to go beyond many of the modern perfunctory judgments of Sirhindi. The first part of the article focuses on what modern scholars consider to be Sirhindis most controversial statements by providing socio-cultural and contemplative contexts that heretofore have not been considered in the scholarly literature. The second section of the article revises the general scholarly understanding that Ahmad Sirhindis experience of the unity of contemplative witnessing (wahdat-i
Yohanan Friedmann , Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 1971). See J.G.J. ter Haar, Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (15641624) as Mystic (Leiden: Het Oosters Instituut, 1992).
2)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

124

Arthur F. Buehler

shuhud) opposes the experiences involved with the unity of being (wahdat-i wujud), often associated with Ibn al- Arabi (d. 1240 Damascus). Although these two spheres of Sirhindis life are distinct, these are the two most misunderstood aspects of the scholarly understanding of Ahmad Sirhindi.

The sociological context: ashra f/ajla f Sirhindi emphasized religious affiliation. Not only was he a very selfconscious Muslim, he was a Hanaf i-Matur idi Muslim. In the eyes of others, particularly his seventeenth-century South Asian contemporaries, it is of the utmost importance that Sirhindi came from a family with ancestry outside of India. Thus, they appended Kabuli and/or Far uqi to the names of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi and his father. The first appellation shows that Sirhindis ancestors came from outside of India, specifically Kabul. The second indicates that he is a descendent of Umar b. Khattab al-Far uq, the second Sunn i caliph. In the social milieu of Mughal India (and many centuries before), this kind of information was critical, even though modern accounts typically ignore this sociological dimension in analyses of IndoMuslim life.3 These nisbas signal the social distinction between foreignborn Muslims who are the noble (ashraf), and indigenous Indian Muslim converts who are the commoners (ajlaf). It is this very distinction that provides a lens to understand some of Sirhindis statements, particularly those that have been interpreted negatively by modern readers. Muslim ashraf, as early as the fourteenth century (at least from the texts we have available), coalesced into roughly four social substrata: Sayyids, putative descendants of the Prophet; Shaykhs, putative descendants of the Companions; Mughals, putative descendants of Turkic origin; and Pathans, putative descendants of Afghans.4 Shaykh includes those of pure Arab descent. There are names ending in Siddiqi from Abu Bakr as-Siddiq the first

3) David Damrel aptly notes that Sirhindis antagonism toward non-Muslim participation in government and overall antagonism toward Indian non-Muslims more likely comes from his background in Indian Islam rather than from his membership in the imported Central Asian Naqshbandi order. However, there is no further elaboration in his article, The Naqshband Reaction Reconsidered, in Gilmartin , Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000), 188 [216245]. 4) See Ja far Sharif, Islam in India: The Customs of the Muslamans of India, translated by G. A. Herklots, edited by William Crooke (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1972), 1011.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

125

successor to Muhammad, Rizwi from Ali ibn Musa al-Rida, the eighth Shi i Imam buried in Mashhad, or Abbasi from Abbas, Muhammads paternal uncle. Mughals usually have Persian or Chaghatai descent, adding Mirza or Amirzada to their names. The commoners were tradesmen and farmers, the lowest of whom were butchers, weavers, barbers, and leather workers. The ashraf were to have the prestigious jobs in government service. Al-Baran i, a fourteenth-century chronicler, noted that Iltutmish (r. 12111236) dismissed thirty-three persons from government service on account of their low birth.5 In the same way, Balban (r. 12661287) removed low-born persons (ajlaf) from all important offices and sharply reprimanded the courtiers who had given Kamal Mohiyar, an Indian Muslim, a post as a tax collector (mutasarrif) of Amroha. Muhammad Tughluq (r. 13251351) consciously initiated the policy of giving preference to foreign-born Muslims in administration and government, and systematically ignored the claims of Indian Muslims.6 Being among the ashraf was an important consideration for suf i authority also, at least if one wanted to attract ashraf i disciples. In addition, ashraf i suf is had greater status because they were perceived to be more shar i a-minded and more pious in their formal Islamic practices, which were presumed to have taken the place of indigenous customs. By definition, all of those who Sirhindi corresponded with were among the ashraf because they could read Persian (except the one letter written to a Hindu). In Indo-Muslim Mughal culture, ancestry was of the utmost significance. South Asian suf is almost always avoided any identification with the trades or attaching professional attributions (nisbas) to their names because tradesmen were considered to be at the lower rungs of Muslim social strata. In ashraf i terms, the translation for ajlaf is course rabble. In his perusal of prominent hagiographical compendia of South Asia, Riazul Islam notes that almost all of the major hagiographic works make a point of mentioning the high pedigree of the leading shaykhs.7 From the textual

5) See also Diauddin Baran is Tar ikh-i Firoz Shah i, trans. H.M. Eliot , The History of India vol. 14, 2nd Edition (Calcutta: Susil Gupta Ltd., 1953), 178, for his contempt toward low-born men. 6) See Imtiaz Ahmad , The Ashr af-Ajlaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in India, Indian Economic & Social History Review 3 (1966), 270. Indian in this context means people from families who did not trace their lineage to non-Indian Muslim regions. 7) See Riazul Islam , Stories of Saintly Wrath, in Riazul Islam , Sufism in South Asia: Impact on Fourteenth Century Muslim Society (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 204.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

126

Arthur F. Buehler

evidence, there seems to be no doubt that this ashraf/ajlaf social stratification permeated Indo-Muslim life, politically, socially, and even spiritually. Shaykh Sirhindi was born into a scholarly, respected ashraf i family. He grew up expecting that it was the normal course of things for the ashraf to be the privileged upper crust of Muslim society, with the ajlaf below, and non-Muslims somewhere beyond the pale. In a letter addressed to Shaykh Far id Bukhar i, Akbar (r. 15561605) and Jahangirs (r. 16051627) paymaster general, he says that anyone who honors infidels (ahl-i kufr) disgraces Muslims. This is not only Hindus being employed in the ranks of the Mughal elite, but also means keeping company with non-Muslims and talking with them, which implies a larger context than government service. They should be kept away like dogs.8 He says that the least harm from associating with these non-Muslim enemies is the weakening of the shar i a injunctions and a strengthening of non-Muslim customs. The object of collecting a special tax (jizya) from them is to humiliate them to the point that they will be afraid to wear nice clothing.9 In this letter to one of the Mughal elite, Sirhindi invoked the primary principle of social order. Muslims (and those of many other non-Muslim cultures) have sacrificed individual freedoms and rights for what they have considered the greater good of social order. Like Abdulhaqq Muhaddith Dihlawis (d. 1642) plea to Jahangir via Shaykh Far id,10 Sirhindi expected the government to maintain the existing social order. In other words, everyone was supposed to be in his proper place according to prior precedent. These two learned suf is were conservatives in that they preferred to preserve what they thought had worked in the past. Akbars fiscal reforms and laws did not discriminate between Hindu, native Indian Muslim (the ajlaf), and the privileged foreign-born Muslim nobility (the ashraf). The ashraf did not appreciate Akbars policies because they lost their monopoly on lucrative landownership entitlements and government posts. Precedent dictated taxing young non-Muslim men who did not join the military and

8) There is an implication here of non-Muslims being impure since dogs saliva is considered to be impure and requires washing of garments before prayer according to Hanaf i jurisprudence. 9) See Ahmad Sirhindi, Makt uba t , 1.163.4344 (volume.letter.pages). Hereafter Makt uba t. Where there are no quotation marks, I have summarized parts of the letter using Sirhindis language faithfully. 10) See Abul-Majd Abdulhaqq Muhaddith Dihlawi , Kit a b al-maka t i b warasail ila arba b al-kam a l wal-fa dail (Delhi, Matba -i Mujtabai, 1867), 8491 (letter 17).

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

127

generally humiliating non-Muslims. The ashraf i Sirhindi talking about how he feels toward Hindus was almost identical to Brahmin attitudes toward untouchable, outcaste mleccha Muslims. All of this, with its derogatory and discriminatory black-and-white pageant of blatant inequality, was intended to preserve a stable social order. Much of this, if not all, is unpalatable to modern sensibilities. It is very rare for Sirhindi to talk like this in Makt uba t. There are echos of al-Baran is rhetoric almost four centuries earlier, whose principles of governance revolves [sic] around shar i a, kufr, jiha d, and jizya; all that is good originates from Islam and a non-Muslim is nothing but evil embodied.11 Abdalquddus Gangohi, the paramount Chishti-Sabir i Shaykh who Sirhindis father met as a youth, declared that only Muslims of pure and zealous faith should have posts in the government and non-Muslims (kuffa r) should not be employed in government positions. Forced to pay jizya, they should not be allowed to dress like Muslims nor should they be allowed to practice their faith openly and publically. There is a clear four-century consensus of the Indo-Muslim religious elite on how to treat and govern the Hindu majority. Sirhindis attitudes often fit the ashraf i profile, as one would expect. Not all harsh language can be attributed to ashraf i attitudes. Friedmann says that Sirhindi frequently speaks of the common people with undisguised contempt [using] expressions such as common people who are like cattle.12 Most of the references to common people in Makt uba t refer to common Muslims who follow the shar i a to distinguish them from the contemplative elite (khaw ass). In the few instances Sirhindi compares common people to cattle, it is a description of common peoples unawareness (maqa m-i aw a mm kal-an a m) or of common people being ruled by their stomachs.13 This does not appear to be a typical ashraf i attitude or undisguised contempt. An ashraf i attitude towards native-born Indian Muslims would be more like saying that they are unworthy, disgusting and importunate, most of them being showy, superficial, and disagree-

11) See Muzaffar Alam , Shari a and Governance in the Indo-Islamic Context, in David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000), 225 [216245]. 12) See Friedmann , Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 50. Although Fiha ris-i tahlili-yi hashtg a na-yi makt uba t-i Ahmad Sirhind i (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 2000) is not a set of concordances, of the ten entries for common people only two refer to them as cattle. Ajlaf is not a term used to refer to them. 13) See Makt uba t 1.313.168 and 3.49.114.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

128

Arthur F. Buehler

able.14 Sirhindis statement, on the contrary, is an example of Sirhindis very high standards for what it means to be a real human being. He says, The common people are outside this shared human reality since they are ruled by their animal natures.15 From this perspective, Sirhindi is just stating how few people tame their ego-selves. Here he is talking as a suf i shaykh. There are also Central Asian Naqshbandi precedents. When we hear Sirhindi and other ashraf i Muslims in India complain about the nonIslamic nature of Akbars government, one of their frames of reference is prior precedent in Transoxiana where Naqshbandis and jurists had more influence in the political realm. The Naqshbandi Shaykh, Ubaydullah Ahr ar (d. 1490), is often mentioned in Ahmad Sirhindis letters (33 times). While Ahr ar was alive, he was the largest landholder in Transoxiana and the political patron of Timurid rulers and the Transoxiana elite. Ahr ar had a clear visionary message that he was divinely ordained to protect the Muslims from the evil of oppressors.16 On a practical political level, he strongly encouraged rulers to implement the shar i a. In India, the ashraf expected their comfort and welfare as ashraf i Muslims to be the first and foremost governmental priority. From this frame of reference, the governments job was to discourage and abolish customs of non-Muslims. From the perspective of Mughal political reality, Khwaja Ahr ars Central Asia is another time and place, as are most other prior Islamic principles of governance. Abdulhaqq Muhaddith, like Sirhindi, complained about Akbar mixing up the social order by putting ajlaf (the common Indian-origin Muslims) and even non-Muslims (the Rajput Hindus) into elite positions in the government. This complaint is based upon Abdalhaqqs interpretation of Prophetic precedent, the sunna, which Akbar had disregarded. From Akbars point of view, an expanding Mughal empire required a leadership unfettered by a special ashraf i interest group touting their interests in the name of Islamic legalism. It did not make political, economic, or military sense just to think of the ashraf when ashraf i Muslims were at most three percent of the population.17 With very few

14) See Richard C. Foltz , Mughal India and Central Asia (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 107. 15) See Makt uba t letter 2.67. 16) See Muzaffar Alam , The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs, and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation, Modern Asian Studies 43/1 (2009), 144 [135174]. 17) Urban population was 15 % of the estimated 110 million population of the Mughal Empire, that is, 16.5 million. Even if one inflates the population of ashraf i Muslims by counting them as 20 % of the urban population, that is only 3.1 million out of 110 million.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

129

exceptions, rulers of all times have put political expediency and maintaining political power before anything else. The Mughal emperors were no exception. Sirhindis concept of a stable social order was not a Muslim only affair. His worldview recognized different religions with different ways of living ones life (shar i as).18 It was a live and let live perspective exemplified by the Quranic verse he cites, to you, your way of living (d in) and for me, my way of living (d in) [Q. 109:6].19 There is no evidence that he ever concerned himself with trying to convert non-Muslims to Islam or with preventing non-Muslims from practicing their religions or living their way of life. There was concern, however, that Muslims could not live freely as Muslims. He says, the infidels enforced the injunctions of their religion while Muslims were prevented from implementing the injunctions (ahka m) of Islam. If they did then they were killed.20 The injunctions he is speaking about here are not the individual worship aspect of shar i a injunctions ( iba da t), since Muslims could obviously pray, fast, give alms, and perform hajj. Instead Sirhindi is referring to injunctions in society (mu a mala t), which includes the right to build mosques, slaughter cows, and have the government appoint the requisite Muslim judges. In his hometown of Sirhind there had not been a judge for years.21 Some of Sirhindis concerns reflect the high degree of tension between Hindus and Muslims in the region. Between 1616 and 1619, Sirhindi mentions Hindus destroying a mosque and tomb in the pilgrimage spot of Kurukshetra reservoir (near Thaneswar) and building a temple on the site. He reports that on the fasting day the eleventh day of each month, Ekadashi, Muslims were not allowed to bake bread or sell food, but during Ramadan Hindus were allowed to do these activities.22 These types of issues created a lot of ashraf i opposition to the Mughal government. More germane to our discussion, Akbars upside-down social order had mortally lasting effects on Sirhindis family.

Personal issues When Mirza Hakims (Akbars half brother) army came through Sirhind in 1580 to dethrone Akbar, there were many nobles in Sirhind who
18) 19)

See Makt uba t letter 2.55. See ibid., 1.47.18. 20) See ibid., 1.47.14. 21) See ibid., 1.195.85. 22) See ibid., 2.92.9394.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

130

Arthur F. Buehler

openly welcomed him. The conventional rationales for this opposition have been already discussed. Less evident are the personal factors in Sirhindis life that heretofore have not been considered in the western academic literature. Specifically, these revolve around Akbars ordering the execution of Sirhindis father-in-law, Shaykh Sultan, in the fifth month of 1007/ December, 1598. This event did nothing to endear Sirhindi to the Mughal regime or to Hindus. It was one of the very few, if not the only, public killing in Akbars reign. Hajji Shaykh Sultan was one of the people assigned in Akbars imperial service to translate the Mahabharata,23 and at some point Hindus complained that he had slaughtered some cows in Thaneswar. This was against the law in the Panjab, so he was banished to Bhakkar. Far id Bukhar i, the governor of Multan at the time, interceded for him, and Shaykh Sultan ended up becoming the tax collector (karo r i) of Thaneswar.24 Later, in the words of Abul-Fadl, he [Shaykh Sultan] renewed his old grudges and set himself to hurt the good.25 No specifics are given other than Shaykh Sultan was summarily executed. It does not seem that things went well for at least one other member of Shaykh Sultans family. Sirhindi writes two letters to Far id Bukhar i concerning Shaykh Sultans brother, Shaykh Zakariyya#, asking for assistance because Shaykh Zakariyya# is having difficulties with his job as revenue officer. Then Sirhindi is pleading with Khan-i Jahan, a high-ranking Mughal official, for Shaykh Zakariyya#s release from prison. The last letter is addressed to Shaykh Zakariyya#s son.26 Recently in the scholarly literature, this incident with Shaykh Sultan has resulted in some misguided remarks. Sirhindis comments on the frictions between Muslims and Mughal laws mentioned in the previous section
One suspects that Akbar knew of his intransigent attitude toward the Hindus. Abdulqadir Badaun i, a Muslim theologian and translator in Akbars court who disagreed with Akbars including Hindus in the court elite, was also assigned to translate parts of the Mahabharata. There is a short biographical notice of Shaykh Sultan Thaneswar i in Abdulhayy b. Fakhruddin Hasan i, Nuzhat al-khaw at ir, 8 vols. (Hyderabad, Deccan: Dairat al-Ma arif al- Uthmaniyya, 1976), 5:161162 which confuses Abdurrahman Khan-i Khanan for Shaykh Far id. There is no mention of his demise at the hands of Akbar. 24) See Abdulqadir Badaun i, Muntakhab al-t a w a r ikh, 3 vols., trans. by Wolseley Haig (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1925), 3:173174. Far id Bukhar i went on to become the future patron of Baqibillahs suf i lodge in Delhi and a recipient of twenty-four letters from Ahmad Sirhindi. 25) See Abul-Fadl Allami, Akbar na ma, 3 vols., trans. By H. Beveridge (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1993), 3:1118. 26) See Makt uba t 1.43.9; 1.50.22; 1.72.54; 1.98.
23)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

131

have been mistranslated as infidels openly practiced their rites, while the Muslims were prevented from so doing [implying iba da t instead of mu a mala t injunctions]; and if they did so, they were killed. This is followed by the translators remark, so says the divine with the usual smug exaggeration of which the self-righteous are so capable.27 Not linking these two events, M. Athar, the translator, notes thirteen lines later that the only case of an execution on record was of Hajji Sultan Thansewar i (whom he did not know as Shaykh Sultan, Sirhindis father in law), a revenue collector. Regretfully, the author did not connect Sirhindis comment with Shaykh Sultan. As a Muslim living under Mughal rule, Sirhindi thought the government could have been more just, indeed much more just. If Hindus had been treated like dogs, there would have been social stability (Sirhindis ashraf i version), and all this might never have happened. His father Abdulahad passed away in the sixth month of 1007 or January, 1599, within a month of his father-in-laws execution. Very soon after these events Ahmad Sirhindi met a Naqshbandi shaykh, Baqibillah (d. 1603 Delhi), in Delhi and experienced a spiritual transformation that changed his life.

Modern versus pre-modern notions of societal order Sirhindis comments about commoners or Hindus, in their potential to increase strife between people, contrast sharply with the larger perspective advocating peace to all (sulh-i kull) that held Akbar and his Mughal successors in good stead.28 From a modern perspective, one could accuse Shaykh Sirhindi, in spite of his documented spiritual insights, of expressing perspectives that disrupt social harmony. To a large extent, the contrast between hard boundaries between religious communities and relatively fluid or non-existent boundaries between others on the basis of religious identity exemplify the qualitative differences between pre-modern and modern worldviews. In the modern world there is a rational notion of being a citizen among other equally legally, morally, and politically free citizens regardless of ethnicity, color, religion, or gender. In Sirhindis world one is a believer who, by embracing certain beliefs and practices, will
See Makt uba t 1.47.14. See M. Athar Ali , Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 167. 28) Nasir ad-Di n al-Tusi s books were read regularly to Akbar. Muzaffar Alam explains the differences between the sharia-model and the Nasirean model of governance in his Shar i a and Governance, 216245.
27)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

132

Arthur F. Buehler

be saved in the Hereafter. For the former, not having these freedoms is painfully inconceivable, and for the latter, to be an infidel is to be cast out of ones family and community and forever doomed to punishment in the Hereafter. These are drastically different worldviews. In Sirhindis worldview, there would be no strife if Hindus lived in their world and Muslims lived in their world, with the ashraf i Muslims authoritatively presiding over the Hindus politically. There was no place in his worldview for mutual understanding, shared meanings, much less mutual resonance between these two religio-cultural worlds.29 Suf i contemplative practice (or any other pre-modern contemplative practice), focusing on subjective individual experience and development, was structurally incapable of making an inter-religious space for this to happen. Subjective contemplative development is independent of this dimension of intersubjective inter-religious development. Just because someone is contemplatively gifted and can facilitate others to have similar experiences does not mean that culturally determined prejudices and proclivities automatically disappear. It is only with the advent of modernity that a critical mass of people could rationally view the cultural ignorance that had perpetuated slavery, caste, ethnocentricity, and sexism. With their collectively combined and increased intersubjective social awareness, moderns have made irreversible changes to human societies across the globe, which are still in process. This is a long-winded way of saying that Sirhindi had a worldview quite different from most of us in the modern world who read English.30 His way of ordering society to achieve what he considered social harmony contrasts sharply with modern notions of what multicultural harmony entails in functioning democracies.

Exaggerated claims In the western academic world over the last decades, Sirhindi does not get many compliments. This is nothing new. From Abdalhaqq Muhaddith Dihlawi and Jahangir to the present day, the most common critique of Sirhindi has been his apparently exaggerated claims. Sirhindi claimed that he was the first to receive certain spiritual knowledge, that he was at a higher station than Abu Bakr (who as Muhammads first successor Sirhindi had
See Makt uba t letter 1.167. There were those individuals who transcended aspects of the predominant seventeenth-century Indo-Muslim culture like Dar a Shikuh (d. 1659), and Miyan Mir (d. 1635).
30) 29)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

133

declared to be the most exalted non-prophet human being), and that he was on par with the Prophet Muhammad.31 Sirhindi also declared himself to be the unique one (fard), having absolute authority from the empyrean to earth and implied that he was the renewer of the second millennium.32 What can scholars make of this and similar kinds of claims made by suf is before Sirhindi? Ibn al- Arabi (d. 1240 Damascus) had multiple visions showing him to be the Seal of Gods Friends, the eternal source of being a Friend of God (wala ya).33 Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209 Shiraz) had an experience of God declaring him to be Gods vice-regent on earth and all other worlds. These are some of the better-known examples. Focusing on Sirhindis situation, there are three possibilities. The first possibility is that these claims were made in an altered state of ecstatic consciousness and deserve to be put in the category of what Carl Ernst calls ecstatic utterances.34 Sirhindi understands that non-realized suf is can have altered states of consciousness (ahw a l) where they mistakenly perceive themselves to be closer to God than they actually are. Sirhindi apologizes for some of his own claims, explaining that he was mistaken.35 Here we have the rare case of the suf i himself recognizing some claims as inappropriate and abrogating them. But that leaves the question open because most of Sirhindis seemingly grandiose claims still remain.36 The second and third possibilities are that these claims are either true or false (or both). The vexing problem is that scholars qua scholars have no way of
See Friedmann , Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 8789. See Ahmad Sirhindi, Mabda wa-ma a d, ed. Zawwar Husayn with Urdu translation (Karachi: Ahmad Brothers Printers, 1984), 911. 33) It is ironic when the doyen of Ibn al- Arabi studies, William Chittick, finds Sirhindis claims to be exaggerated but never questions Ibn al- Arabis claims, for example, saying how Sirhindis criticisms of Ibn al- Arabi are superficial and selfinflating. See William C. Chittick , On Sufi Psychology: A Debate between the Soul and the Spirit, in Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani et. al., eds., Consciousness and Reality: Studies in Memory of Toshihiko Izutsu (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 343. 34) See Carl Ernst , Words of Ecstasy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), 3. 35) In Makt uba t letter 1.220, which apologizes for claims made in Makt uba t letter 1.11. 36) Using primary textual translations, I demonstrate many of Sirhindi s claims in Tales of Renewal: Establishing Ahmad Sirhindi as the Reformer of the Second Millennium, in Jack Renard , Tales of Gods Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 234248. These claims are discussed analytically by Friedman, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 28, 6068, 8791.
32) 31)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

134

Arthur F. Buehler

verifying these claims. If the intersubjective consensus of the suf i community agrees or disagrees with a claim over time then that has some weight. But that seldom turns up in the literature. In Sirhindis case, his implying that he was the renewer of the second millennium was revised by the Naqshbandi community over time. By the eighteenth century, Naqshbandis who came after him, including Shah Waliullah (d. 1762 Delhi) and Abdulghan i Nabulusi (d. 1731 Damascus), recognized him as the renewer of the first century of the second millennium.37 When evaluating suf i utterances one needs to have post-rational criteria and data before one can evaluate post-rational claims as boasts, self-inflating, or true. The realm of the mind can allude to the realm of the post-mind (spirit if you will) but without the post-rational data, the mind is not qualified to evaluate what happens in post-rational states anymore than a person not trained in calculus is qualified to verify a differential equation. The mind and post-mind realms are separate domains of knowledge with distinct presuppositions and methodologies. There are ecstatic utterances and there is ego-inflation, but scholars do not yet have the means to discern between these two. This is why I have qualified my description of exaggerated claims with apparently or seemingly because of my own lack of knowledge and the overall lack of standard criteria to measure spiritual development. Perhaps in the future scholars will be trained experientially in consciousness exploration like anthropologists are now required to be trained in actual experiential fieldwork.38 What scholars can do now is consider the context of contemplative practice, which, among other things, will rectify the often distorted scholarly evaluations of Sirhindi vis a vis Ibn al- Arabi.

Ahmad Sirhindi and Ibn al- Arabi and experiences of unity Much has been written about the supposed antithesis of Sirhindis term unity of contemplative witnessing (wahdat-i shuhud) and the term unity of being (wahdat-i wujud), commonly but mistakenly associated

See Sh a h Wal i ull a h s (d. 1762) proofs of renewal in Abdulahad Wahdat Sirhindi, Sab il al-rasha d, Urdu translation by Ghul a m Mu stafa Kh a n (n.p., 1979), 48; and Pagani , Il Rinnovamento Mistico, p. 254 referrring to a passage in Sirhindi, Makt uba t letter 1.260. 38) Those studying Transpersonal Psychology are seeking to pioneer such kinds of inquiry.

37)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

135

with Ibn al- Arabi.39 What is almost universally unrecognized in prior discussions is that Sirhindis perception of the unity of God is based upon his own contemplative experience and its subsequent interpretation in light of other suf is experience of unity. It is (mostly) non-suf i commentators who have reified Sirhindis contemplative experience by associating it with a dogma, creed, philosophy, ideology, or doctrine. In my translation of Sirhindis letters, I have chosen letters to highlight Sirhindis contemplative insights so that scholars who reify aspects of Sirhindis experiences will need to do so in a suitably larger context, namely the post-rational domain of contemplative experience outlined in Makt uba t. Lets review Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindis experience. Under the tutelage of Baqibillah, Sirhindi finally had his own breakthroughs in contemplative experience that changed his life. He experienced the (apparent) ontological unity of being that his father Abdulahad had taught him from books. A common way of explaining this experience conceptually is to compare normal consensus-reality consciousness with a dark night and a sky full of stars, representing multiplicity.40 In the beginning stages of successful suf i practice, one gets blasted ecstatically into bright sunlight, representing unity. With the resulting intoxication, the aspirant only sees the sun and there is nothing else in existence except the sun. Experientially, the multiplicity of the conventional phenomenal world disappears and one interprets God to be everything. With the collapse of the ego-self, ones consciousness becomes ecstatically drowned in the ocean of God. When the aspirant necessarily comes back to consensus-reality, the world of multiplicity is interpreted as illusion. From here, it is a very short step to consider shar i a practices superfluous. Sirhindi called the suf is who interpreted the phenomenal world as illusion and/or who mistakenly interpreted these experiences as experiences of God wujud is. Baqibillah made sure that Sirhindi went beyond this stage as soon as possible.41 From there, Sirhindi was able to experience both multiplicity and unity, in other words, he metaphorically saw the stars and the sun sim-

39) William Chittick has an intriguing idea that Sirhind is emphasis on the unity of contemplative witnessing was to foil the opponents of wahdat-i wujud. I would rephrase this observation to say that Sirhindis use of this perspective opened up the possibility of suf i practice for more jurists. See Chittick s Rumi and wahdat al-wujud, in Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi, eds., Amin Banani , Richard Hovannisian , and Georges Sabagh (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 90. 40) Sirhindi uses this metaphor in Makt uba t 1.43.67. 41) This is detailed in Makt uba t letter 1.290.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

136

Arthur F. Buehler

ultaneously, and could discern between them. Finally he was able to see the sun and stars separately, as one does in consensus-reality. What had changed in the interim between these experiences was that he had become an incredibly transformed human being. With this realization, Sirhindi noted that large numbers of suf is were ending their journey thinking that the sun-only version of unity was the end of the path. It distressed him that they were interpreting their unity-of-being experience as an experience of God. Sirhindi had conclusively confirmed through experience what his mentor had told him, namely that they were merely experiencing the shadows of the attributes of God. Even more distressing was their increasing disregard for the shar i a injunctions. Sirhindi went from being a bright freshly certified suf i teacher to a man with a mission. Before we go any further, it is important to remember not to project Sirhindis stance against wujud i suf is and their version of the unity of being on to Ibn al- Arabi, who probably would have agreed wholeheartedly with Sirhindis critique. On the practical day-to-day level, Sirhindis main work, unlike that of Ibn al- Arabi (it seems), was teaching and supervising the teaching of a large number of disciples. In that pedagogical context, Sirhindi perceived the aforementioned learning challenges in his disciples, one of which he called asserting the unity of being (taw hid-i wujud i). To deal with this learning impediment, he emphasized the unity of contemplative witnessing (wahdat-i shuhud), namely that the unity one experienced was subjective, not ontological. In this way, the phenomenal world was not trivialized as a figment of ones subjective imagination, along with the shar i a. When one came out of contemplation, the world was the world. In contemplation God was God. This perspective of unity explicitly honored Gods ultimate incommensurability, which might have attracted more jurists into learning about sufism. The term unity of contemplative witnessing (wahdat-i shuhud) was first popularly used by Alauddawla Simnan i (d. 1336). Sirhindi, however, uses this technical term in his own way on the basis of his own experiences and the needs of his students. Sirhindi primarily objected to the perspective of the unity of being on the basis of his contemplative experience, while Simnan i objected to this perspective for juridic reasons.42 There is a temptation to equate Simnan is and Sirhindis thinking because of their differences with Ibn al- Arabi (which are usually more apparent than real).43 CitSee Makt uba t letter 1.42. Sayyid Ashraf Jahangir Simnan i (d. 1425 Jaunpur), who studied with Alauddawla Simnan i as a young man, responds to Alauddawlas ideas in La taif-i ashraf i f i baya n-i t aw af-i suf i, 2 vols. (Karachi: Maktabat-i Simnani, 1999)
43) 42)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

137

ing Simnan i in Abdurrahman Jamis (d. 1492) Nafaha t al-uns, Baqibillah noted that Simnan i had agreed with Ibn al- Arabi when he had experienced what Ibn al- Arabi had discussed, but disagreed with Ibn al- Arabi over what he had not experienced.44 Perhaps he is obliquely teaching Sirhindi (mentioned right after these comments), who might have been grappling with these two shaykhs perspectives at the time.45 Later, Baqibillah points out that the differences between Ibn al- Arabi and Simnan i were semantic.46 In my reading of Makt uba t, it appears that these two perspectives on unity are important for beginners to know because they function as markers on the path. One characteristic marker for aspirants experiencing the unity of being is intoxication and ecstasy. Before being tempted to bask in the experience of intoxication and ecstasy, they realize that they need to move beyond that point. Sirhindi evidently stayed in this intoxicated state for ten years.47 With his experiential insights and later reflection, he devised training methods so his disciples did not get stuck there.48 In Sirhindis juridic sufism, the differences between these two perspectives are significant because the unity of contemplative witnessing is more jurist friendly. In addition, it would be more difficult for a jurists mind and ego-self to reject sufism. Such considerations have repercussions in a suf i training setting.

2:129150. His answer to Alauddawla begins on p. 144 of the 27th la tifa. See also, Hermann Landolt , Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kashan i und Simnan i ber Wahdat al-Wujud, Der Islam 50 (1973), 2981; and his Simnan i on Wahdat al-Wujud, in Collected Papers on Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, edited by M. Mohaghegh and Hermann Landolt , (Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies, 1971), 93111. 44) See Baqibillah, Kulliya t-i Baqi billah, eds., Abul-Hasan Zayd Far uqi and Burhan Ahmad Far uqi (Lahore: Din Muhammadi Press, ca. 1967), 28. 45) Sirhindi appears to be in this situation at the end of letter 1.11. His disciple, Muhammad Sadiq Kashmir i Hamadan i, notes that Sirhindi was attracted to Simnan is perspective and tended to veer from Ibn al- Arabis. Perhaps this is because Muhammad Sadiq was a jurist and foregrounded Sirhindis jurist side. See his Kalim a t-i sa diqin, ed. Muhammad Saleem Akhtar (Lahore: al-Quraysh Publishers, 1988), 187 (Persian text). 46) See Baqibillah, Kulliya t, 37. Baqibillah explains that in the context of absolute, the absolute Nondelimited (i tlaq-i mu tlaq), Simnan i disagreed with Ibn alArabi, understanding it to be existence as negatively conditioned (bi-shar t la shay) when Simnan i really meant existence as relatively non-conditioned (la bishar t shay), which agrees with Simnan is and Ibn al- Arabis perspective. 47) See Makt uba t 1.36.98. 48) See ter Haar, Follower and Heir of the Prophet, 34. In Makt uba t letter 1.290 we get the detailed experiences that led him out of this state.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

138

Arthur F. Buehler

Even so, the so-called controversy generated between these two formulations of unity has been vastly overstated in the scholarly literature. Those who criticize Sirhindi for not understanding Ibn al- Arabi or for his not appreciating differing perspectives are doing a partial reading of Sirhindis views on the subject. Acknowledging the teaching context is critical in seeking to understand what Sirhindi is communicating. The overall suf i consensus is that there is no real controversy. Indeed, both Ibn al- Arabi and Sirhindi agree that these two valid modes of unity are simply two ways of perceiving the One. Sirhindis mentor, Baqibillah, reminds us that differences in subjective experiences between protgs of God are like those between the imams of the legal schools. That is, the differences are in the understandings of their words not in the foundation of the actual case at hand (which in this case is declaring the unity of God, taw hid).49 Sirhindi was well aware that the notion of unity of being was not Ibn al- Arabis formulation. He also acknowledged that both the Fu su s al-h ikam and Fut uha t al-Makkiyya honor and encourage a Muslim to follow the shar i a guidelines (in spite of his using the titles of these books as foils to make a point in his letters). Sirhindi seeks to reconcile many kinds of differences, including those between suf is and jurists and between these two experiences of unity.50 He explains that the expressions, All is God and All is from God, although semantically different, really are the same. The latter is more preferable (to him) because it appeals more to jurists and it honors transcendence.51 For Ibn al- Arabi, the being side of the coin is the God side and the contemplative witnessing side is the human side.52 This is yet another reminder not to jump to conclusions about a multifaceted suf i on the basis of a partial examination of what he has written. The more one reads Sirhindi works, the more one sees how he acknowledged other complementary perspectives. His writings did not encompass all viewpoints like Ibn al- Arabis,53 but in the suf i environment of Mug-

See Baqibillah, Kulliya t, 28. In terms of reconciling suf is and jurists see Makt uba t letter 3.32. 51) See Ahmad Sirhindi, Sharh-i ruba iya t-i Khw aja Baqi billah, ed., Thanalhaqq Siddiqi (Karachi: Educational Press, 1966), 3336. 52) See Qasim Kakai, Wahdat al-wujud bi riw a yat-i Ibn Arab i wa-Meister Eckhart (Tehran: Intishar at-i Hurmus, 2007), 255, 259260. Ibn al- Arabi says that for suf is there is annihilation of the injunction, (fana-i hukm) not the annihilation of the entity (fana-i ayn). The former is the station of contemplative witnessing (maqa m-i shuhud) not mere annihilation (fana). See Ibid. 53) Ibn al- Arabi responds [to Ahmad Sirhindi] by pointing out quite rightly that in the Fut uha t, he has already said everything such critics have said, because
50)

49)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

139

hal India his criticisms largely balanced out what he considered to be the extreme conditions of the time.54 Sirhindi had his own unique role in his own time and place. He also had his own set of unveilings, some of which appeared to differ with those of Ibn al- Arabis, which he recognizes, like Baqibillah before him, are like the variant interpretations of imams of different legal schools.55 But those differences are minor compared the overwhelming commonality between these great shaykhs. Rare for a suf i of any era, Shaykh Sirhindi publically acknowledged his errors.56
What can I do! Sometimes I war with shaykh Ibn Arabi may God rest his soul and other times we are at peace! He was the one who laid the foundations of the doctrine of the mystical knowledge of God (ma rifat wa- irfa n) and thoroughly explained it. He is the one who spoke in detail of the Unity of God (taw hid) and the union with him (ittisa l) and who explained the origin of multiplicity and multiformity Most of the Sufis who came after him chose to follow him and most used his terminology. Even I, miserable as I am, have profited from the blessings of this prominent man and have learned much from his views and insights. May God reward him for this from me. Because the moments in which a man makes mistakes necessarily alternate with moments in

there he presents all valid points of view. Cited in William C. Chittick , On Sufi Psychology: A Debate between the Soul and the Spirit, in Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani et. al., eds., Consciousness and Reality: Studies in Memory of Toshihiko Izutsu (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 343. Such a claim might seem to be extreme, but makes sense in the context of an interpretive community where Ibn al- Arabi is an authority. Reading Kakais voluminous Wahdat al-wujud, it is easy to see how Sirhindi affirms so many aspects of Ibn al- Arabis notions of sufism. 54) Here I am responding to William Chittick, noting the unbalanced nature of Ahmad Sirhindis criticisms. See Spectrums of Islamic Thought: Sa id al-Din Farghani on the Implications of Oneness and Manyness, in Leonard Lewisohn , ed., The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1992), 205 fn 2. Teaching has its own imperatives. Anyone teaching Islam in an upright manner in the contemporary West is going to teach it in an unbalanced fashionemphasizing more of the positive aspects of Islamicate civilization than the negative aspects. This is because of the overwhelming negativity of the media and resultant attitudes prevalent in contemporary western culture. 55) One of Baqibillahs sons, Muhammad Ubaydullah, commonly known as Khwaja Khurd, kept needing clarifications about wahdat-i wujud and wahdat-i shuhud. See Muhammad Ma sum, Makt uba t-i ma sumiyya, 3 vols., edited by Ghulam Mustafa Kh a n (Karachi: Walend Military Press, nd.), 1:410422. This letter is one of three letters over ten pages long out of 239 letters in the first volume of Muhammad Ma sums Makt uba t (Muhammad Ma sum was Sirhindis son and formal successor). 56) See Makt uba t letter 1.220 and 1.209.108.

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

140

Arthur F. Buehler which he is right and because man sometimes says the right things and sometimes not, he whoever he is and whatever he teaches should regard the consensus of opinion of the majority of Gods servants as the criterion for his being right and he should see the departure from this as proof of his not being right.57

The Indian suf i consensus after Sirhindi went on appreciating Ibn alArabis vast contribution to the disciplined inquiry of post-rational human consciousness. Sirhindis formulation of the unity of contemplative witnessing did not take the Naqshbandi world by storm, although every so often an Indian Chishti wrote a treatise defending the unity of being.58 Shah Waliullah (d. 1762) and his son Shah Rafi uddin Dihlawi (d. 1818) both wrote short letters or treatises demonstrating that these two modes of experiencing unity were essentially the same. Any differences that arose were a result of semantics and terminology.59 The Sayyid Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Mir Dard of Delhi (d. 1785) deeply immersed himself in the books of Ibn al- Arabi, along with those of Mulla Sadr a.60 One of the many unstudied jewels of Indian sufism, the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Faqirullah Shikarpur i (d. 1781), wrote sophisticated suf i treatises, blending Ibn alArabis ideas with the ideas of Ibn al- Arabis followers along with Sirhindis Makt uba t and his own suf i experience.61 Even if most of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi shaykhs replaced Ibn al- Arabis Fu su s al-h ikam with Sirhindis Makt uba t as a required text, as apparently they did, Ibn al- Arabis suf i
From Makt uba t letter 3.79, translated by ter Haar, Follower and Heir of the Prophet, 130131. 58) See William C. Chittick , Notes on Ibn al-Arabis Influence in the Subcontinent, the Muslim World 82/34 (1992), 218241. 59) See Shah Waliullah, al-Tafh im a t al-ilahiyya, 2 vols, Ghulam Mustafa al-Qasimi, ed., (Hyderabad, Sind: al-Matba al-Haydar i, 1967), 2: 261284. This letter is translated into English by Fazle Mahmud , Shah Walyullahs View on Wahdatul Wujud and Wahdatush Shuhud, al-Hikma 1 (1964), 4264. The nineteenth-century Naqshbandi-Khalidi Shaykh, Abdulqadir al-Jazair i (d. 1883) was a well known master of Ibn al- Arabis writings. He resolves these two perspectives (without mentioning them by name) clearly and concisely in less than two pages. See Abdulq a dir al-Jaz a ir i , Le livre des haltes (Kitb al-mawqif) 3 vols., trans. Michel Lagarde (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1:552553 (letter 191). 60) For the most detailed study of M i r Dard , see Homayra Ziad s Quest of the Nightingale: The Religious Thought of Khwaja Mir Dard (17211785), Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2008. 61) Two of his printed works are Faqirullah Shikarpur i, Qu tb al-irsha d (Quetta: Maktaba-yi Islamiyya, 1978) and Makt uba t-i Faqirullah, ed., Mawlawi Karam Bakhsh (Lahore: Islamiyya Steam Press, nd.).
57)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st-century update

141

framework and perspectives permeated Indian sufism.62 The unity of contemplative witnessing as a way of interpreting the experience of unity was retained on the pages of Sirhindis Makt uba t. These letters functioned as a detailed operating manual for a curriculum in contemplative practice showing how to verify ways of knowing about unity. Read and discussed in Mujaddidi circles led by learned and contemplatively experienced Mujaddidi shaykhs, Sirhindis written and experiential legacy did make an impact. It was the jurist-friendly version of a newly renewed sufism.

Conclusion Scholars studying sufism over the past decades have enlarged the context of their inquiry by investigating the cultural, political, anthropological, and linguistic contexts of suf i activity in ever-increasing detail. Although Friedmann and ter Haar largely steered the scholarly study of Ahmad Sirhindi beyond the nationalistic agendas that had either demonized or glorified Sirhindi, several issues and residual misconceptions have still not been resolved. In order to address some of these more intractable topics, this article has demonstrated the inter-regional context and sociological presuppositions underlying ashraf i opposition to Akbars reforms, which were probably exasperated in Sirhindis case by the execution of his father-in-law. With this background, we can interpret many of Sirhindis controversial statements in a more nuanced manner. At the same time, it remains difficult for scholars to assess Sirhindis (or other suf is) apparently exaggerated claims, a subset of problematic statements, simply because of our present lack of criteria to evaluate post-rational experience. Although these criteria do not appear to be forthcoming in the near future, increased scholarly attention to the contemplative context can correct the intellectual tendency to reify suf is contemplative experience. By examining this contemplative data on its own terms and taking the training environment within which many suf is operate into account, prior rigid dichotomies like wahdat-i shuhud and wahdat-i wujud look very different. Investigating the experiential basis of wahdat-i shuhud and wahdat-i wujud will enable scholarly understanding to become qualitatively more nuanced. One desideratum in the study of sufism in the 21st-century is to continue to expand the context, particularly in the subjective realm where our tools for comprehension are woefully lacking.
See Hamid Algar, Reflections of Ibn Arabi in Early Naqshbandi Tradition, Journal of the Muhyiddin ibn Arabi Society 10 (1991), 61.
62)

AUTHORS COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR