Subah

“ The Subah pays only 12,000 rupees a-year, and about 3000 rupees as Rajangka. This district maintains two companies of 120 fusileers each.
p. 165The forts are Hedang, where the Subah resides; Chaudandi, where the Rajas formerly lived; Rawa, near the junction of the San and Dudh Kosis; Chariyagarhi, on the Kamal; and Hatuya, at the junction of the San Kosi and Arun, where a Serdar often has a military station.
At the temple of Siva in Halesi, where the Dudhkosi and Sankosi unite, is a very great fair in February. ”

“ He had sent 28 elephants, 40 horses of that part of the country which are known as ṭānghan, 50 eunuchs, 500 pargāla nafīs sitārkāṅī.16
It had been made a rule that the events of the Subahs should be reported according to the boundaries of each, and news-writers from the Court had been appointed for this duty. This being the rule that my revered father had laid down, I also observe it, and much gain and great advantage are to be brought about by it and information is acquired about the world and its inhabitants. If the advantages of this were to be written down it would become a long affair. ”

“ In the latter part of the 3rd cent. we begin to find evidences of a "new Sufism," which was inspired by religious ideals other than those which had been dominant in early Islam, and which developed from those ideals a theology of its own, which for a long time was not admitted as orthodox. Asceticism still occurs, but whilst, on the one hand, it begins to take a more definite character in the deliberate seeking of poverty and mortification, it is, on the other hand, relegated to a subordinate place as a merely preparatory stage in the Sufi life, which is technically described as a "journey." ”

“ Perhaps, for that they broke that rule was I widowed thus early. And yet, Miss Sahib, for love and friendship we have once again in the name of our Shubala forgotten the rules which should bind. No longer must we break the custom-rules of our race. The Miss Sahib knows the Hindu Shastras. For a child married after eleven years of age, both her dead father and I would be condemned to the lowest re-birth which is possible to human beings: and what punishment Shubala herself would get, I know not. ”

“ He is very human; but his humanity is deeply ethical in character.
Much more than Omar and Sa'di, Háfiz was a thorough Sufi. "In one and the same song you write of wine, of Sufism, and of the object of your affection," is what Sháh Shuja said to him once. In fact, we are often at an entire loss to tell where reality ends and Sufic vacuity commences. For this Mystic philosophy that we call Sufism patched up a sort of peace between the old Persian and the conquering Mohammedan. ”

“ They occupy in the East much the same position that Madame Guyon and the Jansenists occupied in the West, and they teach the same doctrine of quietism, which, while it lends to its followers the virtues of exaggerated submission, saps the root of a faith that is manifested in works. So far as the Sufis are striving earnestly after union with God, they are saved from the logical consequences of their doctrines: “Their ear is strained to catch the sounds of the lute, their eyes are fixed upon the cup, their bosoms are filled with the desire of this world and of the world to come.” ”

“ Absorption in God, therefore, or union with Him is the goal of all the Sufi teachings and practices. The entire negation of self clears the way for the apprehension of the Truth. This journey towards God has its stages which are generally given as eight in number: service, love, abstraction, knowledge, ecstasy, truth, union, extinction. Some of the Sufis went so far as to set aside external religion, and showed an utter indifference to the ritual as well as to the moral law. Al-Ghazali was not of their number. ”

“ But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and all that precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the beginning, revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain their favors. Then the transport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression, and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin. ”

“ The Persian Sufis, therefore, who in their mystical works generally used Arabic, veiled their views in a sort of technical language, which was quite unintelligible to the uninitiated. Still some works are preserved which give us an insight into their tendencies.
The Sheikh Suhrawardy, who was a martyr to his convictions, must be regarded as the chief representative of this freethinking tendency in Sufism. His works have been more appreciated by the Persians and Turks than by the Arabs, among whom copies of them are no longer to be found, while they may be met with in Turkish libraries. ”

“ Jami, one of the greatest Persian authorities on Sufism, tells us that the name "Sufi" was first applied to Abu Hashim (d. 162) , an Arab of Kufa who spent the greater part of his life in Syria, and is typical of the early Islamic devotee who followed the simplicity of the Prophet's life and was deeply influenced by the Qur'anic teaching about sin, judgment, and the brief passage of earthly life. Similar devotees, claimed as Sufis by later Sufi writers, but more properly devotees who were their precursors, appear in the course of the 2nd century, such as Ibrahim b. ”

“ I learnt from a sure source that the Sufis are the true pioneers on the path of God; that there is nothing more beautiful than their life, nor more praiseworthy than their rule of conduct, nor purer than their morality. The intelligence of thinkers, the wisdom of philosophers, the knowledge of the most learned doctors of the law would in vain combine their efforts in order to modify or improve their doctrine and morals; it would be impossible. With the Sufis, repose and movement, exterior or interior, are illumined with the light which proceeds from the Central Radiance of Inspiration. ”

“ Sabbatai resigns his Pretensions.—The sultan was quite determined to make an end of all this madness. At the end of two months he demanded a miracle of Sabbatai as the price of his release from prison. But it was to be a miracle of the sultan’s own choosing this time. Sabbatai was to be stripped naked, archers were to shoot at him, and his ‘divine’ flesh was to remain proof against their arrows. Now, two months in an uncomfortable dungeon had considerably sobered Sabbatai Zevi. He was not the sort of stuff of which heroes are made, and he had not the slightest ambition to be a martyr. ”

“ When the lieges oppress one another, Allah setteth over them a tyrannical Sultan and a terrible King. Thus it is told in history that one day there was sent to Al-Hajjáj bin Yúsuf a slip of paper, whereon was written, “Fear Allah and oppress not His servants with all manner of oppression.” When he read this, he mounted the pulpit (for he was eloquent and ever ready of speech) , and said, “O folk, Allah Almighty hath made me ruler over you, by reason of your frowardness;”——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. ”

“ This way of life was extremely common among the companions of the Prophet and the early Moslems. But when in the second century of Islam and the succeeding centuries the desire for worldly wealth had spread, and ordinary men allowed themselves to be drawn into the current of a dissipated and worldly life, the persons who gave themselves up to piety were distinguished by the name of "Sufis," or aspirants to Sufism. ”

“ Every night thou releasest them from their cages And settest them free: none is master or slave. At night the prisoners forget their prisons, At night the monarchs forget their wealth: No sorrow, no care, no profit, no loss, No thought or fear of this man or that. Such is the state of the Sufi in this world, Like the seven sleepers58 he sleeps open-eyed, Dead to worldly affairs, day and night, Like a pen held in the hand of his Lord.— (Professor Cowell.)
As we have seen, Jalaluddin's conception of God is a far higher one than is embodied in the orthodox formula of the Koran, "Say: God is One. ”

“ To annihilate reason, or at least to subordinate it to feeling; to attack liberty, in order to subject the whole of life to love; and, furthermore, the blind abandoning of self—such is the aim of Sufism, as it is of all Mystic philosophy.
The doctrine of the Sufis has been set forth in a great number of treatises, notably that of Sohrawdi. God alone exists; He is in everything and everything is in Him. All beings emanate from Him, without being really distinct from Him. The world exists for all eternity; the material is only an illusion of the senses. ”

“ Pantheistic views and the doctrine of hulul occur frequently in Sufi teaching, but they are by no means universal. Indeed, we cannot make any accurate statement of Sufi doctrine in detail, but only of general principles and tendencies. The Sufis do not form a sect, but are simply devotees of mystical tendencies spread through all the branches of the Muslim community. ”

“ The keynote of Sufiism is the union, the identification of God and man. It is a doctrine which lies at the root of all spiritual religions, but pushed too far it leads to pantheism, quietism, and eventually to nihilism. The highest good to which the Sufis can attain, is the annihilation of the actual—to forget that they have a separate existence, and to lose themselves in the Divinity as a drop of water is lost in the ocean. ”

“ Al-Ghazali completes the development of orthodox Muslim theology. From this time forth it ceased to have any originality, and for the most part showed signs of decadence. Here and there we find Sufi revivals; indeed, Sufism is the only phase of Islam which kept free from the rigid conservatism which has laid its iron hand of repression upon Muslim life and thought generally. In Yemen the system of al-Ghazali was kept alive by generations of Sufis, but for the most part Sufism preferred less orthodox paths. ”

“ From them we gather with certainty that the division of Sufism into two classes, one orthodox and outwardly conforming to Islam, and the other free-thinking and pantheistic, was already an accomplished fact before Ghazzali's time. We recognise also that the latter kind of Sufism was very popular among the lowest classes of the people and even among the agricultural population. The fundamental characteristic of mysticism, the striving after the knowledge of God by way of ecstatic intuition, had already come into open conflict with the fundamental principles of Islam. ”

“ In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little of Sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. ”

“ With Shah Shudja, I would accuse him of mixing up inextricably wine and love and Sufi teaching, and perhaps more besides. To some at least of the innumerable difficulties which assail every man who turns a thoughtful eye upon life and its conditions, Hafiz seems to have accepted the solution presented to him by Sufiism. He understood and sympathised with the bold heresy of Hallaj, “though fools whom God hath not uplifted know not the meaning of him who said, I am God.” ”

“ In Spain itself the leading Sufi was 'Abdu l-Haqq ibn Sab'in (d. 667) , who shows the more characteristic Spanish attitude of a Sufi who was also a philosopher, for Spanish Sufism was essentially speculative. Like many other philosophers of the Muwahhid period he adhered outwardly to the Zahirites, the most reactionary party of the narrowest orthodoxy.
In the 7th century, also, we have Jalalu d-Din Rumi (d. 672) , who practically completes the golden age of Sufism. Although a Persian he was an orthodox Sunni. ”

“ Next day at dawn Shabbar the Jinn and Prince Ahmad set out together upon a visit to the Sultan; and when they had reached the city gates, all the folk, nobles and commons, were struck with consternation at the dwarf's hideous form; and, flying on every side in affright and running into shops and houses, barred the doors and closed the casements and hid themselves therein. So panic-stricken indeed was their flight that many feet lost shoes and sandals in running, while from the heads of others their loosened turbands fell to earth. ”

“ In the 8th cent. we have 'Abdu r-Razzaq (d. 730) , a pantheistic Sufi who wrote a commentary on and defended the teaching of Muhiyyu d-Din ibnu l-'Arabi. He advocated the doctrine of free will on the ground that the human soul is an emanation from God, and so shares the Divine character. This world, he holds, is the best possible world: differences in condition exist and justice consists in accepting these and adapting things to their situation; ultimately all things will cease to exist as they are re-absorbed in God, the only reality. ”

“ The Sufi detaches himself from the world and all its tyrannies and evils,—rises on the ladder to the vanishing point, so to speak, and stays there,—while the Karmathians, the Ismailites and other kindred sects, would fight to substitute the reign of Allah for the reign of man on earth. ”