More Malamati Stuff
Posted this on alt.sufi - God knows why - I suppose because that is Shah HQ (someone coined the phrase ‘Shahbots’ there which is really quite good if you think about it). Didn’t come to much though - people started talking about the da Vinci Code and Atlantis instead.
Anyway, as readers will know, I am not by any means a Shah-basher, perhaps a ‘Shahbot’ basher at a push but I’m working on laying down my arms and finding some peace. Hopefully it will happen soon inshallah. Meanwhile I have been thinking again - this time about Shah’s relationship with Sufism and whether he could be ‘not a Sufi’ as detractors such as Moore et al claim and still be ‘the real deal’. Feel free to take these ideas as talking points, evidence of dogmatic assertion or hypothetical postulates depending on your own personal bias.
In the Islamic tradition there exists something called the ‘Malamatiyya’. As most people interested in this subject know, this is generally regarded as the practice of incurring blame for spiritual/illustrative purposes. Many Shah ‘followers’ take it as referring to a technique rather than a movement, however both these views are not entirely correct.
The Malamatiyya are a historically identifiable group arising in Khurasan in the ninth century and originated by Hamdun al-Qassar. At the time of their arising, there was very little use of the term ‘sufi’ and what this term implied was more of an ascetic than a mystic. There were no Orders and those on a spiritual path at this time were known as ‘the poor’. They did not necessarily follow a specific guide or Sheikh but travelled from place to place, wandering and talking with Sheikhs and guides wherever they encountered them.
The Malamatiyya were a counterpoint to this and although wandering around without a teacher, still claimed to be ‘taught’ and followed their own path, known as the path of blame. This path did NOT entail incurring blame, in fact it was very orthodox - that is to say, the traveller on this path ob served all religious law and was very pious. The ‘blame’ occurred when someone accused them of impropriety or asked them if they were spiritual: in this case they would HIDE their virtue. This was to fight the nafs and not give in to ego - also perhaps to signal to people who could see beyond outward appearances. It is important to note that they were not known or regarded as Sufis.
All this can be verified from sources such as al-Sulami, Hujwiri and the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
Now it gets interesting. This ideal of the Malamatiyya, their whole practice in fact, without a shadow of doubt pre-existed Islam and is represented in exactly the same form in Eastern Christianity: most notably in Isaac the Syrian bit also in St Andrew and many others who there have the name of ‘sarkoi’ or ‘Holy Fool’. It is projected here as a mystic path - and one with exactly the same stations but utilising different terminology.
It gets better: once you have traced the link from Islamic Malamitis to Syriac Christians then you can trace it back further: to the Cynics. Again, here it is exactly the same. principally in the figure of Diogenes (who Shah mentions on several occasions). Diogenes is not only a ‘holy fool’ and a ‘malamati’ he is also a prototype of Mulla Nasrudin. Many of the stories of Diogenes are very similar to the Nasrudin jokes (they are also jokes) and Diogenes is known to have been performing his ‘folly’ in public for illustrative purposes.
You can also trace the links forward: the eastern church passed on the ‘Holly Fools’ tradition throughout Russia where both Gurdjieff and Rasputin may be said to be manifestations of it to some degree.
So, what we have here is a parallel tradition. It is the ‘perennial’ tradition which many Shah followers pay lip-service to but in reality do not act in accordance with their stated beliefs and search (rather believe) in their faith of ‘Sufism’.
It is not Sufism. Perhaps Shah should not be placed in the Sufi tradition. Perhaps he just used elements from that tradition - certainly before he wrote ‘the Sufis’ he experimented with other projections such as the magical one with Gardiner.
At any rate, most Shah followers would nominally accept that ‘Sufism is not called by that name’.
And as Shah himself pointed out: Hujwiri could say in the eleventh century that ‘Sufism was formerly a reality without a name - now it is a name without a reality’.
What is that reality and what is that name to which Hujwiri referred if not this ?
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