The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of Presence: Meditations on Arabic Sufi Poetry Performance and...

journal of Sufi studies 5 (2016) 58–97

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The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of PresenceMeditations on Arabic Sufi Poetry Performance and Ritual in Contemporary Dakar

Oludamini OgunnaikeStanford University (USA)

[email protected]

Abstract

The composition and performance of Arabic Sufi poetry is the most characteristic artis-tic tradition of West African Sufi communities, and yet this tradition has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. In this article, I sketch an outline of a theory of Sufi poetics, and then apply this theory to interpret a performance of a popular Arabic poem of the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975), founder of the most popular branch of the Tijāniyya in West Africa.

Keywords

contemporary Sufism – Ibrahim Niasse – literary theory – Sufism in Africa – Sufi poetry – Tijāniyya

…Whoever wants to understand the poem, must go into the land of poetryWhoever wants to understand the poet, must go into the poet’s land

Goethe, West-Östlicher Diwan, Motto (1819)

…جز عشق تو هر چه داشتم سوخته شد تا در دل من عشق تو اندوخته شد

شعر و غزل دوبیتی آموخته شد عقل و سبق و کتاب بر طاق نهاد

59The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of Presence


Since your love was kindled in my heartApart from your love, all that I have has burnedMy heart put reason and study and books on the shelfAnd was taught poetry and ghazals and quatrains

Rumi, Divān-i Shams, Ghazal 6161

⸪

Arabic Sufi poetry and chanting is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Dakar’s urban soundscape, and definitely the most central artistic feature of contemporary West African Sufi communities. The lilting drone of Mūrids reciting Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba’s (d. 1927) poetry, the Baye Falls’ shouting of the shahāda,2 the crackling gammu3 loudspeakers blaring al-Ḥājj Mālik Sy’s (d. 1922) poems in praise of the Prophet, and the pentatonic call and response of Tijānī disciples echoing Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s (d. 1975)4 longing and love for the Prophet, will be familiar to anyone who has spent a few nights in Dakar next to an open window.

While this poetry, as well as Sufi poetry in African languages such as Wolof, Pulaar/Fulfude/Fulani, and Hausa has begun to receive some scholarly atten-tion, given its important role in both communal and individual Sufi practice, I believe it deserves much greater scholarly consideration and appreciation, such as the predominantly urban and Mūrid visual arts have received in the excellent Sufi Saint in the City exhibit and book.5 This article is an attempt to collect and organize my own meditations on the tradition of Arabic Sufi poetry amongst contemporary communities in Dakar, based on my experiences dur-ing fieldwork there from January–May 2014. I hope to introduce the tradition to a general audience by analyzing a particular poem by a twentieth-century author, and situate it within the larger tradition of Sufi thought and poetry.

1 Kulliyāt-i Shams yā Dīvān-i Kabīr, ed. Badīʾ al-Zamān Furūzānfar (Tehran: n.p., n.d.), 8: 105.2 The Islamic testimony of faith, lā ilāha illā Allāh, “There is no god but God.”3 The name given to large public Sufi gatherings in Senegal.4 Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba, al-Ḥājj Malik Sy, and Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse were the founders of

the three most popular traditions of Sufism in contemporary Senegal: the Murīdiyya, a Sufi order founded by Bamba and headquartered in Touba; Sy’s branch of the Tijāniyya, another Sufi order, centered in Tivaouane, and another branch of the Tijāniyya, founded by Niasse, centered in Kaolack.

5 See Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts, Gassia Armenian, and Ousmane Guèye, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003).

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After outlining the general theory of language and poetics of the larger tra-dition of Sufism, I will analyze a poem by Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse along four related dimensions which were frequently invoked during discussions about poetry and performance: ẓāhir (outward/apparent) bāṭin (inward/hidden) and ṣūra (form) and maʿnā (meaning), highlighting the ways in which the poem exemplifies several important characteristics of the wider tradition. These four dimensions generate the four main categories which organize my analysis of the poem: al-ṣura al-ẓāhir (the apparent form): melody, meter, rhyme scheme, and other poetic and performative techniques; al-maʿnā al-ẓahir (the literal meaning)—the apparent meaning of the poem; al-ṣura al-bāṭin (the hidden form)—argument, allusions, development of themes, structure and juxtapo-sition of ideas and images, references to structuring ideas, texts, practices, prayers etc.; and al-maʿnā al-bāṭin (the inner meaning)-the esoteric or more subtle, hidden meaning of the poem. While these categories are heuristic, and a great deal of overlap exists between them, I believe such separation, however artificial, can aid in analysis and lead to a deeper synthetic appreciation of this kind of poetry and its performance. However, before delving into the analysis of this poem, it is important to appreciate the significance of poetry within the broader Islamic tradition, and the distinct poetics and theory of language within which the Sufi poetic tradition operates.

After recitation of the Qur’an, and perhaps calligraphy, poetry is probably the most important and popular of Islamic arts, and is certainly one of the most prominent and characteristic features of Muslim societies around the world, from the earliest days of Islam to the present day. The pride of place given to the art of poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia, the linguistic miracle of the Qur’an, with its rich imagery and intricate sonoral structures, the pithy and graphic language of the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet of Islam), the appreciation and patronage of poets and poetry by scholars and sultans alike, all contrib-uted to the universal appreciation of poetry in the Muslim world. Pious and profligate, pauper and potentate, Peul and Philipino and everyone in between, loved and loves a good poem. This is especially true within the tradition of Sufism, which has produced most of the great poetry in every Islamic language, and tends to incorporate the best poetry composed outside of it anyway.6

Rare is the Sufi master who has not written a collection of poetry, and rarer still are gatherings of Sufis where some form of poetry is not recited or sung. The Senegalese Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba’s (d. 1927) impressive literary output

6 The finest “secular” poems about wine, beauty, and love by non-Sufi authors such as Abu Firās al-Ḥamadānī, and even bad-boy poets such as Abū Nuwās and Mutannabī are frequently quoted by Sufi authors who imbue these verses with mystical meaning.



(estimated at over 200 works) is nearly entirely composed of verse.7 Even the prose works of Sufism are studded with poetry: the influential Andalusian mystic Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) magnum opus, the Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (some-times called “the Bible of Sufism”) contains over 1,428 original poetical pieces, comprising over 7,000 verses.8 And so, we can ask, why do Sufis write and recite so much poetry?

Why Poetry?

ويف اإلشارة معنى ما العبارة حدت

In allusion there is meaningnot contained in plain expression.

Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Naẓm al-Sulūk

From the first few generations of Sufism to the present day, poetry remains the preferred means of expression of the spiritual states (aḥwāl) and sta-tions (maqāmāt) that constitute the Sufi path. Sufi literature often describes the knowledge of these states and stations of spiritual experience and attain-ment using the metaphor of taste (dhawq) to highlight both the immediacy and the existential and experiential dimension9 of this mode of knowledge/realization that is the purview of the Sufis. This knowledge or “tasting” is often contrasted to the discursive knowledge that can be acquired from books and study. A common adage, oft-quoted by Sufi Shaykhs and disciples in Senegal, says, “Sufism is the knowledge of tastings (ʿilm al-adhwāq), not the knowledge of papers (ʿilm al-awrāq).”10

Not every meaning can be contained in every form of expression, and dif-ferent disciplines have evolved different means of expression suitable for their particular subjects. In mathematics, we have equations and textbooks, in architecture, we have blueprints, and in music, we have various kinds of

7 See J.O. Hunwick (ed.), Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume IV: The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 397–452.

8 This figure does not include the many quotations of verses by other poets, see R. Deladrière, “The Dīwān of Ibn ‘Arabi” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 15 (1994) accessible at http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/diwan_1.html.

9 Taste precedes and accompanies eating, the physical/existential incorporation of a sub-stance into one’s being. Likewise, the spiritual tasting of Sufism accompanies or is identi-cal to a transformation of the being of the adept.

10 Shaykh Māḥī Cissé, interview with the author, April 20th, 2014. Medina Baye, Senegal. Arabic.

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notation and nomenclature. One would be hard-pressed to find calculus being taught through interpretive dance, or conversely, a declaration of love written in the matrix notation of linear algebra, so what is it about poetry that has made it the vehicle of choice for Sufis to express their spiritual longings, expe-riences, and epiphanies? In his seminal study, Nicholson writes,

. . . the Sufis adopt the symbolic style because there is no other possible way of interpreting mystical experience. So little does knowledge of the infinite revealed in ecstatic vision need an artificial disguise that it can-not be communicated at all except through types and emblems drawn from the sensible world, which, imperfect as they are, may suggest and shadow forth a deeper meaning than appears on the surface. “Gnostics,” says Ibn al-ʿArabī, “cannot impart their feelings to other men; they can only indicate them symbolically to those who have begun to experience the like.”11

This problem is by no means unique to Sufis or mystics in general. When faced with the difficulty of relaying an unshared experience, we resort or allude to shared experiences through simile, metaphor, and symbol in order to express the inexpressible. To take one of Wittgenstein’s well-known examples, although we may know perfectly well what a clarinet sounds like, in order to describe its sound we have to resort to a poetic register of speech. For example one could say that the sound of a clarinet is “mellow,” “sweet,” “muted,” “woody,” “smooth,” “dark,” “slightly pinched,” “like a cat’s purr,” “like a glass of aged red wine,” or “like a woodland stream.” Though such a description could hardly qualify as a definition, these allusions do communicate something, especially to one who has heard the distinct voice of a clarinet. As Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235), regarded as the greatest Sufi poet of the Arabic language, wrote, “In allusion, there is mean-ing not contained in plain speech.” If this is true of the sound of a clarinet, how much more so of the mystical states of the Sufi path?

Thus, when attempting to put the seemingly elusive spiritual “tastings” (adhwāq) of the mystical path into words or onto papers (awrāq), the Sufis avail themselves of the allusive powers of poetry. The very structures of poetry (rhyme, metre, and its synthetic and allusive mode of speech) lend them-selves to expressing the ineffable. Poetry is a barzakh (a liminal reality that both separates and unites two other realities12) between music and prose,

11 R.A. Nicholson. The Mystics of Islam (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 103.12 Barzakh literally means an “isthmus,” and in Islamic theology, has come to refer to the pur-

gatorial state in which the soul dwells between death and the final judgment. However, in



feeling and thought; rhythm (virtually all Arabic Sufi poetry is in meter) is the barzakh between eternity and time, stillness and motion; rhyme, like the drone in music, is the barzakh between one sound and many. These features make poetry the perfect medium for the mystic torn between silence and speech. As the early Sufi poet Shiblī (d. 946) writes,

Praise be to God that I am like a frog that dwells in the seaWhen he utters something his mouth is filled, but when he is silent, he dies from grief.13

In fact, many Sufis argued that silence was the better course when it came to Divine mysteries and spiritual states. Paradoxically, one of the most prolific of Sufi poets, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, took “Khāmūsh,” meaning “Silence,” as his pen-name. He wrote verses such as, “Whoever has been taught the mysteries of the [Divine] Act, his lips are sealed and closed”,14 “Speech always fails to reach the meaning; hence the Prophet said, (Whoever knows God), his tongue falters,”15 and most famously, identifying love with the path and goal of the Sufi way (as many Sufi poets did):

Whatever description or explanation I give of lovewhen I reach love, I am ashamed of itAlthough the description of the tongue clarifieslove that is tongueless is of grater clarityAs the pen hastened to writewhen it came to love, it split on itselfIn describing love, reason becomes miredlike an ass in mudIt is love alone, it is love alonewhich has explained love and being in love16

the vocabulary of Sufism post-Ibn ʿArabī (and later Islamic philosophy), the term came to mean the intermediate realm between that of the spirits and that of the bodies, or more generally, any liminal state that unites opposites (see “Barzakh,” in al-Ḥakim, Muʿjam al-ṣūfī [Beirut: Dandara, 1981], loc. cit.).

13 Quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 35.

14 Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Mathnawī 5: 2240.15 Ibid., 2: 3013.16 Ibid., 1: 113–17, quoted in S.H. Nasr (ed.), Rumi: Lament of the Reed (Istanbul: Asr Media,

2000).

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The 10th century Baghdadi Sufi, Sumnūn, gave the problem its classical form, “A thing can be explained only by what is more subtle than itself: there is noth-ing more subtle than love—by what then, shall love be explained?”17

And yet, in spite of all this, thousands of Sufi poets have sung and penned millions of verses on the mysteries of Divine Love, and continue to do so to the present day. They’ve gone a different way than the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, and seem to have adopted the motto, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must sing.” To better understand how these poets navigate these paradoxes of language, we have turn to the tradition’s own theories of lan-guage and poetry. As Goethe wrote as the motto to his own encounter with the world of Sufi poetry (the West-Östlicher Diwan, his poetic response to the great Persian Sufi poet, Ḥāfiẓ), “Whoever wants to understand the poem, must go into the land of poetry. Whoever wants to understand the poet, must go into the poet’s land.”

Sufi Theories of Language

The Islamic tradition has produced a number of rich and sophisticated theo-ries of language and literature, especially poetry. But virtually all of them, from the mundane to the mystical (especially the mystical) begin with the linguis-tic miracle of the Qur’an. One can hardly overemphasize the centrality and influence of the Qur’an on Islamic life, language, and literature, especially Sufi poetry. Most Sufi poets, like the vast majority of educated Muslims in the pre-modern period, had memorized all or most of the Qur’an at an early age, and spent much of their time reciting and meditating on its verses. For example, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse was reported to finish two recitations of the entire Qur’an every week of his life. As the early twentieth-century Algerian Sufi shaykh wrote in one of his poems,

It [the Qur’an] hath taken up its dwelling place in our hearts and on our tongues and is

Mingled with our blood and our flesh and our bones and all that is in us.18

17 Quoted in Schimmel, As Through a Veil, 17.18 Quoted in Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī, his

Spiritual Heritage and Legacy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 23.



In her study of Sufi poetry, Annemarie Schimmel explains the intimate rela-tionship between Sufi poets and the Qur’an,

Père Nwiya has highlighted the immense importance of the mystics’ con-stant preoccupation with the Koran, the uncreated word of God, so that a complete quranisation de la memoire was achieved by which the mystic finally saw everything in light of the Koranic revelation, took his inspira-tion in every moment from the Koran, and applied its images to his own experience. The constant recurrence of Koranic images and figures . . . in the work of . . . Sufi poets can be explained by this central position of the Koran in the life of the Sufis; simple lines in any Islamic language, even in folk poetry, can contain allusions to a Koranic verse which the Western reader may detect only much later.19

We will see several examples of this Qur’anic presence in the analyses of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s poem below.20 Furthermore, the trilateral root struc-ture of the Arabic language extends the influence of the Qur’an beyond allu-sion and quotation. In Sufi poetry, not only does the use of a word found in the Qur’an call up associations of the verses and narratives in which it is found, but any word that shares a root with words found in the Qur’an reverberates, be it ever so subtly, with the Qur’anic verses and narratives containing words of the same root. Schimmel explains this unique feature of the Arabic language,

. . . this holds true for mystical poetry in the whole Islamic world. For every Arabic root evokes of necessity many reminiscences in the listener’s or reader’s mind and may lead him back to the words of the Koran and the tradition; it is . . . like a lyre in which the movement of one string makes all the others vibrate and thus evokes the secret harmonies of related concepts. Thus the vocabulary of even the simplest verse is highly charged with meaning and can therefore barely be adequately translated. . . .21

19 Schimmel. As Through a Veil, 15–16.20 There is an entire genre of West African Sufi poetry that consists of acrostics of Qur’anic

verses or formulae, thus the poem quite literally emerges from the text of the Qur’an and serves as a commentary on the verse or phrase. From a ritual standpoint, the reciter of the poem is also reciting a verse of the Qur’an since it is spelled out in the first letter of each verse of the poem. Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba wrote several such poems, such as his poem entitled “AstaghfiruLlah,” “I ask forgiveness of God.”

21 Schimmel, As Through a Veil, 16.

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Although Sufi poetry is suffused with the presence of the Qur’an, the Qur’an explicitly declares itself not to be poetry.22 The Islamic tradition generally held, and holds the Qur’an to be the utmost pinnacle of language, transcending the categories of prose and poetry, and even those of human and Divine. As one scholar notes, “For Moslem orthodoxy, the Quran is not only the uncreated Word of God—uncreated though expressing itself through created elements such as words, sounds and letters—but also the model par excellence of the perfection of language.”23

But all of this begs the question of how the Islamic tradition theorized lan-guage, and how these Islamic theories are similar to or different from mod-ern and post-modern theories of language. While a thorough discussion of this vast field is outside the scope of this paper, a brief summary is in order to prevent conflating notions of symbolism, meaning, and reference in Sufi dis-course with those of contemporary Western academic discourse.

What is Language?The Islamic tradition contains two main theories concerning the origin of lan-guage: the first (called tawqīf ), asserts that words were assigned their meanings by Divine providence, while the second (called iṣṭilāḥ), posits that language was created and evolved through social convention and agreement.24 While the revelatory theory (tawqīf ) came to be the predominant position, many schol-ars held nuanced positions between the two, or professed neutrality on the issue.25 Furthermore, several theories developed on the relationship between words and their meanings; some early grammarians took the “conventional-ist” view that the relationship was arbitrary for nearly all words, while others took the “naturalist” view that the relationship was non-arbitrary.26 These two dimensions (the origins of language and the relationship between words and meanings) were somewhat orthogonal, with many scholars who supported the “conventional” origin of language arguing for the “naturalist” relation-ship between word and meaning, and all other permutations. The majority of Sufi authors, following al-Ghazzālī (d. 1111), argued for both the revelatory ori-gins of language and “naturalist” relationship between words and meanings,27

22 See Qur’an 36:69.23 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), 2.24 M. Shah, “Classical Islamic Discourse on the Origins of Language: Cultural Memory and

the Defense of Orthodoxy,” Numen 58 (2011), 314–43.25 Ibid., 335.26 Ibid., 315.27 Ibid., 324.



although these ideas became even more sophisticated and nuanced in the complex mystical schemas of Ibn ʿArabī and those influenced by his school.28

Unlike Saussure, the father of modern Semiotics, Sufis such as Ibn ʿArabī held that the relationship between the signifier and signified is not arbitrary, but is instead governed by a logic of similarity and symbolism, not difference. While the Islamic grammarians, linguists, and other scholars were well aware of the principle of difference which Saussure used to explain the relationship between signifiers,29 for Ibn ʿArabī and his followers, this “horizontal” relation-ship of difference is but the result of the vertical relationships between signi-fiers and their signifieds, or in Islamic language, between the forms (ṣuwwar) and their meanings (maʿānī). It is this “vertical” relationship of similarity or continuity that primarily generates meaning; the “horizontal” relationships of difference are secondary. As one Arabic saying puts it, nazzala al-asmāʾ min al-samāʾ, “the names descend from Heaven.”

This perspective gave rise to the mysterious “science of letters,” (ʿilm al-ḥurūf in Arabic) in which each sound/letter is associated with a number, meaning, element, aspect of life/nature, part of the body, spiritual reality or realities, and Divine Quality or qualities.30 This Hermetic science, variations of which are also found in several other religious traditions, relies on a logic of sym-bolism in which relationships between entities in one particular domain, such as written letters, are symbols/manifestations of relationships between relationships between entities of another domain, such as numbers or Divine Names. Connections in one domain can be mapped onto other domains.

This “science” has a certain logic to it, but its proponents claim that it can only be partially understood rationally and requires spiritual unveiling and realization to master and understand. In a sense, one could say that this occult science appears to the uninitiated much as music theory would appear to a

28 For example, considering man’s will as being the result of God’s will, in a sense, collapses the opposition between the “revelatory” and “conventionalist” theories on the origin of language, since human conventions proceed by Divine Providence. Or, relatedly, the opposition between the “naturalist” and “arbitrary” positions on the relationship between words and their meanings is bridged by the Divine Act of naming, which, with or without human mediation, can either be arbitrary or non-arbitrary. For Ashʿarites such as Ghazālī, God’s will is arbitrary, and can arbitrarily be arbitrary or non-arbitrary.

29 For example, “dog” derives its identity by being different from other words such as “dot,” “dig,” and “bog.” For example, see Ibn Jinnī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Najjār (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1952).

30 See William Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), and Titus Burkhardt, Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ʿArabi (Aldsworth, UK: Beshara, 1977).

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deaf person. He or she would have to take the hearing person’s word that a minor scale sounds sad, and a major scale happy, and which intervals are harmonious and which are dissonant. On this basis, a deaf person could have some idea how a piece of music would sound on the basis of a musical score, but it is only though the power of hearing that one can truly appreciate the effects of a piece of music. Similarly, one can learn about this “science of let-ters,” but it is only by gaining new perception through spiritual unveiling that one can truly and immediately appreciate these subtle powers of language.31

This tradition is very popular in West African Islam; shops, jewelry, cloth-ing, houses, children are adorned with amulets and talismans produced by the practical application of this “science.” Poets often date their compositions by using phrases with a numerical equivalent of the year, and the “secret” of the efficacy of many poems and prayers is believed to be explained by this science of correspondences.32

Ibn ʿArabī’s Theory of Language33

Being is the sea, speech is the shore,The shells are letters, the pearls knowledge of the heart34

Maḥmūd Shabistarī

Ibn ʿArabī provides several different metaphors and metaphysical frameworks to explain these relationships between the world of language and various other worlds, the most prominent and influential of which is the “doctrine of the breaths,” which draws on the Qur’anic image of God breathing His Spirit

31 “For Ibn ʿArabi as well as a number of other Sufis, the science of letters is properly speak-ing the science of the [saints] awliyâʾ, and it is one of the surest signs of the authenticity of their spiritual realization” (Claude Addas, “Ship of Stone,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 19 [1996], accessible from http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/shipof stone.html).

32 Sidi Inaya Niang, Dakar, interview with the author, March 26th, 2014.33 Ibn ʿArabī’s writings and theories are referenced throughout this paper, not only because

he is perhaps the most influential of Sufi theorists—being known as the Shaykh al-Akbar, “The Greatest Master”—but also because his writings significantly shaped the doctrines and perspectives of the Tijānī order to which Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse belonged. Shaykh Ibrahim also quotes Ibn ʿArabī, and references his ideas and terminology frequently throughout his writings.

34 E.H. Whinfield, Gulshan i Raz: The Mystic Rose Garden of Saʿd ud-din Mahmud Shabistari (London: Trübner, 1880), 56.



into man, and the image of the “breaths of the all-Merciful” (nafas al-Raḥmān) from the hadith literature.

Speech is simply an articulation of breath, and in this perspective, the Divine “breath” is pure being, so everything that exists is Divine speech, a cosmic array of words. Since man is “made in God’s image,” he has the peculiar status of being a “talking word.” To borrow an image from The Lord of the Rings movies, it is as if Gandalf, amidst his many smoke rings, blew a smoke figure of him-self blowing smoke rings. Therefore, man’s speech, which constitutes human language, echoes the Divine speech, which constitutes the cosmos (including man and his language). Man’s articulation of breath is but a reflection, in a very limited domain, of the process which brings the entire cosmos into delimited existence from undifferentiated Being. Chittick summarizes this perspective,

The fundamental determinant of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s deeply Islamic perspec-tive on language is of course the Book itself, that is, the Koran, which molds his psyche in a way that is simply unimaginable to contemporary observers, even those theorists who claim that language determines all of reality. Perhaps the problem for the modern theorists is that they have little idea of what “all of reality” might entail. . . . From Ibn al-ʿArabi’s point of view, they are correct in situating all of reality in language, but they are mistaken in finding language’s origin in the human self or in anything other than God. The self is nothing but a word articulated by the Essence, and the Essence remains always and forever beyond any articulation. So also, every language, whether meta-cosmic, human, or infrahuman, is an articulation of Unarticulated Wujud [Being]. . . .

The cosmos is a vast configuration of words telling a coherent story (for those who understand), and hence it is a book. So also the human being is a book, but human beings, by and large, have forgotten the story line. . . . Given the fact of human forgetfulness, the All-Merciful articu-lates a third book through precisely the same creative process that brought the first two books into being. This book is the Book of Revelation, the Reminder or the Re-membrance, given to Adam and to all the subse-quent prophets and appearing in its most complete and comprehensive articulation in the Koran.35

For Ibn ʿArabī, each supra-formal meaning takes different forms in the vari-ous “languages” of being, from the Divine language of God’s Knowledge, to human conceptualization, to human speech, or human writing. These forms

35 Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God, xxxiii.

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of a particular meaning are all ontologically connected to one another,36 a part of the intricate cosmic structure of “breaths.” The four “main” domains of this “language” of being—Revelation, microcosm (man), macrocosm (uni-verse), and metacosm (God)—all reflect one another, and human speech is but one of many sub-domains which reflect the meanings and realities con-tained in these four domains of Divine speech. It is only the inscrutable Divine Essence, which as the source of pure, unarticulated “breath,” transcends all such speech, and yet is present within it.

Poetic language is special because it highlights the connections between these different languages and, like the Qur’an, its very form mirrors the struc-ture of the cosmos and the human being. In the introduction to his own collec-tion of poetry, Ibn ʿArabī describes how God fashioned the cosmos according to the same principles that form the structure of a poem, concluding, “All of the world is endowed with rhythm, fastened by rhyme, on the Straight Path.”37 Thus, like the Qur’an, poetry can be an effective tool of spiritual realization and remembrance, taking us back to the pure “breath” which is our origin and essence. Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes, “Harmony is always present, but as its imprint upon the word or substance of language becomes more marked and profound, poetry comes into being, poetry which through its re-echoing of the fundamental Harmony of things is able to aid man to return to the higher states of being and consciousness. . . .”38

What is Poetry?—Sufi Poetics

Highlighting these cosmic connections, one of Ibn ʿArabī’s most prominent intellectual descendants, Jāmī (d. 1492), known as the last of the great classical Persian poets, wrote:

What is poetry? The song of the bird of the IntellectWhat is poetry? The similitude of the world of eternity39

36 This ontological connection is what makes symbolic ritual possible and provides the logic underlying the esoteric “science of letters,” ʿilm al-ḥurūf. See Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God, xxix–xxxv.

37 Quoted in D. McAuley, Ibn ʿArabi’s Mystical Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 45.

38 S.H. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 89.

39 Ibid., 91.



Nasr comments upon these verses, writing,

Poetry is the result of the imposition of the Spiritual and Intellectual Principle upon the matter of substance of language. This Principle is also inextricably related to Universal Harmony and its concomitant rhythm which is to be found throughout cosmic manifestation. The rhythmic patterns of traditional poetry therefore possess a cosmic reality and are far from being simple man-made contrivances.40

In this theory of Sufi poetics, the formal structures of Sufi poetry, (meter, rhyme, and sound) are closely related to their meanings, which they vehicle or manifest in their own domain. Nasr comments,

According to this doctrine, everything in the macrocosmic world consists of both an external form (ṣūra) and an inner meaning (maʿnā). This is also true of human language which has come into being as a result of the imposition of maʿnā on upon the very substance of language or its ṣūra. As this impression of maʿnā upon ṣūra increases, the external form becomes more transparent and reveals more readily the inner meaning. With poetry or poetic language in general, this process reaches a higher degree of intensity until in the case of inspired poetry, maʿnā dominates completely over ṣūra and remolds the outward form completely from within (without of course, destroying the poetic canons).41

Or as the great Persian Sufi poet, Rumi (d. 1273), says more poetically,

What is poetry that I should boast of it?I posses an art other than the art of the poetsPoetry is like a black cloud; I am like the moon hidden behind its veil.Do not call the black cloud the luminous moon in the sky42

These verses highlight another prominent aspect of these Sufi theories of poetry—poetry is meant to point beyond itself, to the transcendent meanings that it is supposed to manifest. The goal of Sufi poetry is to go beyond poetry. As could be expected, this creates a markedly ambivalent attitude towards the poetic enterprise, as Rumi writes,

40 Ibid., 90.41 Ibid., 89–90.42 Quoted in ibid., 140–1.

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I think of poetic rhyme while my Beloved (God)Tells me to think of Him and nothing else.What are words that thou shouldst think about them,What are words but thorns of the wall of the vineyard?I shall put aside expressions, words and sounds,So that without all three I carry out an intimate discourse with Thee.43

Poetry, like all language, is the result of the duality of speaker and spoken-to, and therefore implies absence and separation. Even the most beautiful verse cannot reach the ineffable unity of the Real.

Although this perspective may seem to bear some similarities to poststruc-turalist theories of language, especially those of Lacan, it is important to dis-tinguish these perspectives. Much as in Sufi discourse, for Lacan, “the Real” is pure presence beyond all language, impossible to symbolize or even imagine, “the essential object which isn’t an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence.”44 For Lacan, language is absence; it names an absent object that cannot be made present. “The word, like the unconscious desire, is something that cannot be fulfilled. Language, reaching out with one word after the other, striving for but never reaching its object, is the arena of desire.”45

However, unlike for Lacan, the Real of Sufism is a Divine Name (al-Ḥaqq), which is at once the Absolute Truth and Ultimate Reality. It is the ineffable, Divine Essence that is both absent and present, that transcends the distinc-tion of subject and object, of all language and forms, and yet manifests itself in them all. It is this metaphysical union of transcendence and immanence that distinguishes Sufi poetics from post-structuralist theories; the Real or transcendent signified which lies outside of text and speech may be ineffable, but because it is also present within text and speech, they can lead beyond themselves back to the Real.

Rumi uses the Qur’anic story of Joseph’s shirt to illustrate this point beau-tifully. In the 12th chapter of the Qur’an, Joseph tells his brothers to take his shirt back to Canaan and cast it over the face of their heartbroken father Jacob, who had gone blind from weeping over the loss of Joseph, his favorite son. The brothers do so and even before they reach Jacob, a wind brings him the scent

43 Ibid., 94.44 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in

the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 164.

45 J. Hunter (ed.), The Norton Introduction to Poetry, 8th ed. (New York: Norton, 2002), A19.



of Joseph’s shirt. He recognizes the scent of his son and announces to every-one that he can smell his son, but they dismiss this as the ravings of senility. However, when the brothers arrive and cast the shirt over Jacob’s face, his sight returns, and he sets off to meet Joseph in Egypt. Rumi says poetry is like the scent of Joseph’s shirt—it is only for those who are blind and separated; how-ever, it can restore their sight and lead them back to their Beloved.46

In this perspective, poetry, like everything else, is a veil that both conceals and reveals. In fact, as is so often the case in Sufism, opposites combine, and this absence is actually a form of presence. As Ibn al-Fāriḍ writes,

You have nearness with me in your distance from me. . .In other than thee, You showed Yourself to my eyesWhich, delighting in you, saw nothing but you47

Or as the Sufi shaykh Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh says in his famous aphorisms, “The Truth is only veiled from you due to Its extreme nearness to you. It is only veiled due to the intensity of Its manifestation and It is only hidden from sight due to the splendor of Its Light.”48

Thus poetry is a paradoxical form of presence-in-absence. A shirt cast over one’s face usually blocks sight, but if that shirt carries the perfume of the Beloved, it can have the reverse effect. For the Sufi, poetry is a veil that can make one see more clearly. As with other traditions of mystical literature, Sufi poetry has developed numerous techniques to achieve this seemingly impos-sible task of expressing the ineffable, one of the most common of which has been described as apophasis or “unsaying.” In his Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Michael Sells offers this description of apophasis,

Apophasis moves toward the trans-referential. It cannot dispense with reference, but through the constant turning back upon its own referential delimitations, it seeks a momentary liberation from such delimitations. In terms of a spatial metaphor, to the linear referential motion apopha-sis adds a circular turning back (epistrophe). The combination yields a

46 Schimmel, As Through a Veil, 3.47 Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Kāfiyya, verses 42 and 45.48 Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyya, nos. 164 and 165.

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semiotic spiral motion ever deeper into the pre-referential ground (or groundlessness) of the discourse.49

In attempting to describe the ineffable, the last thing one wants to do is reduce “it” to a verbal description or mental construction, because then one would be describing that construction and not the ineffable, which, properly speaking, can’t even be called a “thing” or “it.” One way of avoiding this pitfall is to “unsay” what one has just said, by saying something else which conditions or cancels it. For example, one could say “God is too great to be understood” and then unsay this by adding, “He is so great that one can’t even understand whether or not He is too great to be understood.” However, one would have to continue this process ad infinitum. By turning a statement back on itself (in what Sells calls an epistrophe) however, one can both say and unsay at the same time. For example: “these words can’t be understood” or “The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.” This kind of unsaying provoke shifts in perspective that unite and transcend their opposing meanings.

As several Sufi authors have pointed out, this kind of epistrophe is implicit within the basic Islamic testimony of faith, “there is no god but God,” which Sufis interpret as, “there is no being but God.” Shaykh Aḥmad Tijānī (d. 1815) (the founder of the most popular Sufi order in West Africa) is recorded as having said, “the reality of tawḥīd [saying “there is no god but God”] cannot be grasped, because so long as you are speaking, you exist and God exists, so there are two, and so where is the unity (tawḥīd)? There’s no tawḥīd except that which is [said] by God, through God, and to God. The servant has no entrance to this, and no exit from it.”50

These and other such paradoxes are intentionally used within the poetry and prose of Sufism and other mystical traditions, not to obfuscate or to be irrational, but rather because these paradoxes are necessitated by the close relationship between meaning and form, which these traditions assume. Sells writes,

. . . the paradoxes, aporias, and coincidences of opposites within apo-phatic discourse are not merely apparent contradictions. Real contradic-tions occur when language engages the ineffable transcendent, but these contradictions are not illogical. For the apophatic writer, the logical rule of non-contradiction functions for object entities. When the subject of

49 Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 8–9.

50 Ibrahim Niasse, Jawāhir al-Rasāʾil. 1: 60.



discourse is a non-object and no-thing, it is not irrational that such a logic be superseded.51

Thus, as suggested by Ibn ʿArabī’s theory of language described above, the lan-guage of mysticism mirrors the mystical path. Where opposites combine in the ontological “languages” of Divine Speech (i.e. the meta-, micro, or mac-rocosm), then they do so in the language of human speech. Since, as we have seen above, human speech is a mirror of these cosmic structures, where they converge and merge into one another, so too do the structures of speech. For example, when describing the union or mirror-like relationship between the human and Divine, the referents of pronouns almost always becomes ambigu-ous in Sufi poetry and prose, as they do in the Qur’an, as Ibn ʿArabī is fond of pointing out.52 Nowhere is this more true than in poetry, where such paradoxes and intentional ambivalence are standard fare, even for more prosaic topics.

Perhaps the most famous example of poetic form mirroring the stations of the Sufi path can be found in Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s magnum opus, the “Poem of the Way.” This long ode charts the mystical progress of the speaker and divides itself into three sections, each reflecting a different spiritual station. In the first section, which describes the station of separation ( farq), the poet is separated from his Beloved and mourns her absence and the difficulties he faces without her in standard language. In the second section, which describes the station of union (ittiḥād), the poet describes the experience of absolute union or identity with the Beloved with phrases such as “I am She” and “She is Me.” The pro-nouns are intentionally combined and confused and one can hardly tell if the subject or object of a verb is the poet or his Beloved, because they are no longer a separate entities. This stage corresponds to what the Sufis call fanāʾ (anni-hilation) in which the experience of all but the Beloved disappears. The final section of the poem corresponds to the station of baqāʾ (subsistence), often called, fanāʾ al-fanāʾ, the annihilation of annihilation, or jamʿ al-jamʿ, union of union, due to the fact that in this station, the mystic unites his experience of identity and union with his previous experience of separation. In this section, the poet describes himself as being simultaneously one with every-thing, including the Divine Beloved, with verses such as,

But for me, no existence would have come into beingNor would there have been vision. . .

51 Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 3–4.52 See chap. 3 of Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying.

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There is no living being, but his life is from mine,And every willing soul is obedient to my willThere is no speaker, but tells his tale with my wordsThere is no listener, but hears with my hearing,Nor anyone that grasps but with my strength and mightAnd in the whole creation there in none save meThat speaks or sees or hears (vv. 638–642)

and

And I dived into the seas of universal union ( jamʿ)Nay, I plunged into them in aloneness and brought out many peerless pearlsThat I might hear my acts with a seeing earAnd behold my words with a hearing eye (vv. 725–26)53

The synesthesia of these last verses is not just a rhetorical device, but rather a way of expressing this experience of radical unity both between and within the macrocosm and microcosm. This final stage of the path is identified with the Sufi concept of the “Perfect Man,” the perfection of the human state, in which man is likened to a perfectly polished mirror reflecting all the Divine Names and Qualities, uniting God and the cosmos in himself. In Sufism, the Prophet is the model par excellence of this state of human perfection.

This tripartite schema (separation, union/annihilation, union of union and separation) is also reflected in the very nature of the process of apophasis, of unsaying. First there is the plain statement, which necessarily assumes and even causes separation and duality, then there is the unsaying, which negates what came before it, and then there is the perspective shift or moment of rec-ognition in which both the saying and unsaying are united and transcended.54

Functions of Reciting Sufi Poetry

These features of Sufi poetry all exist for the purpose of helping the listeners and reciters progress along the spiritual path. Thus, the line between poetry and liturgy is very fine in Sufi practice both classical and contemporary. The popu-

53 G. Scattolin, “Realization of ‘Self ’ (anā) in Islamic Mysticsm: ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ,” Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 56, 1 (1996): 29.

54 The very term “annihilation of annihilation” is an example of this kind of unsaying.



lar poem al-Munfarija by the North African Sufi ibn Naḥwī (d. 1098) and the poetic prayer Duʿāʾ al-Naṣirī by the Moroccan Sufi Shaykh Ibn Nāṣir (d. 1085) are currently recited by the Boutshishī order of Morocco as a part of their daily liturgy,55 and Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse used to have his disciples recite Ibn Nāṣir’s poem/prayer to deliver Senegal from French occupation.56 The poetry of Ibn al-Fariḍ and Ḥallāj are commonly sung as worship during Sufi gatherings around the world, and the Egyptian Sufi poet al-Busīrī’s (d. 1294) famous poems, the Qaṣīdah al-Burdah, “Ode of the Cloak” and the Hamziyya are recited throughout the Islamic world, especially in celebration of the birth of the Prophet. Poetry is seen as an extension of the Qur’an and hadith, and its recitation is seen as an extension of the practice of dhikr (invocation) of Arabic formulae from these sacred literatures. Nasr writes,

The rhythm which in-forms traditional poetry is . . . based on the tradi-tional science of sounds [ʿilm al-ḥurūf ]. . . . In fact, a great deal of poetry may be considered as a kind of prolongation of the fundamental spiri-tual practices of the tradition in question. . . . One can refer to the case of Rumi, who composed much of his poetry after sessions in which ritual practices of dhikr or invocation were held and much of the rhythm of various litanies and invocations are reflected in his Sufi poems. . . .57

The rhythms and melodies of recitations of dhikr and poetry differ significantly from country to country and one Sufi brotherhood to another. Even within a single city such as Dakar, one can distinguish the Tijānī dhikr of those in the tradition of al-Ḥājj Mālik Sy from those who belong to Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s branch of the order, even though they are reciting the same words.

The Mūrids have a very distinctive style of reciting the poetry of their founder Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba, which is believed to originate with the poet himself.58 This style has two main registers of recitation, a lilting, descend-ing, relatively quiet register, and an ecstatic, loud, and high-pitched, register.59

55 Sidi Mehdi Boutayeb, interview with the author, May 15th, 2014. Boutshishī Zawiya, Naʿīmah, Morocco. Arabic/English.

56 Z. Wright, “Embodied Knowledge in West African Islam: Continuity and Change in the Gnostic Community of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2010), 207.

57 Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, 90.58 C. Dang, “Pilgrimage Through Poetry: Sung Journeys Within the Murid Spiritual Diaspora,”

Islamic Africa 4.1 (Spring 2013): 69–101.59 For example the recitation located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znd0bKZGgMI

switches from the first to the second at 1:41.

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These two registers represent two different phases of the spiritual path, sulūk, or wayfaring, when the disciple proceeds by his own efforts, and jadhb, when the disciple is drawn effortlessly towards the Divine. Incidentally, these two registers are often used when Mūrids perform dhikr. Sometimes reciters of poetry will switch registers intentionally, in accordance with the content of the poem, but sometimes it simply happens when the recitation of the poem evokes a state of ecstasy, and therefore the louder register.60

This highlights another common feature of Sufi poetry, which is especially salient in West Africa, the ability of poems to induce a ḥāl or spiritual state in its listeners. The power of poetry and music to elicit emotions is well-known throughout the world, but performances of Sufi poetry tend to elicit particu-larly strong reactions. Mūrids have described Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba’s poetry as inducing an overwhelming joy that makes them feel like “crying, dying . . . it is only qaṣāʾid [poems] that makes us feel that.”61 Moreover, reciting Bamba’s poetry is believed to be able to help answer prayers, cure illness, and in general, vehicle the barakah (spiritual blessings) of the Shaykh himself.62 One Mūrid disciple said, “When I read the qaṣāʾid, it’s like I’m face to face with Aḥmadu Bamba.”63

Just as with the Qur’an, even those who do not know Arabic often feel they derive something from the very presence or sound of the poetry. As one Mūrid said, “You got some deep things inside the qaṣāʾid that people don’t know . . . it comes through the sound.”64

Many of the Tijānī disciples I interviewed expressed similar sentiments, explaining that they loved the poetry of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse because it made them feel close to him, and that they could “understand” the deep meaning of the poem, even if they didn’t understand all of the Arabic words. Some Tijānī shaykhs have even prescribed certain of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s poems to their disciples for particular spiritual reasons. For example, one disci-ple told me that his shaykh had told him to recite a particular poem of Shaykh Ibrahim’s in order to see the Prophet in a dream.65

Therefore, while the formal beauty and elegance of African Arabic Sufi poetry is widely appreciated, especially by those literate in Arabic, its primary

60 See Dang, “Pilgrimage Through Poetry.”61 Ibid., 90.62 This is by no means unique to West Africa, throughout the Muslim world the Qaṣīda

Burda is renowned for its curative powers.63 Dang, “Pilgrimage Through Poetry,” 90.64 Ibid.65 Zakiru Niasse, interview with the author, April 16th, 2014. Medina Baye, Senegal. English.



appeal for Sufi aspirants is its power to help them progress spiritually (although this is not unconnected with the formal beauty of the poem). Within this tradi-tion, poems are understood to come from and lead back to a certain spiritual station or state (maqām) or (ḥāl). The recitation of these poems is believed to vehicle the presence of this station or state of the poet at the time of compo-sition, as well as the presence of the Beloved described in the poem (usually the Prophet/God), whose very presence induced the state/station from which the poem emerged. Poetry can stimulate spiritual realization through its sound, through its formal beauty, through its barakah or that of its author, through its rhetorical devices, through its dazzling insights or arguments, or through what it describes, and in this tradition, none of these elements are seen as being completely separate from the others. The ideal Sufi poem func-tions much like the Qur’an—its meanings descend from God, through the Prophet/poet, into the domain of human language in order to reverse the pro-cess, enabling the listener transcend him or herself (as well as language), and return to God by realizing the full perfection of the human state, exemplified by the Prophet/poet.

Analysis of Shaykh Ibrahim’s Poem

In the following sections, I will analyze a poem written by Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, perhaps the most influential, and certainly the most popular, Sufi Shaykh in West Africa in the 20th century,66 which exemplifies many of the themes discussed above, and is widely considered to be one of the peaks of the West African tradition. The poem is from the Diwān, or collection of poetry, entitled Nūr al-Ḥaqq, or “The Light of Truth” and can be found in the volume entitled Dawāwīn as-Sitt.67

Apparent Form (ṣūra ẓāhir)This poem, like most Arabic poems, is known by its first words, Ṣafā liya waqtī, which means, “He purified my time for me.” The recitation of the poem that will be analysed below can be viewed at www.waspproject.org. I chose this poem, not only because it is one of my favorites, but because it exemplifies many

66 For an excellent introduction to the history of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse and his early com-munity of disciples, see Rüdiger Seesemann, The Divine Flood: Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

67 I would like to thank Tierno Mahmoud Oumar Athie for bringing this poem to my atten-tion and Abubakr Sadiq Abdulkadir for his suggestions and help with the translation.

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of the unique features of Arabic Sufi poetry in general, and Shaykh Ibrahim’s poetry in particular. I asked my friend Tierno Mahmoud Athie, a Senegalese disciple of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s order, to recite the poem for me because in addition to being a great lover of Arabic Sufi poetry, especially that of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, he is quite an accomplished poet himself. Tierno told me that this poem is a favorite of Shaykh Ibrahim’s Mauritanian disciples, so he recited it in a Mauritanian melody and cadence.

Although all of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s poems (indeed virtually all Arabic poetry in Senegal) are called qaṣāʾid in Arabic or khassaʾid in Wolof (the plural of qaṣīda), only some of them fit the classical definition of this poetic form. While this poem is much shorter than the standard qaṣīda, which usually con-tain between 50 and 100 verses, it contains many of the features that define this genre of poetry such as strict meter and monorhyme (as do the vast majority of Shaykh Ibrahim’s poems). This particular poem also adheres to the standard themes and forms of the classical qaṣīda, albeit recast along Sufi lines: it begins by invoking the memory of beloved (a feature called nasīb), then describes the solitary journey of/towards the beloved (a feature called raḥīl), and concludes with praise of the beloved and her/ the poet’s tribe (features called madīḥ and fakhr, respectively), satire of other tribes (hijāʾ) and advice and aphorisms (ḥikam).68 Like the majority of Shaykh Ibrahim’s other poems, and indeed the majority of classical qaṣāʾid, this poem is written in the meter of ṭawīl,69 which gives it a grand and formal tone.

As is customary, in this recitation, Tierno repeated the first verse (bayt) of the poem twice. He also repeats the sixth verse twice in part, because its rather unusual wording requires a second hearing to understand what is being said. Skilled reciters use repetition of a verse (or half a verse) like this in order to clarify, emphasize, and excite their audience-sometimes provoking ecstatic states in themselves and their listeners. However, this recorded salon recita-tion was a much more staid affair.

68 This structure comes from the classic work by Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), The Book of Poetry and Poets, cited in R. Allen, An Introduction to Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 77.

69 Arabic prosody contains sixteen meters, established by the early Arab lexicographer and philologist al-Farāhīdī, and his student al-Akhfash. Ṭawīl is considered one of the more classical and formal-sounding of meters, whereas Rajaz, which has more of a “rocking-horse” feel, is more commonly used in didactic poems and versifications of prose texts—Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba wrote most of his works in this meter.



Tierno ends the recitation with the melodic invocation (dhikr) of the name “Allah.” Recitations of Sufi poetry in Senegal (indeed around the world) are often preceded, followed, and accompanied by the melodic dhikr of the Shahādah, blessings on the Prophet, or Divine Names, emphasizing the con-gruence of the poems with these fundamental Sufi practices.

Apparent Meaning (maʿnā ẓāhir)Turning to the apparent or literal meaning, in this section, I provide a transla-tion and transliteration of the poem, enumerating the verses for ease of ref-erence. I have also endeavored to respect the line-breaks of each hemistich (miṣrāʿ) of the Arabic poem as much as possible. While I save much of the dis-cussion of allusions and other poetic features for the following sections, I have included footnotes explaining some of the more basic allusions and poetic fea-tures that would be immediately apparent to the typical Islamically-educated, Sufi listener. The full Arabic text and translation can be found in the appendix at the end of the article.

Translation and Transliteration:

1) He purified my time for me and he made sweet my intimacy By the mention (dhikr) of the followed one,70 the salve of heart and soul

Ṣafā liya waqtī wa huwa qad ṭāba lī ansīBidhikriʾl-muqaffā marhamiʾl-qalbi waʾl-nafsi

2) A Messenger ascended above heaven71 and He Drew nigh and descended (or drew near and then drew nearer)72 while he was in the Holy Presence73

70 This phrase evokes three distinct meanings: making mention of/recalling the Prophet, practicing the invocations that the Prophet practiced, or invoking blessings on the Prophet.

71 It is worth noting the jinās or pun between the words “ascended,” samā and “heaven,” samāʾ.

72 a quote from Qur’an 53:8; this whole verse refers to the Prophet’s nocturnal ascent through the heavens to the Divine Presence (miʿrāj), specifically as described in Surat al-Najm, as the verse quotes verbatim from the eighth verse of this chapter of the Qur’an.

73 This is a technical term in Tijānī Sufism referring to the Divine Essence and the ecstatic state of consciousness ( fanāʾ / annihilation) experienced by initiates when they encounter

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Rasūlun samā fawqaʾl-samāʾi wa innahudanā fatadallā wa huwa fī ḥaḍratiʾl-qudsi

3) At a time when [there was] no servant and no thing other than him74And nothing remains of meaning and nothing remains of sense75

ʿAlā ḥīna lā ʿabdun wa lā shayʾa ghayruhufalam yabqa min maʿanā wa lam yabqa min ḥissi

4) And that is the Truth76 and He is our GodHe is the Truth, none but He remains to the dust of the grave

Wa dhālika annaʾl-Ḥaqqa wa huwa ilāhunāHuwaʾl-Ḥaqqu lā tulfī siwāhu ilāʾl-ramsi

5) save ignorance and false fantasyso purify a heart from jealousies and fantasy and conjecture

this reality at the culmination of their period of tarbiya—the method of spiritual training unique to Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s branch of the Tijāniyya.

74 This hemistich alludes to various sayings from the hadith literature that discuss the pre-eternal existence of the Prophet such as “I was a prophet while Adam was between water and clay,” “The first thing God created was my spirit” or “my light,” and “I have a moment when none but my Lord can embrace me.” The pronoun “him” at the end of this line is ambiguous, it could refer to the Prophet or to God, and this ambiguity is probably inten-tional, as will be discussed below.

75 This hemistich alludes to the various sayings from the hadith literature indicating that Muḥammad is the last or “seal” of the prophets that begin with the same words, “lam yabiq.” For example, “nothing remains of prophecy save glad tidings,” and the variant, “nothing remains after me of glad tidings except . . .”. Taken together, the two hemistiches of this verse refer to the Prophet’s unique status of being “first in creation, last in manifes-tation,” the Alpha and Omega.

76 Because there is no capitalization in Arabic, this verse both affirms what preceded it by saying, i.e. “that is the truth,” and identifies it with God, “that is the Truth”, al-Ḥaqq (The Truth/The Real) being one of the names of God. The next hemistich can be read as identifying this “Truth” with the pre-eternal reality of Prophet (the Muḥammadan Reality), recalling his appellation in the ṣalāt al-fātiḥ (the central prayer of Tijāni Sufism) as “the helper/victor of the Truth by the Truth” (Nāṣir al-Ḥaqq biʾl-Ḥaqq), as well as the Qur’anic verse, “We created not the heaves and the earth and all that is between them save with Truth (biʾl-Ḥaqq)” (15:85). This elision of identity between, God, the Truth, and the Prophet is significant and will be discussed further in the next sections.



Siwāʾl-Jahli waʾl-wahmiʾl-kadhūbi fakhalliṣifuʾādan minaʾl-aghyāri waʾl-wahmi waʾl-ḥidsi

6) And where is apart from the Holy, where is His equal?77 Leave the “where,” [ask] where is the knowledge from that foundation?

Wa ayna siwāʾl-Quddūsi ayna siwāʾuhuDaʿiʾl-ayna wa aynaʾl-ʿilma min dhālikaʾl-ussi

7) The Holy is not seen with the naked eye, but ratherwith the eye of blindness and obliteration and annihilation and effacement78

Wa laysa yurāʾl-Quddūsu biʾl-ʿayni innamāBi ʿayniʾl-ʿamā waʾl-saḥqi waʾl-maḥqi waʾl-ṭamsi

8) So get drunk, for whatever you may have intended, you have only tastedof wine and voice, but a sound and whisper79

Fataskaru mahmā qad hamamta wa lam tadhuqMudāman wa lā ṣawtan siwāʾl-rakzi waʾl-hamsi

77 This jinās or pun between the words “other” (siwā) and “equal” (siwāʾ) is worthy of mention, and the refrain of “where?”, particularly in the context of the following verse, recalls the famous poem of Ḥallāj, “I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart . . .” which is discussed further the following sections.

78 This verse alludes to the Qur’anic story of Moses and the mountain (7:143) in which Moses asks to see God, and God tells Moses to look at a mountain where He will manifest Himself. God reveals Himself, the mountain is obliterated, and Moses faints. Sufi com-mentators, including Shaykh Ibrahim, frequently equate Moses’ soul with the mountain and his fainting with the experience of fanāʾ.

79 In Sufi poetry, wine commonly refers to maʿrifa, or realized spiritual knowledge, and drunkenness refers to the state of consciousness that accompanies this mode of knowing. The implication here is that the wine and music of this world are a but a shadow of that of the next, which, however the mystic perceives here and now, through his/her maʿrifa.

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9) If the drunk dances or gets carried away singing80that is from ecstasy, he is being sanctified from confusion81

Wa in raqaṣaʾl-sakrānu awṭāra munshidanFadhālika min wajdin taqaddasa min labsi

10) Whatever we say about drunkenness is, for us,knowledge, too lofty to be bound in pages82

Wa mahmā taḥaddathnā lisukrin faʿindanāʿulūmun taʿālat an tuqayyada fī ṭirsi

11) For every station, if only you knew, there is a saying83So not equal are the rational thinker and the mad brother84

Likulli maqāmin in darayta maqālatunFalaysā sawāʾa ʿāqilun wa akhū massi

12) Going astray in the Essence of God is the essence of guidance85so beware of the dangerous criticism that leads to sorrow

Ḍalālun bidhātiʾLlāhi ʿaynu hidāyatinFa iyyāka waʾl-naqdaʾl-muwaddī ilāʾl-baʾsi

80 Sufis were, and still are, often criticized for this kind of behavior during their ecstatic states.

81 The Arabic word translated as confusion, “labs,” comes from the same root as the word for “clothing.” The implied image is of denudatio, shedding the clothes of self, speech, and thought in holy ecstasy.

82 This recalls the saying contrasting adhwāq (tastings) with awrāq (papers), the former being superior to the latter.

83 This verse echoes the previous one, but recasts the opposition between spiritual realiza-tion (maqām) and discourse (maqāla) by assigning each spiritual state an accompanying verbal expression. In contrast to the previous verse, language is being considered in its revelatory, and not its restrictive, aspect.

84 The trope of divine madness being superior to human reason is well-established in Sufi poetry. This hemistich also recalls the verse of the Qur’an which says, Are those who know equal to those who know not? (39:9)

85 The juxtaposition of opposites (ṭibāq) in this hemistich is particularly arresting as it com-bines two of the most fundamental opposing pairs of the Qur’an, which conclude the oft-recited first sūra of the Qur’an: ḍalāl “going astray” and hidāya “divine guidance.”



13) So the knowledgeable give everything its due, while he who is ignorant,denies a thing, though it be more evident than the sun86

Fayunṣifu dhū ʿilmin wa man huwa jāhilunFayunkiru shayʾan wa huwa awḍaḥu min shamsi

14) Upon him be the blessings of God, and then His peaceand upon his family and companions, in reality they are my joy87

ʿAlayhi ṣalātuʾLlāhi thumma salāmuhuwa alin wa ṣaḥbin fīʾl-ḥaqīqati hum unsī

Inner Form (ṣūra bāṭin)Although many of the more “hidden” structural features, such as allusions and poetic devices, have already been highlighted in the footnotes above, in this section I wish to address some of the more subtle structures of the poem that might elude a first-time listener.

As previously mentioned, although only 16 verses long, this poem follows the classical form of the qaṣīdah. It begins with a nasīb, a recollection of the beloved, whom the poet is following. In a typical qaṣīda, the beloved would be a beautiful woman who has departed with her tribe, while the poet stands in the remnants of her desert campsite, recalling her beauty before following her tracks across the dunes. In the mystical landscape of Shaykh Ibrahim’s poetry, however, the beloved is the Prophet, and the poet follows him on his spiritual ascent “above heaven” (verse 2). This description of the journey towards the beloved, or raḥīl, is another feature of the qaṣīda genre. Similarly, the stan-dard feature of the praise of the incomparable beauty of the beloved (madīh), here becomes praise of the spiritual reality of the Prophet and his unique posi-tion vis-à-vis the Divine (verses 2–6). Shaykh Ibrahim follows the Sufi tradi-tion of transforming the conventional praise of the tribes of the beloved and

86 Another common Sufi image, perhaps most powerfully conveyed by Persian Sufi Shabistarī (d. 1340) who, in his long poem “The Rose Garden of Mystery,” describes the rational philosopher as one who “seeks the blazing sun by the dim light of a torch in the desert,” verse 95 (Whinfield [trans.], Shabistari’s Rose Garden of Mystery, 9).

87 The last word of the last hemistich of the poem, unsī, is nearly identical to the last word of the first hemistich of the poem, ānsī. This technique is known as radd al-ʿajuz ʿalā al-ṣadr, and is a classical rhetorical feature of the qaṣīda genre. In a sense, it “seals” the poem by making it come full-circle, folding the end back to the beginning. The phrase, “in reality,” refers to the spiritual reality of the Prophet (ḥaqīqa Muḥammadiyya), which plays a cen-tral role in Tijāni doctrine and practice, and that of his family and companions.

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poet ( fakhr) into praise of the Sufis (verses 8–11), and the conventional satire of other tribes to ridiculing the rationalists who ridicule the Sufis (verses 11–13). The warnings and aphoristic admonitions (verses 8 and 10–13) are typical of the convention of ḥikam, which ends many classical qaṣāʾid.

In addition to its structural allusions to the classical qaṣīda tradition, this short poem is full of allusions to the Qur’an, hadith, Sufi sayings and practices. As mentioned in the footnotes, “the dhikr of the followed one” (verse 1) alludes to the related Sufi practices of recollecting the example of the Prophet, follow-ing this example by invoking various Divine Names or formulae (also called dhikr), one of the most important of which is invoking blessings upon the Prophet. From the outset, the poet announces that he is following the Prophet, and that it is the dhikr of the Prophet that makes his life “sweet” and soothes his “heart and soul.”

In the second verse, the phrase “above heaven,” alludes to the common doc-trine, oft-cited by disciples of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, that the Sufi seeks God alone, not Paradise or Heaven.88 Thus the poet is declares his desire to follow the Prophet beyond Paradise, to God Himself. It is therefore fitting that this second verse also quotes from the Qur’anic account of the Prophet’s noctur-nal ascent through the heavens (miʿrāj) (Qur’an 53:8) to the Divine Presence. The language of this verse is ambiguous and could mean, “He drew nigh and descended” or “he drew near and then drew nearer.” Taking the two meanings together, we get one of the many coincidentia oppositorum, unions of oppo-sites, of this poem. The prophet’s descent back to earth can also be his “draw-ing nearer.” Since nowhere is apart from the “Holy Presence,” motion in any direction moves one “nearer” to it. Furthermore, this seems to be a reference to the final stage of the three journeys of the Sufi life (modeled on the stages of the miʿrāj, and roughly the same as the three stages discussed in the pre-vious sections): the journey from the world to God, the journey in God, and the journey through the world with God; which many Sufi writers, including Shaykh Ibrahim, discuss. Thus, “descending” is also “drawing near,” because in returning to the world the Sufi recognizes God both in His Essence and in His manifestations. Thus, this is an allusion to baqāʾ (subsistence) after fanāʾ (annihilation). The trajectory of the Sufi path is therefore depicted as follow-ing in the footsteps of the Prophet on his ascent to heaven and his descent to earth, “while” still being “in the Holy Presence.”

88 Mohammadou Diallo, Dakar, interview with the author, March 20th, 2014, Dakar, Senegal. French. Cf. the early formulation attributed to Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiya, “O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting beauty.”



Incidentally, this is very similar to the way several contemporary disci-ples of Shaykh Ibrahim’s order explained their experience of the process of tarbiya (spiritual training or initiation) to me. During this process, the shaykh gives the disciple a particular set of prayers and formulae to invoke, and he or she continues with these invocations until s/he has an experience in which everything, even him/herself, is perceived as being God. In this state of fanāʾ (annihilation), the disciple is described as being in the Ḥaḍrah al-Qudsī, “Holy Presence” mentioned in the second verse. Then, the shaykh helps “ease the disciple back” back into the ordinary world of multiplicity, without however, letting go of this radically transformative experience. Thus, this verse would be a clear allusion to the experience of tarbiya for those who have experienced it or heard it discussed.

As mentioned in the footnotes, verse 3 alludes to a collection of hadith that describe the primordial nature of the Prophet existing alone with God. The second hemistich of this verse is highly reminiscent of another verse from Ibn ʿArabī’s Ringstones of Wisdom, which Shaykh Ibrahim quotes frequently in his writings to describe the spiritual station of “direct witnessing” (mushāhadah),

Nothing remains except The RealNot even a single thing other than HimTo this nothing is connectedNor is anything separated89

Shaykh Ibrahim describes this station as the “vision of the Truth (the Real) by the Truth (the Real) as it is without doubt or uncertainty or fantasy. There only remains the Truth by the Truth, in the Truth, and not one hair of the slave remains in existence. None arrive at this station except that he has been anni-hilated from his soul and from ‘other’ and otherness . . .”.90 Thus, it is no sur-prise that verses 4 and 5 (and 6 and 7) seem to be a versification of the above quotation.

For the listener familiar with Sufi poetry, verses 6 and 7 recall the famous verses of Ḥallāj:

89 The verse reads, “fa lam yabiq illā al-Ḥaqq wa lam yabiq Kāʾin / fa mā thumma mawṣūl wa mā thumma bāʾin” (Ibrāhīm Niyās, Maqāmāt al-dīn al-thalāth from Saʿādat al-ʿAnām bi aqwāl Shaykh al-Islām (n.l.: al-Sharika al-Dawliyya lil-Tibāʿa, n.d., 128). This verse is also found in Ibn ʿArabī’s Ringstones of Wisdom (see Dagli’s translation, The Ringstones of Wisdom [Chicago: Kazi, 2004], 83).

90 Ibrāhīm Niyās, Maqāmāt al-dīn al-thalāth, 128.

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I saw my Lord with the eye of my Heart,I said, “Who are you?” He answered, “You.”For your where has no whereAnd there is no where where you are.You give no image to imaginationFor it to imagine where You are.You are He who has filled all where,and beyond all where. Where are you then?

As mentioned in the footnotes above, verse 7 clearly alludes to the Qur’anic story of Moses and the mountain, reinforcing the theme of fanāʾ (annihilation) that pervades the poem. The words used in the second hemistich of this verse (saḥqi, maḥqi, ṭamsi), however, are not mentioned in this Qur’anic narrative, but rather appear in verses about disbelievers being “blinded” or “destroyed.”91 The positive valence lent to these words by connecting them to fanāʾ foreshad-ows the radical reversal of Qur’anic pairs of opposites that occurs in verses 11 and 12.

The discussion of ecstatic drunkenness in verses 8–10 has many parallels in earlier Sufi poetry, and plays with a standard set of associated concepts. Even the English word “ecstasy,” which literally means to stand outside of oneself, shares in this association with “annihilation” and being “outside of place.” The Arabic word for “ecstasy,” wajd, shares the same root as the words for finding/being, wujūd, and consciousness, wijdān,92 and thus this kind of ecstasy is the result of consciousness finding being, when the mystic finds the Real, and stands outside of the duality of subject and object.

This state of drunken ecstasy transcends the limits of propriety, selfhood, and even description, all of which would bind or limit that which is by defini-tion illimitable—the encounter with the Absolute, Infinite, Real. However, as verse 10 suggests, this statement is itself a description or delimitation. Is not this very poem about drunkenness “bound in pages”?

Here, as in verse 8, the poet simply affirms one of the most common tropes of Sufi poetry (as discussed above), that no matter how beautiful, the poetic description is but “sound and whisper” compared to the reality to which it alludes. In verse 11, the poet continues this dialectic between language and spiritual realization, positing that for each spiritual station, there is an accom-panying form of expression, revealing language’s ability to express or point beyond itself. Here, in a classic apophatic move, the poet points out what he is

91 For the root s-ḥ-q, see Qur’an 67:11, 22:31, for m-ḥ-q see 3:141, for ṭ-m-s see 54:37.92 S.H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 1.



in the midst of actually doing, self-consciously highlighting language’s poten-tial to both conceal and reveal spiritual realities in the middle of a poem per-forming both functions.

As mentioned above, the second half of verse 11 cleverly plays with the Qur’anic query, “Are those who know equal to those who know not?” (39:9). Here the “madman” knows what “the rational thinker,” who has had no taste of ecstasy, does not; moreover, just as the Holy can only be seen with “the eye of blindness,” it can only be known with a knowledge of “unknowing.” From this perspective, “those who know not,” the drunkards who see with “the eye of blindness” are not equal to the “rational thinkers” who know: the former are superior to the latter.

This dizzying reversal of perspectives is followed by one of the most arrest-ing verses of Shaykh Ibrahim’s oeuvre, “Going astray in the Essence of God is the essence of guidance” (verse 12). This strong coincidentia oppositorum is meant to shock the listener, and force him or her to shift his/her perspective on the fundamental opposition of “going astray” and “guidance.” As a unified, undifferentiated whole, the Divine Essence is necessarily the “place” where opposite Divine Attributes meet, God being both The Guide, al-Hādī and the Misguider, al-Muḍill.93 But the context of the previous verses suggests that this “going astray” is connected to the drunken ecstasy of the human encounter with and is annihilation in the Divine. This “going astray,” losing oneself in spiritual ecstasy of Divine union, is actually the point to which guidance leads; it is its essence and goal.

This radical inversion of the “misguidance”-“guidance” pair is meant to be disorienting, but the poet asserts his authority in the second half of the verse, warning the sober “rational thinkers” against criticizing what they do not understand. Taken together, this verse alludes to the famous hadith of super-erogatory devotions, which Ibrahim Niasse frequently quotes:

God says: I will declare war on he who shows enmity to a friend of mine. And the most beloved things with which My servant draws near to Me, is what I have enjoined upon him; and My servant does not cease drawing near to me through supererogatory acts of worship until I love him, so I become his hearing with which he hears, and his sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks. . . .94

93 Both of these names, as well as many other similar pairs of opposites, are included amongst the traditional list of 99 divine names.

94 Bukhārī VIII, bk. 76, no. 509.

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Verse 12 is essentially a mirror image of this hadith. It begins with the descrip-tion of “losing oneself” in the Divine (God becoming one’s hearing, sight, etc.) as being the essence of guidance, the goal of the obligatory and supereroga-tory acts of worship of the hadith, and concludes with an echo of God’s threat against those who would criticize someone who is “lost” in this way (the first sentence of the hadith).

The poem then concludes by contrasting the person of knowledge and the ignorant. The fool’s denial of the sun is a standard trope in Sufi poetry, and this rhetorical flourish is so popular because it points to one of the main themes of the poem, and Sufi poetry in general. The sun is difficult to look at directly, and doing so eventually makes one blind, and yet it is that which makes everything visible. Similarly, the Sun of the Divine Essence, the Real, can only be seen with “the eye of blindness,” and yet it is that which makes everything else existent and intelligible.

Finally the poem finishes with the standard blessings upon the Prophet, his companions, and family. As the near-repetition of the rhyme word from the first half of the first verse (unsī) suggests, the poet is now back where he began, praising the Prophet and his close followers, but having completed his journey of drunken ecstasy, is now intimate with their spiritual realities.

Inner Meaning (maʿnā bāṭin)As can be seen above, this “hidden” structure of the poem alludes to many of the “hidden” or less obvious meanings of the poem—the structure and mean-ing of the poem are intimately connected. In this section, I will discuss what I perceive to be the more esoteric overall message of the poem.

In essence, this is a poem about the ultimate stages of transcendence and ineffability, the Divine Essence and the “station of no station.” In Sufi cos-mology/theology, the Divine Essence stands above and beyond any and all descriptions, relations, limitations, or conceptions. It is the highest and ulti-mate mystery, akin to Meister Eckhart’s “God beyond God.” The human state which corresponds to this supreme transcendence is the “station of no sta-tion,” which Ibn ʿArabī places above and beyond all other spiritual stations and attainment. These two “places without place” are intimately related, as Ibn ʿArabī explains,

Nothing is more universal in its distinctionthan the lack of limitation [taqyīd]to a distinguishing station



The Muḥammadan is distinguishedonly by his lack of distinguishing station

His station is that he has no stationThis means that a condition [ḥāl] can prevail on a personso that only through it is he known [or does he know]:

he is related to it and determined by itBut the relation of stations to a Muḥammadanis like the relation of names to Allah95

In Islamic theology, the name “Allah” names the Divine Essence—it is said to contain all of the other Divine Names, which name it, but it is not restricted by any of them. The Divine Essence is, by definition, free of any limitation or restriction, but as Ibn ʿArabī points out above, being described as having no limitation (i.e. “occupying the distinguishing station of being unlimited”) is itself a limitation. The only way out of this conundrum is to transcend tran-scendence and embrace immanence. “The Muḥammadan,” the perfect saint who fully follows the Prophet, mirrors the Divine Essence by following suit,

He is not determined in any station to which he may be relatedRather, in every breath, in every time, in every condition he is the image of what that breath, time, or condition requiresHis limitation does not remainThe divine decrees [aḥkām] vary in every moment and he varies in accor-dance with themFor “Every day he is in a different state” [Qur’an 55:29]. . .The Muḥammadan pole or individual changes perpetually with each breath in knowledgejust as each creature changes in condition (ḥāl)The Muḥammadan increases in knowledge of what he is transformed in and throughnot of the transformation itselfFor transformation pervades the world entire and pervades him.96

95 Quoted in Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 104.96 Ibid., 104–5. Note the similarity to the verses of Ibn al-Fāriḍ cited above, in which he

writes, “There is no speaker, but tells his tale with my words / There is no listener, but

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To borrow another image from Ibn ʿArabī, this saint is like a perfectly clear mirror—he has no image of its own, and therefore no fixed limitation. Thus, he changes with the never ending and ever-changing fluctuations emerging from the Divine Essence. The saint knows what appears in him, but he doesn’t know the Divine Command which produces the fluctuations. Both the Divine Essence and the Muḥammadan, the Perfect Man, have an aspect of themselves that is beyond all of these fluctuations, like the invisible surface of the mirror, but it is precisely because of this aspect that they are immanent and mani-fest in everything and everything is manifest in them. It is precisely because a mirror’s surface is invisible that it reflects everything. The only way to make something invisible, whether through transparency or reflection, is to make it capable of displaying absolutely everything.

To make the analogy more precise, if I wanted to “transcend” being visible, I would either have to become transparent or wear some kind of invisibility cloak that would make me look transparent; in either case, I would have to be capable of putting on any and every form in the background. This is precisely what Ibn ʿArabī commends the Muḥammadans for doing in regards to Divine manifestations, especially those of religious beliefs. Thus, in his most famous poem, he writes:

My heart became capable of accepting any formA meadow for gazelles, a cloister for monksA temple for the idols, the Ka‘bah for the circling pilgrimThe Tables of the Torah, the scrolls of the Qur’anMy religion is the religion of LoveWherever its caravan turnsLove is my religionAnd my faith

We have an example in Bishr,And Hind her sisterand Qays and LaylaMayya and her lover Ghaylan

The last few verses of this poem list some of the most legendary lovers of Arabic literature, and Ibn ʿArabī explains their inclusion in his own commen-tary upon the poem, “Allah dazed them with love [hayyamahum] for their

hears with my hearing, / Nor anyone that grasps but with my strength and might / And in the whole creation there in none save me / That speaks or sees or hears.”



fellow human beings as a rebuttal to those who claim to love him, but are not similarly dazed with love. . . . Love deprived these [unrequited lovers] of their wits. It made them pass away from themselves at the sight in their imagination of the beloved.”97

Here we have a complete commentary on Shaykh Ibrahim’s poem. The real “follower” of Muhammad transcends the heavens, and then transcends this transcendence by descending into immanence and leaving all stations, self, everything behind (verse 3). However, in leaving everything behind, he para-doxically unites with everything. This is the “station of no-station” a place located “no where” (verse 6), occupied by a mirror-like heart capable of accept-ing any form, purified of any prejudice, “fantasy, or conjecture” (verse 5). Such a heart can acknowledge and recognize the Divine in all of its manifestations, “giving everything its due,” as in verse 12.

Ibn ʿArabī frequently contrasts the fluid, receptive, and ever-changing nature of the heart (qalb), with the binding, restrictive nature of reason (ʿaql); and using love-crazed poets who lost their wits and their consciousness as exemplars reinforces this theme, as do the praise of annihilation, drunkards, and madmen in verses 7–11 of Shaykh Ibrahim’s poem.

Additionally, the exhortation of the second hemistich of verse 6 (“Leave the ‘where,’ [ask] . . .”) can be interpreted as an injunction to leave aside searching for the Divine Essence and the station of no-station, precisely because they are no “where” to be found, but instead to focus on the knowledge which comes about as a result of the perpetual fluctuations which emerge in oneself from the “station of no station”/ Divine Essence. As quoted above, “The Muḥammadan increases in knowledge of what he is transformed in and through, not of the transformation itself.”

Finally, in following the caravan of love of Ibn ʿArabī’s poem, we get a hint of what “Going astray in the Essence of God is the essence of guidance” may mean, but a passage from Ibn ʿArabī’s most influential work, The Ringstones of Wisdom, is even more clear. He writes,

That is the bewilderment [ḥayra] of the Muḥammadan“Lord, increase me in bewilderment in you . . .”

For the bewildered one has a round [dawr]and a circular motion around the axiswhich he never leaves

97 Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 111.

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But the master of the long pathtends away from what he aims forseeking what he is already in

A master of fantasies which are his goal

He has a “from” and a “to”and what is between them

But the master of the circular movementhas no starting pointthat “from” should take him overand no goal that he should be ruled by “to”

He has the more complete existenceAnd is given the totality of the words and wisdoms.98

Thus, the “Going astray in the Essence” of verse 12 of Shaykh Ibrahim’s poem can refer to the state of bewilderment (ḥayrah), which Ibn ʿArabī praises as one of the highest (if not the highest) forms of knowledge. In imagining God or spiritual attainment as a goal to be reached after a long journey, the master of the “long path” chases his own fantasy of what God or spiritual attainment will be like, like a man chasing his shadow. Moreover, his spiritual progress or attainment is limited by his imagined starting and ending points—he is lim-ited by his own fantasy.

However, instead of this “long path” of fantasy, the Muḥammadan tran-scends the limits of beginning and end, going and coming, by going around in a circle. He is still, but moving; moving, but still, always focused on the axis of the Divine Essence, perceiving it from a different angle at every moment. He does not seek anything outside himself, he is not trying to get to any particular station or state, but rather cycles through them all, increasing in knowledge with each turn. At the end of his work on the stages and stations of the Sufi path, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse similarly describes the first stage of the path, repentance (tawba) as being subsequent to the last stage of the path, gnosis or realized knowledge (maʿrifa), outlining a similar circular (or spiral) path. He writes, “Maʿrifah is the last of the stations of religion and tawba is its first. However, the reality of tawba (repentance) is the absence of tawba and that is

98 Quoted in Sells. Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 101–2.



only achieved through maʿrifa.”99 Commenting on this passage, one of Shaykh Ibrahim’s disciples remarked, “You keep going through the stations, once, twice, maybe three times, you don’t stop, there is no end to this path.”100

The prayer, “my Lord increase me in bewilderment in You,” is an oft-quoted hadith that complements the similar Qur’anic prayer, “my Lord increase me in knowledge” (20:114). Ibn ʿArabī equates the two and identifies this bewilder-ment and circular motion with the knowledge that results from being perfectly receptive to the ever-changing manifestations of the Essence. Bewilderment is the result of the encounter of knowledge with that which transcends it; it is the experience of the sublime, the intellectual or cognitive equivalent of annihilation, the effacement of all limits of knowledge. However, one must not confuse this position with a celebration of the irrational, which for the Sufis, is even more limiting than the rational. The “going astray” of the profligate sin-ner is not the same as the “going astray” of the perfect saint (although they are not entirely separate, since the latter, in a sense, contains the former). This kind of bewilderment, drunkenness, annihilation, and blindness is beyond both rationality and irrationality, transcending and uniting them both. This bewilderment is the “unknowing” more profound than any limited “knowing,” it is the “going astray” which is the “essence of guidance,” and this is why the Muḥammadan prays for increase in it. In his Ringstones of Wisdom, Ibn ʿArabī concludes, “Now guidance is that man should be guided to bewilderment, and know that the affair is bewilderment and that bewilderment is unrest and motion, and that motion is life, without stillness and so without death, and is existence without non-existence.”101 Thus, “going astray in the Essence of God is the essence of guidance” since this bewilderment is its purpose and goal.

The one who goes on a “long path,” limited by his knowledge, does not see that he is actually his own goal, and thus chases a fantasy, unlike the bewil-dered one who drunkenly circles around himself without beginning or end. How fitting then, that the poem should end as it began, in “sweet intimacy” with the Muḥammadans.

Although this is where the poem ends, the performance continues as the reciter trails off reciting, “Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah . . .” in the same cadence as the poem. This spiraling recitation of the name of the Divine Essence recalls the bewildered circling of the Muḥammadan around the same Essence. At the very beginning of his commentary on the Qur’an, Shaykh Ibrahim notes the opinion that the name Allāh etymologically “originates from [the verb]

99 Ibrāhīm Niyās, Maqāmāt al-dīn al-thalāth, 129.100 Sidi Inaya Niang, interview with the author, April 2nd, 2014. Dakar, Senegal. English.101 Ibn ʿArabī, Ringstones of Wisdom, 198.

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aliha, which means ‘to be perplexed, or bewildered,’ because intelligences are bewildered/perplexed by His greatness.”102 As quoted above, “the relation of stations to a Muḥammadan is like the relation of names to Allah.”

Conclusion

While the knowledge of drunkenness described in this poem may be too lofty for these pages, I hope at the very least, they have provided context and insight into this remarkable poem, the ways in which it stretches the limits of language and thought, and the fecund tradition from which it springs. I hope the present work can serve as a foundation for future studies of this rich and multi-faceted tradition, and perhaps model how the theories indigenous to the tradition can be used to interpret it for a more general audience. The work of younger, con-temporary Arabic-language poets throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as that of female poets, African-language poets, and the burgeoning traditions of urban, African French and English Sufi poetry also deserve scholarly attention. For the Sufis of Senegal, the ineffable beloved is an irresistible and inexhaust-ible source of poetic inspiration; I expect the streets of Dakar will continue to echo with khassāʾid for a long time to come.

102 Ibrāhīm Niyās, Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr al-qurʾān al-karīm, 1: 43.



Appendix A

Arabic Text of Poem.103

بذكر املقفى مرهم القلب والنفس صفا ل وقت وهو قد طاب ل أنسيدنا فتدل وهو يف حضرة القدس ه ماء وإن ا فوق الس رسول س

فلم يبق من معنى ول يبق من حس ه على حني ال عبد وال شيء غيهو الق ال تلفي سواه إل الرمس وذلك أن الق وهو إلـهنا

فؤادا من الغيار والوهم والدس ص سوى الهل والوهم الكذوب فخلدع الين و أين العلم من ذلك الس وس أين سواءه وأين سوى القد

حق والق والطمس بعني العمى والس ا وس بالعني إن وليس يرى القدمداما وال صوتا سوى الركز والمس فتسكر مهما قد هممت ول تذق

س من لبس فذلك من وجد تقد وإن رقص السكران أوطار منشداعلوم تعالت أن تقيد يف طرس ثنا لسكر فعندنا ومهما تدفليسا سواء عاقل وأخو مس لكل مقام إن دريت مقالةي إل البأس اك والنقد املود فإي ضالل بذات اهلل عني هداية

س فينكر شيئا و هو أوضح من ش فينصف ذو علم و من هو جاهلوآل وصحب يف القيقة هم أنسي عليه صالة اهلل ثم سالمه

103 Dawāwīn al-Sitt (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 2009), 236.

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The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of Presence: Meditations on Arabic Sufi Poetry Performance and...

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