Ahmad-e Jami (Zhanda Pil, Khorasani Sufi, d. 1141)

Ahmad-e Jami, Shihab al-Din Abu Nasr, was a Khorasani Sufi and Persian writer, known as Zhanda Pil ("elephant-colossus"). He was converted in middle age, lived in solitude, and died at his convent at Ma'addabad of Jam in 536/1141.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) gives Ahmad as Shihab al-Din Abu Nasr Ahmad b. Abi l-Hasan of Nama, near Turshiz in Kuhistan, born about 441/1049–50. He is said to have led a wild youth until, at twenty-two, a supernatural voice converted him while he was driving an ass loaded with wine to a drinking-bout, and he withdrew to the hills of his village. After some twelve years of travel in Khorasan he settled in the mountains of Jam, where he built a masjid, and at about forty moved to Ma'addabad, where he built a convent and a Friday mosque. He travelled widely in eastern Persia and had contact with the Seljuq sultan Sanjar. He died in his convent in Muharram 536/August 1141 at the head of a large body of disciples. ¹

His doctrine is grounded in the Qur'an and the Sunna and in the Sufi understanding of the shari'a, and he stands as a pronounced Sunni, though he allowed inner reasoning (hudiyat). His teaching of the soul passes through the stations ammara, lawwama, mulhama up to mulma'inna, and he took the "soul at rest" as the sheath in which the heart is fixed. The aim of mystical effort is the "spirit" and the real being, reached by remembrance of God and by waiting for God's grace. He rejected the teaching that the qualities of God may be assumed in concrete form, since this implies indwelling (hulul). ¹

He wrote several Persian works, among them Uns al-tai'bin, Sirat al-sa'irin, Futuh al-ruh, Rawdat al-mudhnibin, Bihar al-haqiqa, Kunuz al-hikma and Miftah al-najat, of which only Uns and Miftah survive. The Diwan that goes under his name, which shows him as an ecstatic pantheist, is suspected by modern scholars of being at least partly a falsification. Biographies were written by Radi al-Din 'Ali b. Ibrahim, a contemporary of the shaykh whose work is not preserved, and by al-Ghaznawi, a disciple. ²