Kitab al-Luma' fi al-Tasawwuf

Kitab al-Luma' fi al-Tasawwuf is by Abu Nasr 'Abd Allah ibn 'Ali al-Sarraj al-Tusi (d. 378 AH), one of the oldest surviving comprehensive books on Sufism. Its first editor, Reynold Nicholson, lists it first among the sources for the history of Sufism in its first four centuries, ahead of al-Kalabadhi's al-Ta'arruf, Abu Talib al-Makki's Qut al-Qulub, al-Sulami's Tabaqat al-Sufiyya, al-Qushayri's Risala and al-Hujwiri's Kashf al-Mahjub. ^{5 6} Al-Sarraj says at the outset that he has gathered chapters on what the Sufis held and what their early shaykhs said: the principles of their sciences, their reports, verses, questions and answers, stations, states and allusions. ⁷

Al-Sarraj says a questioner asked him to explain the science of Sufism and the Sufis' way, since people differed about it: some exaggerated its merit, some put it beyond reason, some thought it frivolity, some reduced it to austerity and wearing wool, and some attacked it so far as to accuse its people of heresy. He was asked to set out what he held sound of the principles of their way, "bound to following the Book of God", imitation of the Prophet and the character of the Companions and Successors, supported by the Qur'an and reports. ¹ Nicholson therefore calls the work avowedly apologetic and controversial, its aim being to show that the principles of Sufism agree with the Qur'an and the Sunna. ³

Al-Sarraj holds that the "people of knowledge who uphold justice", the heirs of the prophets, are of three classes: the traditionists, the jurists and the Sufis; and that the sciences of religion are three: the science of the Qur'an, the science of the Sunna and its explanation, and the science of the realities of faith, which he traces to the hadith of Gabriel on islam, iman and ihsan. ² He describes each class: the traditionists held to the outward hadith, travelled the lands and fixed the narrators, their states and the defects of reports; the jurists surpassed them in understanding and deduction, distinguishing abrogating from abrogated and general from particular by Qur'an, Sunna, consensus and analogy. ^{8 9} He says the Sufis agreed with the jurists and traditionists in their beliefs and accepted their sciences, those who had not reached their level turning to them when in doubt; their way is not to seek concessions and interpretations but to take the more cautious course, after which they rose to noble states particular to them. ^{10 11}

To the question why the Sufis are not named after a state or a science, as ascetics are named after asceticism, al-Sarraj answers that they were not confined to one kind of knowledge or state; had he named them after what prevailed in them at each moment he would have had to give them a new name each time; so he named them after their outward dress, the wearing of wool, as the disciples of Jesus were named after their white clothing. ^{12 13}

The book consists of an introduction and major "books", as their headings in al-Jadir's edition and Nicholson's abstract show: ^{14 15 16 17 4}

• Introduction: the relation of Sufism to Islam, the classes of the learned, the name "Sufi", the affirmation of inner knowledge, unification and gnosis (pp. 7-60 in al-Jadir's edition). ^{1 18 19}
• The Book of States and Stations: repentance, scrupulousness, renunciation, poverty, patience, trust and contentment, then states such as watchfulness, nearness, love, fear and hope (from p. 61). ^{20 21} See stations and states.
• The Book of the Elect on understanding and following the Book of God (from p. 105), the Book of Imitating the Messenger of God (from p. 131), the Book of Deductions (from p. 149) and the Book of the Companions (from p. 171). ^{22 23 24 25}
• The Book of the Manners of the Sufis (from p. 203): in purification, prayer, alms, fasting, pilgrimage, companionship, food, travel, begging, earning, marriage, sickness and death. ^{26 17 4}
• The Book of Questions and their differing answers (from p. 299), and the Book of Letters, Openings, Verses, Prayers and Epistles (from p. 329). ^{27 28}
• The Book of Audition (from p. 369) and the Book of Ecstasy (from p. 415), which includes an abridgement of the Book of Ecstasy of Abu Sa'id ibn al-A'rabi. ^{29 30 15}
• The Book of Affirming Signs and Miracles (from p. 435), with the difference between saints and prophets in them. ^{31 15}
• The Book of Explaining Difficulties: the terms current in the Sufis' speech (from p. 453). ³²
• The Book of Interpreting the Ecstatic Sayings and words "whose outward is repugnant and whose inward is sound and straight" (from p. 505), followed by the chapters on errors at the end of the book. ^{33 16}

Al-Sarraj defines shath as "a strange expression describing an ecstasy that overflows through its force", derives it from movement, and compares it to abundant water running in a narrow channel and spilling over its banks; one who hears it, he says, is either seduced into ruin by denial or safe by withholding denial and asking someone who knows. ^{33 34} In this book he explains sayings attributed to Abu Yazid al-Bistami, al-Shibli, Abu al-Husayn al-Nuri and Abu Hamza al-Sufi, and reports a debate he had in Basra with Ibn Salim, who declared Abu Yazid an unbeliever for saying "Glory be to me"; al-Sarraj argued that he may have been speaking in God's words, and that he had asked Abu Yazid's family in Bistam, who denied the story. ^{35 36} This is al-Sarraj's position, a Sufi position on a question on which scholars differed.

He devotes a chapter to the shaykhs who were accused of unbelief and brought before the ruler. He divides their opponents into two groups: those who did not understand their words, and those who understood them but sought leadership and popular favour by attacking them; he then relates what befell Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, Samnun and the group against whom Ghulam Khalil testified, Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz over his Kitab al-Sirr, and 'Amr ibn 'Uthman al-Makki. ^{37 38 39} See the trial of Ghulam Khalil.

Al-Sarraj ends the book with chapters on the errors of some "who took on the outward marks of Sufism": in branches such as poverty and wealth, earning, abstaining from food and seclusion, and in principles such as indwelling (hulul), the spirit, prophethood and sainthood, licence, the passing away of human nature and seeing God with the heart. ^{16 40} In the chapter on the Hululiyya he says he knew none of them and only heard their doctrine reported, and that whoever truly held that God dwelt in bodies He had chosen is astray "by the consensus of the community", for God is distinct from things; what dwells in hearts is faith in Him, assent, the affirmation of His oneness and knowledge of Him. ^{41 42}

The book opens with its chain: a group in Baghdad, among them 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi, and Karima bint 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Qurashiyya in Damascus wrote it to the transmitter, all from Abu al-Waqt 'Abd al-Awwal al-Sijzi al-Harawi, from Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Abi Nasr al-Kufani, read to him in 465 AH, from Abu Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Khabushani, from al-Sarraj. ⁴³ The first edition is Reynold Alleyne Nicholson's in the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series (Leiden: Brill, 1914), "edited for the first time" with critical notes, an abstract of contents, a glossary and indexes; among modern editions is that of Dar al-Fath edited by Muhammad Adib al-Jadir. ^{44 45}