A Sufi Itinerary of Tenth Century Nishapur Based on a Treatise by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī

Abstract

Among the extant works of the well-known Sufi biographer Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) is Masalat darajāt al-ṣādiqīn fi l-taṣawwuf (the Stations of the Righteous). This treatise begins with a question about the three paths of Islamic mysticism: the Malāmatiyya, the Sufis and the Path of Love. Al-Sulamī's response presents the three as facets of an integral whole, each reflecting stages on a quest for knowledge. The treatise is set out as an itinerary through increasingly subtle stations of experiential knowledge of divine reality; as such it represents a prototype of this genre of Islamic literature. Central to the itinerary are the origins and epistemological foundations of Islamic sainthood (walāya). In this paper I rely upon a new critical edition of the text updated from an hitherto unused manuscript that supplies a serious lacuna in the earlier edition. I focus on al-Sulamī's exposition of the stations of maʿrifa, his multiple references to walāya, the concealed and revealed saints, and the Pole (Quṭb), in order to establish a framework for a Sufi epistemology founded upon a hierarchy of subtle degrees of maʿrifa. I present translations from the text that emphasize the central role in al-Sulamī's teachings of the principles of the Malāmatiyya of Nishapur. Masalat darajāt al-ṣadiqīn affords us the opportunity to encounter al-Sulamī in a rarely perceived theoretical context—as the mystic, mentor, teacher and transmitter of the spiritual tradition of his home city of Nishapur, the Malāmatiyya. Moreover, al-Sulamī's detailed exposition of the stations of maʿrifa elevates that tradition from one seen as a spiritual tendency based upon a pessimistic view of human nature to a school of mystical theology.