The Pure Intention: On Knowledge of the Unique Name (Al-Qa?d al-Mujarrad f? Ma‘rifat al-Ism al-Mufrad by Ibn ‘A?? All?h al-Iskandar?) (By Translator: Khalid Williams)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Pure Intention: On Knowledge of the Unique Name by Khalid Williams Atif Khalil (bio) The Pure Intention: On Knowledge of the Unique Name (Al-Qas.d al-Mujarrad fī Ma‘rifat al-Ism al-Mufrad by Ibn ‘At.ā Allāh al-Iskandarī) Khalid Williams (translator) Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2018. xii + 86 Pages. In his Comfort of the Gnostics (Salwat al-‘ārifīn), Abū Khalaf al-Ṭabarī (d. 1077 CE) opens his chapter on dhikr by declaring without reservation that “no one reaches Him except through perpetual remembrance.”1 As a religious rite, dhikr, silently or aloud, privately or in community, has served as the heart of Sufi piety throughout Muslim history. Despite the defining role of dhikr in Islamic mysticism, we have yet to see a full-length monograph devoted exclusively to the topic in Western scholarship. A number of book chapters and articles, however, have appeared over the course of the last seventy-five years, varying in quality, exploring different facets of the subject. Among them, in 1943 W. Haas published an article in the Muslim World on the meditative practices of the Rahmaniyya Order of Algeria.2 More than thirty years later, another contribution appeared in the same journal, this time by J. Kennedy. It was on the dhikr rituals of the “Nubians” of Egypt and Sudan.3 The Canadian anthropologist and scholar of religion, E. Waugh, explored the role of the munshidīn or singers in the dhikr ceremonies of Egypt in 1991.4 Two years later, A. Geels wrote a detailed description of the collective dhikr ceremony of the Halveti-Jerrahis of Turkey accompanied by a contemporary psychological analysis of the ritual.5 This was followed in 1999 by a relatively comprehensive treatment by J. Lumbard of the levels of dhikr and their relation to the levels of the self, through the lens of traditional Sufi psychology.6 In the same year, M. Waley examined modes of contemplation in Persian Sufism with a focus on the theory and practice of dhikr.7 W. Chittick outlined the cosmology of dhikr in a short chapter in 2002.8 More recently, J. Elias contributed to a volume on meditation in the Western Religions where he analyzed dhikr as a practice that stands in between prayer and meditation.9 An essay by S. Bashir in the same work looked at the role of movement and stillness in 14th century Central Asian Sufism.10 A year later, A. Papas published a paper on dhikr and samā’ in the mysticism of Dahbīdī (d. 1542).11 The most recent addition to the burgeoning field of dhikr-studies has been E. Abuali’s article on the vision of colored lights in the Kubrawi Order.12 And then there are the treatments of remembrance in the works of J. Trimingham,13 M. Valiuddin,14 and others,15 not to mention the [End Page 108] two very good entries on the subject by L. Gardet (Encyclopedia of Islam) and W. Chittick (Encyclopedia of Religion).16 As far as translations are concerned, Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) Book of Invocations and Supplications (Kitāb al-adhkār wa’l-da‘awāt), the ninth book of the Revival (Iḥyā’), was rendered into English in 1973 by K. Nakamura, a revised version of which appeared again in 1990 through the Islamic Texts Society (ITS).17 The same publisher released a translation by M. Fitzgerald and Y. Slitine of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s (d. 1350) Wābil al-sayyib in 2000. Although entitled The Invocation of God, only a portion of the work dealt with dhikr. Without question, the most significant text to appear on the subject in English has been M. Danner’s translation of Miftāḥ al-falāḥ (also by ITS; 1996). Ibn ‘Āṭā’ Allāh (d. 1309), the Shādhilī author of The Key to Salvation confessed in the introduction that his reason for writing the manual was because he had not come across a single adequate treatment of the subject. Few works after it seem to have matched its breadth, scope and degree of influence on later Sufi tradition (outside perhaps of manuals meant for initiated members of specific...