Introduction: Ṭūsī and Sufism
Arguably one of the greatest thinkers in history, Khvāja Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was born in 597/1201 into a Twelver Imāmī family, which he would later call “the believers in, and followers of exoteric aspects of the religious law,” in his autobiography.Footnote 1 His father was a well-educated Imāmī scholar: Ṭūsī’s depiction of him as a man whose main concern was the principles of religion and substantive law (usụ̄l va furūʿ) makes us think that he was interested in jurisprudence. On the other hand, his father received an education from his uncle, who was a student of the famous Ismāʿīlī-inclined doxographer al-Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153). In his childhood, Ṭūsī studied with a student of Bābā Afżāl al-dīn Kāshānī (d. ca. 610/1213), another Ismāʿīlī philosopher and a master of esotericism in Ṭūsī’s eyes, Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāsib (d. 640/1242). Probably as a culmination of these manifold influences, we find Ṭūsī having left Nishapur and living in Quhistan among Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs by 624/1227 where he embraced the Nizārī faith, and lived under the protection and friendship of the Ismāʿīlī governor, Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥtashim (d. 655/1257), to whom he devoted his The Nasirean Ethics and Muhtashimian Ethics.Footnote 2 After eight productive years in Quhistan he was transferred to the headquarters of Nizārīs in Alamūt, where he not only wrote many books celebrating Ismāʿīlism, but he also received the honorific title “master of creation and the chief missionary [khvāja-ye kāʾināt va sulṭān al-duʿāt],” and lived there until its surrender to the Mongols and destruction in 654/1256.Footnote 3 The three decades that Ṭūsī spent among Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs were the most productive period of his life.Footnote 4 His service as the philosopher/vizier of Rukn al-Dīn after the assassination of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad III continued until the Ismāʿīlī surrender to Hūlāgū Khān (r. 654‒63/1256‒65), the Īlkhānid warlord. Ṭūsī played a curious role in the negotiations between the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs and the Mongols, working with other scholars of the court towards a peaceful surrender. He was appointed as negotiator to Hūlāgū, who was preparing the conquest of Persia.Footnote 5 Claiming to have been a captive amidst the Nizārīs, he not only survived the large-scale massacre of Ismāʿīlīs, but also became the advisor of Hūlāgū, and the administrator of religious foundations, endowments (awqāf), and finances.Footnote 6 Having renounced Nizārī Ismāʿīlism, he re-embraced Twelver Imāmism, and served the Mongol rulers until his death.Footnote 7
We have no evidence that Ṭūsī ever became a practicing Sufi.Footnote 8 However, except for some forms of mysticism and asceticism, Ṭūsī was not opposed to Sufism either. The Nasirean Ethics, finished in 633/1235 in the Ismāʿīlī stronghold in Quhistan holds in high esteem some ideas associated with Sufism, such as examining the ego (muḥāsabat al-nafs) that al-Kindī (d. 258/873) had recommended, taming oneself via hunger, and the voluntary death before physical death that Ṭūsī aptly traces to Plato.Footnote 9 “The philosopher [ḥakīm] Plato has said: ‘die by will, and you will live by nature!,’ while sufistic philosophers [ḥukamā-ye mutaṣavvifah] have put it thus: ‘die before you die!’”Footnote 10 It is significant that Ṭūsī describes Plato and Sufis with the same honorific term, “ḥakīm,” which can mean “philosopher” or “sage” depending on the context.
On the other hand, Ṭūsī’s commentary on the chapter entitled “Stations of the Mystics” (Maqāmāt al-ʿĀrifīn) in Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 428/1037) Remarks and Admonitions, finished around 644/1246 after two decades of labor, does not show any enthusiasm for Sufism. Ṭūsī dryly points out that for Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209), this chapter is the most important part of the entire Remarks and Admonitions as it explains the “Science of Sufism,” but Ṭūsī himself does not express any specific interest.Footnote 11 We know that he is sharply critical of antinomian and ascetic forms of mysticism, and he does not hide his philosophical dislike of solitude, as well as the lifestyle of itinerant mendicants.Footnote 12 This contempt could get violent when combined with his political power. In 658/1259‒60, when a group of Qalandars introduced themselves in the court, Hūlāgū asked his advisor Ṭūsī who they were. Ṭūsī’s reply—“the excess of this world!”—sufficed for a summary execution of all the Qalandars.Footnote 13 His hatred of antinomianism was indeed widely shared by prominent Sufis of his time.Footnote 14 His contacts with what he saw as an urban, intellectual form of Sufism become more frequent in the last eighteen years of his life. His exchange of letters with Sufis,Footnote 15 particularly with the great Sufi master of his time, Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnavī (d. 673/1274), is of fundamental importance, because it indicates at least three key points for a fresh reading of Ṭūsī, the first of which has been barely studied, while the second and third ones have eluded scholarly attention.
The first point is his close acquaintance with philosophical Sufism. As much as Qūnavī’s long letter and questions to Ṭūsī display the former’s skills in peripatetic philosophy, Ṭūsī’s brief analysis of Qūnavī’s Sufi treatise demonstrates Ṭūsī’s genuine knowledge of the Sufi path and teachings. Here Ṭūsī shows an evident respect for the Sufi master Qūnavī, and gives a succinct description of the states and stations that the Sufi wayfarer underwent.Footnote 16
The second issue that the exchange of letters with Qūnavī brings up is Ṭūsī’s overlooked double-entendre that barely hides his still strong affiliation with Ismāʿīlism. Reading his responsa to Qūnavī’s challenging philosophical questions calls into question nothing less than Ṭūsī’s apparent theological affiliations with Imāmism. Ṭūsī opens the response with a rich benediction for the guide (hādī) that God sends to creation, supports via His support (ʿayyadahu bi-tāʾyīdihi) and chooses as regent (nāʾiban) to the Prophet. This felicitous, divinely ordained guide is also the one who calls (al-dāʿī) all creation to the most glorious path (ashraf al-ṭarīqah). Subsequently, in stark contrast to Ṭūsī’s authoritative tone throughout the letter and the conventions of scholarly and courtly writing, he directs all of these series of praises to Qūnavī. He continues apparently extolling the recipient of the letter, employing an Ismāʿīlī terminology that would be excessive and unusually extravagant even for a scholar of the caliber of Qūnavī:
In our time, indeed, God has appointed a great teacher to this position [i.e. regency]. He is the great imām, the pole of God’s friends, the caliph of the prophets, the inviter to Truth, the guidance of creation, the heart of the nation and religion … Ibn Isḥāq [Qūnavī].Footnote 17
Arguably, this is one of the most concrete textual examples of dissimulation that betrays Ṭūsī’s continuing Ismāʿīlī devotion. To the best of my knowledge, this evidence has eluded the attention of Ṭūsī scholars who debate his religious convictions. Landolt attentively questions Ṭūsī’s appeal to the “imām” in addressing Qūnavī, but does not suggest any answer.Footnote 18 Chittick and Madelung also intuit that there is something unusual in these extravagant expressions of admiration, especially in light of Ṭūsī’s political and scholarly reputation, his generally authoritative voice in the correspondence, and his polite but critical comments on Qūnavī’s Sufi treatise that immediately follow the eulogy.Footnote 19 I want to propose the possibility that the benediction is not intended for Qūnavī at all. It employs all well-known honorifics of the Ismāʿīlī imāms, and makes better sense as tacitly praising the Ismāʿīlī imām of his time instead of Qūnavī. It is more convincing to postulate that the post-Alamūt Ṭūsī, who had to completely replace the explicit benedictions for the Ismāʿīlī imāms in his earlier works, might have found such an implicit way to express his continuing devotion.Footnote 20 As we will see below, his response to the Sufi master is colored by his still strong Ismāʿīlī leanings.
The third aspect is a culmination of the first two points: Ṭūsī’s apophatic theology in his post-Alamūt career and its blending of Sufism and Ismāʿīlism. Together with the works penned by the fifth Yemenī dāʿī Ibn al-Wālid (d. 612/1215), Ṭūsī’s early autobiography and his Ismāʿīlī masterpiece the Paradise of Submission, which was also commissioned officially for use within the Nizārī daʿwā as late as the eighteenth century, are gems demonstrating how the main components of Ismāʿīlī apophaticism were carried into the thirteenth century.Footnote 21 This peculiar negative theological approach to the divine nature survives in Ṭūsī’s post-Alamūt corpus, after his conversion to Imāmism. In his Division of Existents, for example, he gives a brief overview of the alternative views on the divine nature. After introducing the Muʿtazilite and Ashʿarite positions, he explains his own view. Accordingly, the appropriate way is to negate all binaries and attributes since they are inapplicable: “the ipseity of God, transcendent He is, is One from all aspects. No existing attribute can be attached to it.”Footnote 22 Ṭūsī’s post-Alamūt writings are full of allusions to Ismāʿīlism, or even direct Arabic translations of his Persian Ismāʿīlī works.Footnote 23 Both Sufism and Ismāʿīlism do play a fundamental and persistent role in Ṭūsī’s corpus from early on until his death.
Origin and Destination: An Ismāʿīlī Eschatology?
The prominence of Sufi themes is unexpected but quite evident in Ṭūsī’s early writings. The positive approach to urban Sufism in The Nasirean Ethics is echoed not only in his post-Alamūt writings. His early work in Persian on Ismāʿīlī eschatology, Origin and Destination, has conspicuous Sufi elements. Here Ṭūsī writes that on the Day of Reckoning (rūz-e ḥisāb) people will be divided into three groups, all of which, in turn, are comprised of three subgroups. The first group is composed of those who will directly enter paradise. “The people of the right side who have not committed any sin” and “those whose books of reckoning are empty of bad deeds” are in this first group of the elect, but the foremost and highest position among all is reserved, quite surprisingly, for Darvīshes:
First are the foremost [sābiqān] and the people of the greatest Height [aʿrāf], that is, those who are above reckoning and accountability. It is reported in a tradition [dar khabar ast]: “When Darvīshes are brought to the place of reckoning [ḥisābgāh], the angels will demand their accounts. In reply they say ‘What have you given us that makes us accountable to you?’ Then the commandment of the Exalted Lord will be heard: ‘They are right, their account is not any concern of yours’.”Footnote 24
While at least one verse (Q.15:92) in the Qurʾān seems to suggest that everyone without exception will be judged, Ṭūsī is evidently following the Sufi reading of another verse, according to which it is the Darvīshes who “will be kept far from [the trial],” and the first (al-sābiqūn) to arrive in paradise.Footnote 25 The earliest prophetic traditions had many references to those who will enter the paradise without a reckoning.Footnote 26 Prominent traditionists like the Ḥanbalī al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995) reported the traditions about the 70,000 believers who would enter paradise without reckoning or any torment (bi-ghayr ḥisāb wa lā ʿadhāb).Footnote 27 Such traditions widely circulated among Sufis: his correspondent Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnavī, for example, cited one of them in accordance with his philosophical mysticism.Footnote 28
Also from early on, Sufis associated the sābiqūn with “the elect” (khawwāṣ) and “the friends of God” (awliyāʾ), which they soon incorporated into Sufism. Al-Sulamī’s (d. 412/1021) compilation of Sufi exegesis displays how early Sufis like al-Junayd (d. 297/910) and his pupil Ibn ʿAṭāʾ (d. 309/922), among others, as well as Sahl al-Tustarī’s (d. 283/896) Qurʾān commentary associate the sābiqūn with the Sufi elect and the friends of God.Footnote 29 Ṭūsī’s association of the sābiqūn with Darvīshes, and exempting them from the ultimate reckoning, fits perfectly into this popular Sufi exegesis. Al-Tustarī’s caveat on the verse of all-inclusive reckoning, for example, has significant overlaps with Ṭūsī’s account on Sufis:
Q.15:92: “By your Lord, We will question them all.” In this verse there is specificity [khuṣūṣ] [within the “all”]. For indeed there are among this nation [ummah] those who are gathered up from their graves [and taken] directly to paradise, who do not attend the reckoning [ḥisāb], or experience any of the horrors [of the day]. They are those of whom God, Exalted is He, says, “they will be kept away from it” [Q.21:101]. And indeed the Prophet said: “Verily, the friends of God [awliyāʾ Allāh] leave their graves for paradise and they do not stop for the reckoning, nor do they fear the length of that day. They are the first to reach paradise. “God is well-pleased with them and they are well-pleased with Him. That is the great triumph” [Q.5:119].Footnote 30
Sufi exegesis is particularly helpful in uncovering the Sufi themes in Ṭūsī’s designation of the most perfect friends, who will not be questioned on the day of reckoning. ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī’s (d. ca. 730‒36/1329‒35) great work of Sufi exegesis, which was attributed to Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), has significant convergences with Ṭūsī’s description as well. In the very sentence that follows the introduction of those who “will not be made to stand for the reckoning,” Kāshānī quotes Q.18:28—exactly like Ṭūsī.Footnote 31
God’s speaking on behalf of the Darvīshes, who skip the step of reckoning in the afterlife as they enjoyed in this world a complete mental independence, was also a well-known Sufi theme. Indeed, we find such popular accounts in Sufi hagiographies and works of Ṭūsī’s times. The hagiographies of al-Bisṭāmī (d. 234/848‒49 or 261/874‒75) and Dhū al-Nūn (d. 245/859 or 248/862) narrated identical or parallel accounts, which widely circulated in Sufi works, such as the famous Conference of the Birds of ʿAṭṭār (d. 618/1221), or the lectures of Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī (d. 578/1182) recorded by his students.Footnote 32 Far off in al-Andalus, Ibn al-ʿArīf’s (d. 536/1141) Splendors of Sessions, which depends on ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī’s (d. 481/1089) Sufi treatise the Pitfalls of Stations, appeals to the same theme.Footnote 33 Ibn al-ʿArīf cites some of the verses that Ṭūsī cites, and presents the following list when enumerating the wonders (karāmāt) given to the knowers (ʿārifūn) in the afterlife:
No. 26: Being protected from the unrest of interrogation in the tomb [fitnat sūʾāl al-qabr]. Prompting of the right answers [talqīn al-ṣawab], and being saved from the ordeal. … No. 33: The easing of the reckoning. Among them are those for whom there won’t be any reckoning ever.Footnote 34
The same blessings in the hereafter also appear verbatim in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 504/1111) work on practical Sufism, the Path of Worshippers.Footnote 35 The theme of God responding to the question of the angels on behalf of the Darvīshes was also a devotional aspect of Turkish Sufism. In his description of the Day of Reckoning, the most well-known representative of popular Islam in Anatolia in the late thirteenth century, Darvīsh Yunus Emre (d. ca. 720/1320) was expressing in Turkish the same concern for God’s direct involvement in the interrogation that Ṭūsī was addressing: “ The interrogator angels arrived, and asked diverse questions, / Lord, you respond to them instead of me! God, I hand myself over you.”Footnote 36
Ṭūsī’s Origin and Destination does not have any direct or indirect reference to imāms, or to the backbone of Ismāʿīlī epistemology, instruction (taʿlīm). Instead of instruction, the highest form of knowledge is acquired through direct vision, or witnessing—the major source of Sufi epistemology.Footnote 37 The work itself aims to explain discursively the visionary, non-discursive accounts of those who possess direct vision: the prophets and the saints (avliyāʾ).Footnote 38 (The English translator renders the term “avliyāʾ” into English as “imāms,” aiming to situate Origin and Destination into a Shīʿite theological context, which is in my opinion misleading at least in this context.Footnote 39) At the very beginning Ṭūsī acknowledges the insufficiency of language and instruction as eschatology is a field of witnessing the ineffable by the people of insight (ahl-e bīnish), not that of descriptions by scholars (ahl-e dānish).Footnote 40 In addition to the designations “Darvīshes,” or “Avliyāʾ,” Ṭūsī’s Origin and Destination describes these preeminent beloved friends of God in a Sufi vocabulary. They are the “foremost” (sābiqūn):
“the people of unity [ahl-e vaḥdat], exalted above the path and travel; rather, they themselves are destination for travelers. ‘And let not your eye pass away from them in quest of the fineries of this life’ [Q.18:28].”Footnote 41
“The people of unity” was a designation employed not only by Sufis, but also Ismāʿīlīs among others. However, the context of human perfection transforming the desirer or traveler into the object of desire or the destination is unmistakably a key aspect of Sufi apotheosis that we find widely circulating in thirteenth century Persian Sufism.Footnote 42 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣaqalī’s (fl. fourth/tenth CE) commentary on Sahl al-Tustarī differentiates the murīd, who desires God, from the one who is already the murād, who is desired by God.Footnote 43 Al-Tustarī’s Qurʾān commentary makes the same distinction, equating the latter, once again, with the elect:
Q.6:125: Truly God has distinguished between the one who seeks [murīd] and the one who is [divinely] sought [murād], even though they are both from Him [min ʿindihi]. But He simply wanted to distinguish the elite [khuṣūṣ] from the generality [ʿumūm], and so He singled out the one who is sought in this chapter and others.Footnote 44
That perfect seeker becoming the sought one was indeed one of the most common Sufi tropes for human perfection in Ṭūsī’s time. “The seeker is in reality the sought, and the sought the seeker” appears in all popular Sufi manuals of Ṭūsī’s times, including that of al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), and ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234).Footnote 45 The same theme can be found in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s own writings and in his circle as well.Footnote 46 Ibn al-ʿArabī’s close disciple Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥabashī (d. 618/1221), for example, writes that “one is not a desirer so long as one is not desired, one is not desired so long as one is not a desirer.”Footnote 47
Even more significantly, Ṭūsī continues his description with a citation from a possibly Sufi source, without translating from Arabic into Persian: “of these are the group that: ‘if present, they are not recognized, and if absent they are not missed [in ḥaḍarū lam yuʿrafū wa in ghābū lam yufqadū].’”Footnote 48 The citation is a prophetic saying, and a similar version of it had already appeared in one of the longest epistles of the Brethren of Purity (fl. late fourth/tenth CE). Yet it particularly signified one of the major principles of the path of self-blame (malāmatiyyah), which originated in Nishapur in the ninth century, and became a widespread theme after its incorporation within Sufism. Indeed, the Brethren of Purity cites the saying within the context of celebrating God’s hidden friends, clearly adopting a distinctly malāmatī Sufi vocabulary. Accordingly, the awliyaʾ embody the noblest group in the day of resurrection (illā lahum al-sharaf al-āʿlā yawm al-qiyamah; al-sharaf al-āʿẓam), wear coarse wool clothes (al-ʿabāʾ; al-khashin), pray in seclusion (khalwah), “do not fear the blame of any blamer,” and ultimately remain hidden from creation.Footnote 49 This public invisibility of the most intimate friends of God is in agreement with the popular Sufi conception of apophatic apotheosis wherein human self, agency, and attributes are perfected through their negation.Footnote 50 Hence, Ṭūsī’s people of unity, who are not recognized if present and not missed if absent, are of particular importance. While the direct source of Ṭūsī is difficult to determine, popular Sufi works of al-Kharkūshī (d. 406‒7/1015‒16) and al-Sulamī among others contain comparable accounts on the people of blame.Footnote 51 Similar accounts abound in the corpus on Malāmatīs and Sufis. Al-Sulamī’s treatise on the self-humiliation of the poor aspirants, for example, describes the sincerest level of seekers, “the poor” (fuqarāʾ), in similar lines to Ṭūsī’s.Footnote 52 Ṭūsī’s Darvīshes will be also exempt from reckoning in the hereafter exactly because they were perfectly fuqarāʾ in this world—they have nothing to be held accountable for. Again, Sufi exegesis indicates further connections with Ṭūsī’s hidden friends of God. Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī’s (d. 320/932) interpretation of Q.21:101, the very verse that al-Tustarī quotes in his account of the sābiqūn, the friends of God who will skip the reckoning, is of particular relevance here:
Q.21:101: “Those to whom the good went beforehand [sabaqat] from Us, they will be kept away from it.” Those are a people whom God has guided. He guides them by His Essence and He makes them holy with His attributes. Thus, He makes witnessings, transitory things, and beholding recompenses fall away from them. They have no way to allude to their secret hearts and nothing to express their places. He veils them from being settled in the homesteads [mawāṭin]. They are not they through themselves and they are not present in their presence through their presence.Footnote 53
Al-Wāsiṭī’s interpretation is significant for Ṭūsī’s hidden, beloved friends of God, who will skip the reckoning, for at least two reasons. First, it associates the veiled friends of God with the sābiqūn, as Ṭūsī does. Second, al-Wāsiṭī’s interpretation is preserved in al-Sulamī’s prominent compilation of Sufi exegetes, Truths of Qurʾānic Exegesis, which, as we have seen above, preserves outstanding convergences with Ṭūsī’s account of the Darvīshes.
But there is an even more striking potential source for Origin and Destination than al-Sulamī’s famous compilation of Sufi exegesis. Ṭūsī’s quotation of the prophetic saying, “if present, they are not recognized, and if absent they are not missed,” appears almost verbatim in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s descriptions of his admired Andalusian master, Abū Jaʿdūn al-Ḥinnāwī (d. 597/1201). Apparently a simple henna-siever, who had poor vision because of his vocation, al-Ḥinnāwī also suffered from a stammer and spoke only with great difficulty. Ibn al-ʿArabī writes:
when he was absent he wasn’t missed and when he was present no-one sought his advice [idhā ghāba lam yuftaqad wa idhā ḥaḍara lam yustashar]. When he arrived in a place he was accorded no welcome, and in conversation he was passed over and ignored.Footnote 54
For Ibn al-ʿArabī, however, this faceless person was one of the most spectacular Sufis, comparable with the loftiest level of Ṭūsī’s Darvīshes. Accordingly, al-Ḥinnāwī was in fact one of the four “Supports” (Awtād) arcanely living on earth, through whom God preserved entire creation. As a perfectly hidden master of self-blame, if al-Ḥinnāwī “spoke he appeared foolish, when he sat down others began to get up and leave, and when he was present in a company the others found his presence tiresome. This state of affairs was pleasing to him.”Footnote 55 It was this characterless, simple person on whose shoulders the whole of creation stood.
The three works of Ibn al-ʿArabī which mention al-Ḥinnāwī and contain the phrase on the invisible presence of the saints of self-blame were written between ca. 596/1200 and 627/1230s. Most, if not all, of these works were present in the library of Qūnavī that he inherited from the great master himself.Footnote 56 Whether taken from Ibn al-ʿArabī via Qūnavī or not, the very fact that Ṭūsī did not translate the quotation but kept the original Arabic in Origin and Destination indicates his familiarity with the Sufi literature that contained such elements of apophatic apotheosis and self-blame. The same observation can be made on popular Sufi sayings that Ṭūsī directly quotes in the book. A key principle of Sufi epistemology, “information cannot be like witnessing,” and similar dictums, “die before you die,” which he explicitly attributed to Sufi sages in The Nasirean Ethics, or “certainties are moments” are directly quoted in Arabic probably from Sufi sources with which the young Ṭūsī was evidently conversant.Footnote 57 Moreover, the prophetic reports that Ṭūsī cites widely circulated among Sufis, such as in the Qurʾānic exegesis of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī attributed to Ibn al-ʿArabī, and in the works of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. after 787/1385).Footnote 58
Let me give a final example of the unmistakable Sufi tone that abounds in Origin and Destination, and point to the tension it carries. “All is but He” (hamā ūst), claims Ṭūsī boldly at the beginning of Origin and Destination, like Ibn Abī al-Khayr (d. 440/1049), Aḥmad al-Ghazālī (d. 520/1126), ʿAṭṭār, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 687/1289), Bābā Afżāl al-dīn Kāshānī, Rūmī (d. 672/1273), and many other Persian Sufis of the time.Footnote 59 Strikingly, Ibn Abī al-Khayr’s mention of the same Persian phrase, “all is but He,” appears in the very anecdote where the shaykh (i) adopts the perspective of apophatic apotheosis where perfection is attained in self-negation of binaries, (ii) describes and explicitly praises the path of self-blame, (iii) underscores that information (khabar) or instruction has no epistemological power in the visionary quest of self-purification, and (iv) addresses the insufficiency of language and discourse in the territories of witnessing. In the same anecdote he even mentions the report “information cannot be like witnessing” in Persian that Ṭūsī preferred to cite in Arabic.Footnote 60 In light of these significant parallels it is tempting to conclude that the young Ṭūsī was familiar with the hagiography of Ibn Abī al-Khayr or other Arabic Sufi works that adopted the themes of apophatic apotheosis with an emphasis on the path of self-blame.
These examples demonstrate that Ṭūsī’s early eschatological work written in the Ismāʿīlī stronghold of Quhistan closely associates itself with Sufi themes, terms, sources, and hermeneutics. Ṭūsī’s knowledge of Sufism manifested in his later works such as his correspondence with Qūnavī or Kīshī (d. 695/1296) or his Sufi monograph Attributes of the Illustrious is more than a late interest or a mere political calculation. But unlike Qūnavī, who explicitly aims to reconcile Sufism and peripatetic philosophy, Ṭūsī does not have a reconciliatory Ismāʿīlī agenda.Footnote 61 Instead, Sufism and Ismāʿīlism are in an uneasy tension in Ṭūsī’s early writings, and he does not undertake to harmonize the two. The conflict between Origin and Destination written in Quhistan during 621‒33/1224‒35 and a letter on divine union that he wrote around 638/1240 in Alamūt depicts this tension vividly. While Origin and Destination opened with the popular Persian Sufi phrase “all is but He,” his letter to a certain Khvāja Muḥammad Abū Saʿīd (“Bāsaʿīd”), penned as an Ismāʿīlī master, strongly condemns this phrase. Bāsaʿīd’s letter grumbles about a group of fellow Ismāʿīlīs who uttered “all is but He,” and asks Ṭūsī whether such utterances are appropriate or not. Furious at hearing such a report, Ṭūsī’s harsh response allows for violent punishment of these fools. “Real cohesion [payvastan] and unification [ittiḥād] with the real light of the world of religion” is attained only through proper submission to the imāms. Accordingly, the divine will is known through following His vicegerents via proper instruction. Only the uneducated, riff-raff Ismāʿīlīs (ghulāt-a ḥashvī) would utter such a claim, which is nothing but an expression of disbelief and polytheism (kufr va shirk).Footnote 62 The dilemma would only deepen in his post-Ismāʿīlī career. Towards the end of his life, Ṭūsī would own and re-employ this very phrase in his Attributes of the Illustrious, as we will see below. In this work, he also justified the famous utterance “I am the Truth” (Anā al-Ḥaqq) of al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922), who “had universally been condemned by Twelver Shīʿīs.”Footnote 63
How can one reconcile, if one should, (i) the Ismāʿīlī Ṭūsī of Quhistan who praises the Darvīshes and avliyāʾ employing Sufi terms and themes, and declares that “all is but He,” (ii) the Ismāʿīlī Ṭūsī of Alamūt who violently condemns the same utterance, and (iii) the Twelver Ṭūsī who re-endorses “all is but He” within Sufi framework? Ṭūsī’s evident desertion of Ismāʿīlī doctrines, his supposedly late discovery of Sufism, or his allegedly inherent inconsistency as a man of all seasons, whose views were infinitely flexible, changing according to the political circumstances, do not tell us the entire story. Ṭūsī’s only major treatise specifically devoted to Sufism, Attributes of the Illustrious, is of particular importance in this ambivalent context. The work embodies not only a peculiar employment of Ismāʿīlī double negation within a Sufi garb, but also sheds light on the continued convergence of Ismāʿīlism and Sufism in Ṭūsī’s theological corpus without a theoretical effort to harmonize the two frameworks.
Attributes of the Illustrious: Sufi-Ismāʿīlī Apophaticism of an Imāmī Polymath
Ṭūsī’s Attributes of the Illustrious was penned towards the end of his life, after his public conversion from Ismāʿīlism to Imāmiyyah. The work describes the Sufi path in six chapters, which, in turn, are composed of six stations. Let me focus on the last two chapters only (see Figure 1). The fifth chapter concerns the stations of the most distinguished wayfarers who have attained union (ahl-a vuṣūl). It contains the stages of complete trust to God (tavakkul), resignation (riżā), submission (taslīm), unification (tavḥīd), conjunction (ittiḥād), and union (vaḥdat). The sixth and last chapter is an exception as it is devoted to one theme only: annihilation (fanāʾ).
The Sufi path of spiritual progress according to Ṭūsī’s Attributes of the Illustrious
Since the ninth century onwards Sufis have defined such systems of spiritual progress. Ṭūsī’s list of stages, however, has no precedent in the Sufi literature to my knowledge.Footnote 64 Especially submission did not surface in Sufi manuals in the thirteenth century or earlier. It was the presence of this term, which had evident significance in Ismāʿīlī theology, that made Ṭūsī’s Sufi path unprecedented.Footnote 65 Indeed, it is an Ismāʿīlī path of Sufism: the same order of stations, with a minor yet curious difference, appears in Ṭūsī’s earlier Ismāʿīlī eschatology Origin and Destination. Here Ṭūsī explains that the return to divine oneness requires first the annihilation of the volition which lifts one to the rank of resignation. Then, with the annihilation of one’s power, one attains the stage of complete trust. In the next step, one’s knowledge must be annihilated in God’s knowledge, which brings the stage of submission. Finally, “one’s existence must be annihilated in God’s existence, to the extent that one should become nothing on one’s own. This is the rank of the people of unity [maqām-e ahl-e vaḥdat].”Footnote 66 In other words, the places of the stages of resignation and complete trust are reversed in Attributes of the Illustrious and Origin and Destination, while other stages and themes are identical. Even the Qurʾānic verses that Ṭūsī cites for the stages of resignation, complete trust, and submission are the same.Footnote 67
Why are the steps of resignation and complete trust reversed in the “Ismāʿīlī” eschatology and the “Sufi” manual? Ṭūsī’s brief exposition of the Sufi path in his letter to Qūnavī unveils the mystery. Here, Ṭūsī has another, however brief, account of the Sufi wayfaring. Accordingly, resignation and complete trust constitute a binary; they represent one single station, and Ṭūsī does not employ them separately.Footnote 68 When one transcends “the station of resignation and complete trust,” one attains union, which is beyond unification as well as conjunction. This depiction in the letter is in perfect harmony with the account in Attributes of the Illustrious and Origin and Destination. Hence we have three texts written for very different readers in different periods of Ṭūsī’s career that strongly cohere in their description of the spiritual path. Ṭūsī calls these most distinguished travelers both “those who have attained absolute union” (ahl-e vaḥdat-e muṭlaq) and “the people of communion” (ahl-e vuṣūl)—both of the designations appear in Origin and Destination and Attributes of the Illustrious. The “Sufi” path of Ṭūsī’s Attributes of the Illustrious and the Letters is thus paved by a unique approach to spiritual progression with an Ismāʿīlī flavor. However, not only the path of spiritual progress is in line with his Ismāʿīlī writings in Attributes of the Illustrious. I would argue that the work also adopts a distinctly classical Ismāʿīlī apophatic approach to the divine nature.
The apophatic theologies of divine nature developed by Ismāʿīlī thinkers since the early tenth century have distinct cosmological markers and a logical structure. Respecting their diversity, and without essentializing or dehistoricizing them, we can briefly highlight three general features that widely circulated among Ismāʿīlī thinkers until the Mongol invasion.
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1. They put the divine essence beyond the Divine Word (or Command), which lies beyond the first creation, the Universal Intellect. Creation emerges from the Divine Word’s conjunction with the Universal Intellect, which compromises the former’s oneness, and makes it knowable to intellect only as the one-many, yet still unknowable in its relative oneness.
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2. The relative oneness of the Divine Word can be transcended only by two negations. The first one negates the positive ground and relationality, and the second cancels all (positive and negative) discursivity in order to indicate the beyond of the relative oneness beyond creation. This via negativa indicates the inapplicability and failure of any statement on God through its own performative self-cancellation. The Ismāʿīlī negative path should not be confused with that of some peripatetic philosophers, Muʿtazilīs, Ibādīs, and Imāmīs, who conjured the divine attributes as negations. Ismāʿīlī scholars attacked the negativist reading of the divine attributes, calling it “hidden anthropomorphism.” “Negating the divine attributes” indicates their inapplicability within the classical Ismāʿīlī theological tradition, rather than their negative applicability, which they criticized.
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3. The absolute oneness of God is unknowable, beyond the impenetratable oneness of the Divine Word. Classical Ismāʿīlī theologians performed the unsayability and unknowability of the excessive, saturated theme of theological discourse via negating their own act of saying on knowing.
Major features of Ismāʿīlī negative theology are dressed in the Sufi garment in Attributes of the Illustrious. Striking parallels can be found even in rhetorical gestures—such as the opening of the book, or devotional expressions. Ismāʿīlī texts typically began with a powerfully apophatic manner with the strongest emphasis we find on divine unknowability and the inapplicability of language both positive and negative.Footnote 69 Attributes of the Illustrious opens in an eye-catchingly apophatic manner, very similar to the works of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. 361/972), Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (d. 411/1021), and other Ismāʿīlī scholars:
Incomparable thanks to God, because no intellect has the power to access His truth, and no thought or knowledge can comprehend the fullness of His gnosis. Every expression that aims at His description and every utterance that verbalizes his identity is perceived only via the blemish of comparability [tashbīh] if it is affirmative; its perception is not freed from the scourge of ineffectualism [taʿṭīl] if it is not affirmative.Footnote 70
In the very opening of the work on Sufism, Ṭūsī cancels divine knowability as well as positive and negative discourse on God. The double threat of comparability and ineffectualism described here might appear common. Yet it displays a rare, deeper skepticism concerning the limitations of language than it appears. Sufis and theologians employed the “two limits” of tashbīh and taʿṭīl predominantly to underscore the dangers in interpreting the divine attributes, the reported (khabarī) physical attributes in particular. Not only Imāmī and Sunnī scholars who penned influential theological works and creeds popular in Central Asia, but also Sufi masters like ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1167), Aḥmad al-Rifāʿī, Abū al-Najīb al-Suhrawardī (d. 563/1168), ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and ʿIzz al-Dīn Kāshānī all used the binary of tashbīh and taʿṭīl when addressing divine attributes, specifically within the context of anthropomorphic depictions of God.Footnote 71 For Ṭūsī, however, the danger of falling into one of these fallacies was a generic philosophical problem inherent in any utterance on God. It was not such celebrated Sufi eponyms or theologians, but other sources that nourished Ṭūsī’s skeptical opening. Ismāʿīlī texts, with their powerful, apophatic openings and common depiction of the tension between tashbīh and taʿṭīl as general problems of descriptive language, provide the most likely possibility. For example, the Ismāʿīlī dāʿī of Nishapur where Ṭūsī studied for a few years, Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm (fl. fifth/eleventh CE) suggested a via negativa that would yield divine unity purified both from tashbīh and taʿṭīl.Footnote 72
The more we proceed through Ṭūsī’s stations, the more his apophatic theology with its double negation reveals itself in the Sufi terminology. Step four of the Sufi path, unification, brings the seeker to the realization that the attribute “Being” should be negated from creation because only God deserves it:
[Unification is] to cut off oneself from the vision of plurality and to consider everything One, and to see all One. Once the seeker unifies in the depth of her soul all in Oneness, she moves from the station of “He is One and there is none who shares with Him in divinity” to the station of “He is One and there is none who shares with Him in Being.”Footnote 73
Unification thus separates God’s Being from creation, insofar as only God is the Real Being—the term applies to Him via eminentiae. The limits of this act of negation, however, become clear once the seeker progresses on the Sufi path, and achieves the next step, conjunction. “‘Unification’ is to make one, while ‘conjunction’ is to become One. … In unification there is a blemish of limitedness that does not exist in conjunction.”Footnote 74 More clearly, unification is the realization of the seeker that God is the only real Being. This is very much like the Necessary Existent (wājib al-wujūd) of the peripatetic philosophers, who is the only Real Being and the source from which all beings emanate, and all attributes are to be negated. Conjunction is going beyond this philosophical negative theology, realizing that the divine otherness cannot be limited with existentiating causality. The station of conjunction is the realization of the still positive, causal ground of Being, and negating it in favor of the non-discursive, ineffable, visionary testimony of oneness: “[conjunction] is to see that all is He, without limiting Him by saying that ‘everything other than Him exists through Him, so all are One’.”Footnote 75 Conjunction negates from God the attribute of Being, along with ontic, causal relationality. This disqualification of the popular philosophical theologies of the divine nature through a further radicalization of negation was the hallmark of classical Ismāʿīlī theologians. With this first negation, the text self-consciously goes beyond the philosophical via negativa and leaves no positive language for God, including Being.
Still, continues Ṭūsī, “conjunction means to become One, but it has the smell of plurality.”Footnote 76 Now, the discursive act of negating God's Being (and everything else) needs to be negated with a second move, in order to indicate the pure oneness beyond all binaries. We move to a second negation, which now targets the entire discursive field, both positive and negative. This is the sixth and final station, divine union (vaḥdah), where discourse, with its endless binaries, cancels itself, as Ṭūsī moves to paradoxes:
“rest and motion, contemplation and remembrance, journey and wayfaring, desire, desirer and desired, deficiency and perfection are all non-existent in oneness. When discourse arrives at God, rein back!”Footnote 77
The final step of union is the second performative negation that cuts all discursive fields in order to indicate divine union. This was the end of their journeys, and the self-negation of language, for the most advanced Sufis. Indeed, the Ismāʿīlī path described in Ṭūsī’s Solidarity and Dissociation ends exactly at this point, where it clearly overlaps with Attributes of the Illustrious. The former treatise is written for novice Ismāʿīlī seekers of union (ṭālib-e vaḥdat), and similarly depicts the station of union as the stage where discourse cancels itself, after having removed its ground, both positive and negative:
there is neither knowing nor known, neither lover nor beloved. All will be God and God alone. … [T]his is a rank that no creature can describe. That which can be described in words cannot be free from denial [kufr] and ascribing partners to God [shirk].Footnote 78
The realm of union described in this Ismāʿīlī text as the self-cancellation of all binaries and discursive spaces overlaps fundamentally with the one we find in Attributes of the Illustrious. The station of union in these works corresponds to the numeric oneness of the Divine Word in the Ismāʿīlī apophatic tradition that Ṭūsī inherits. It can be indicated only with the self-canceling double negation. Step five, conjunction negates all positive statements about God, while the final step, union, cancels both positive and negative language.
God is commonly called the “Originator” in the Ismāʿīlī tradition, as it is the Divine Word that creates the Universal Intellect, and hence everything else. We have no way to experience, or know, and no language to indicate God’s absolute oneness beyond the numerical oneness of the Divine Word. Hence Solidarity and Dissociation, Ṭūsī’s earlier work for Ismāʿīlī novices, ends when we arrive at the end of discourse via double negation. Attributes of the Illustrious, however, wants to elaborate what it means to talk about divine oneness. Hence it adds a sixth chapter that has no sections or stations, but is rather composed of a few sentences. It is telling that the content of this new chapter is not different from the sixth and last step of the fifth chapter: it is still elaborating union, but now Ṭūsī is addressing the divine oneness beyond the oneness of the Divine Word. The chapter “explains” this non-journey of unknowing the beyond of the beyond-intellect. Ṭūsī associates this “non-journey” with non-discursive negation, by calling the chapter “annihilation” (fanāʾ), the “beyond” of double negation:
In union, there is no wayfarer and wayfaring, journey and aim, desire, desirer and desired: “everything perishes except His face” [Q.28:88]. Also there is no affirmation of this discourse, and it cannot be uttered; and there is no negation of this discourse, and it cannot be uttered. Affirmation and negation are binaries, and duality is the source of multiplicity. There is no affirmation or negation there. Negation of the negation, or affirmation of the affirmation also is not there. Negation of the affirmation, or affirmation of the negation also is not there. … Whatever comes to tongue, imagination, or reason is to be negated. “To Him all matters are returned” [Q.11:123].
It was this that we aimed to address in this compendium, and here the discourse is terminated.Footnote 79
This concluding chapter not only echoes the dizzying passages of the earlier Ismāʿīlī theologians on the divine nature, but such an ending is in stark opposition to the Sufi, and also philosophical, formats we know. Sufi texts neither depict annihilation as the final culmination of the path, nor employ the term without its typically superior counterpart of “subsistence” (baqāʾ), or “annihilation of annihilation” (fanāʾ al-fanāʾ). For Ṭūsī, however, there is no subsistence, life, being or any other positive (or indeed, negative) ground to talk about. This “station” is called “annihilation” not because there is something that has, or can be annihilated, but only because it is a common, negative linguistic performative signal to absence. “[Sufis] call it annihilation, because the return [maʿād] of creation is by annihilation, as its origin [mabdaʾ] was from non-existence [ʿadam].”Footnote 80 There is no way from the numeric oneness to the absolute oneness; there is only annihilation if we want to address divine oneness—neither a negation nor an affirmation, nor their negations. Here at the end of a uniquely Ismāʿīlī path of Sufi wayfaring, we are nowhere else other than the double negation of classical Ismāʿīlī apophaticism on the divine nature.
Conclusion
Ṭūsī’s apophaticism presents irreducible Sufi themes profoundly blended with the theological heritage of al-Sijistānī, al-Kirmānī, and other Ismāʿīlī masters. The negation of the applicability of all attributes and even of Being is mixed with a rational, intellectualist self-negation of discourse that leads to the unknowability of the trans-transcendent God. Ṭūsī’s apophatic Sufi-Ismāʿīlī theology in Attributes of the Illustrious displays two key interrelated phenomena: the theological and thematic porosity of Sufism and Ismāʿīlism in thirteenth century Persia, as well as the continuity of the Ismāʿīlī apophatic tradition, in different forms, after the Mongol invasions.
The porosity of negative theology on the divine essence should not be mistaken for harmonization in the case of Ṭūsī, because he neither considers himself a Sufi in any sense, nor aims to integrate Sufism and Ismāʿīlism. Attributes of the Illustrious is not a Sufi-Ismāʿīlī (or Ismāʿīlī-Sufi) treatise that wants to harmonize the two. Instead, it is Ṭūsī’s empathetic but also naturally “Ismāʿīlīzed” depiction of pious Sufism to the powerful Īlkhānid vizier Shams al-Dīn’s (d. 682/1284) ill-fated son Bahāʾ al-Dīn (d. 677/1279), who was already an admirer of Sufi saints (muḥibb al-avliyāʾ) according to Ṭūsī’s own testimony.Footnote 81 The theological disparity becomes clear at the very beginning of the treatise, when Ṭūsī is describing the prerequisites of the wayfaring for the Sufi novice in the very first station of the first chapter. This is “faith” (īmān), and it requires the affirmation of the certain knowledge (ʿilm qaṭʿī) of God’s eight essential attributes.Footnote 82 This Sunnī theological stance was not acceptable to Ṭūsī, as we know from his other writings, but it was an accurate description of a widespread Sufi creed of the time. Even though Ṭūsī adds Ismāʿīlī apophatic themes to his treatise on Sufism, he appears as more of an outsider describing a form of Sufism that was already incorporating sustained Ismāʿīlī teachings. Reading his Attributes of the Illustrious in the light of his oeuvre—especially Letters and Origin and Destination—indicates a very different trope than bringing Sufism and Ismāʿīlism together. Instead, in Ṭūsī’s oeuvre they are already and imperfectly blended together, which provides important insights into later Ismāʿīlism as well as Sufism.
Ṭūsī’s unique versatility blends Ismāʿīlī apophaticism with Sufi themes, terms, and hermeneutics in apparently Ismāʿīlī writings. But this is not a one-way relationship. A distinct Sufi flavor is obvious in some of his Ismāʿīlī works, Origin and Destination being the most obvious, while his apparently Sufi work Attributes of the Illustrious follows a unique Ismāʿīlī path and negative theology, and his letter to the Sufi master Qūnavī might be covertly praising the Ismāʿīlī imām of the time. Like many Ismāʿīlī Sufis to emerge in the following centuries, Ṭūsī does not propose any harmonization between the two—Ismāʿīlism is already intertwined with a peculiar form of Sufism. With its path of self-blame and apophatic human perfection, this interpretation of Sufism is distinctly a malāmatī one. Ṭūsī is consistently opposed to extreme ascetism and especially to the antinomian, itinerant Darvīshes. Textual evidence suggests conversance and strong parallels with Ibn Abī al-Khayr, the Sufi exegesis of al-Sulamī and al-Tustarī, and stereotypical as it may sound, Ibn al-ʿArabī in this interpretation of Sufism that Ṭūsī adopts.
Pre-modern Ismāʿīlī apophaticism has a unique combination of double negations, the unknowability of God, and an intellectual, philosophical self-cancellation of theological discourse. This apophatic theology of the divine essence expanded widely from Andalus to Central Asia in the tenth century, and made its mark, as witnessed by the longstanding, mostly hostile and reductive depictions of Ismāʿīlīs as “the negators.” The case of Ṭūsī suggests that Ismāʿīlī double negation was preserved, and put into creative interactions with Sufism in Iran and Central Asia in the thirteenth century. The organic coalescence of post-Alamūt Ismāʿīlism and Sufism in these territories strongly corroborates this premise.
