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Truth and Narrative: The Untimely

Thoughts of Ayn Al-Qudat
Al-Hamadani
by Hamid Dabashi
Routledge/Curzon, 1999

Often relegated to the third figure in the mystic-martyr triad

Hallaj-Suhrawardi-Hamadani, the ink of Western scholars has done little to
clarify the life, times and teachings of Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (1098 1131).
Unfortunately, this first full-length monograph on the famous Persian mystic
takes us a step in the wrong direction.
In his introduction, Hamid Dabashi declares his intention to emancipate
the writings of Ayn al-Qudat from the misreadings to which he believes they
have been subjected (pg. 4). His goal is to give an account of Ayn al-Qudats
life and thought in terms specific and particular to him, and not to categorize
him into the bland a-historical straight-jacket of Islamic mysticism, Persian
Sufism or Eastern Gnosticism, terms for which I have absolutely no use or
patience. (pg. 6) But the specific terms of this study are more particular to
Dabashi than to Hamadani, and Dabashis impatience for the terms and norms
of scholarship permeates the entire study. It is replete with incessant
repetitions (several quotations are cited at length more than once), simple
errors (fifty-two transliteration errors and thirteen grammatical mistakes in
chapter one alone), and littered with solecisms, such as axle for axis
(pg. 262), flock(s) for lock(s) (pgs 290 & 520), seeked for sought (pg. 491),
much childish (pg. 349,350), and many more. Important dates are often
misstated, e.g., Sanai (d. 545/1150) (pg. 153), as opposed to 525/1131; the
birth date of Ibn Rushd (520/1126) is listed correctly, but then said to be the
year of Ayn al-Qudats death (pg. 146). The Ghaznavids are said to have ruled
from 366/1186 (sic; read 977) (pg. 111), though they did not supplant the
Samanids until 387/997. Such errors are so common as to make one wonder
if anyone, including Dabashi himself, edited or even proof-read this work.
The first 100 pages are devoted to a vague and petulant diatribe against
Orientalists, academic Sufis, crypto-converts and Muslim apologists
whom it is argued are responsible for confining Hamadanis writings in the
dungeons of Persian Sufism and Islamic mysticism (pg. 4). While a redefinition
of terms and a critique of scholarship is always welcome, Dabashi offers none

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of this, giving few examples and no in-depth analysis of those he does

provide. He appears to be singularly unaware of many important
developments in the discourse of Islamic scholarship over the last two
decades. He laments: after nearly two hundred years of recorded Islamic
studies, not a single alternative approach has even been noted or suggested
to the dominant positivist discourse of Orientalism, (pg. 39) a claim so
patently false as to demonstrate Dabashis utter failure to account for much of
the scholarship pertaining to his subject-matter. This failure leads him into
many avoidable errors. Foremost among them is the simplistic bifurcation,
which posits Sufi masters as subverting the nomocentrism of the clerical
establishment (pgs 120 1). To sustain this opposition Dabashi questions
whether or not Ayn al-Qudat was ever really a judge (pg. 9,164), but then
declares He was a learned judge . . . (pg. 65). To demonstrate his main
hypothesis, that Hamadani was a radical adab humanist who transcended the
dominant discourses of kalam, philosophy and Sufism, he relies upon
simplistic institutionalized images of these disciplines, failing to acknowledge
the great cross-fertilization which characterized Hamadanis period, a
phenomenon well described by Marshall Hodgson in The Venture of Islam
(2:152200).
Dabashi sees the literary aspect of Hamadanis writings as the main trunk
of the entire tree, claiming, Ayn al-Qudats work ought to be read within
the dominant literary context that the adab tradition had operative as their
intellectual context. (pg. 185) Throughout chapters 3, 5 and 6 he repeatedly
asserts that Ayn al-Qudats main preoccupation was with writing. This,
however, flies in the face of Hamadanis assertion that he had abandoned
this preoccupation once he devoted himself to Sufism. But Dabashi simply
cannot accept that Hamadanis central concern was Sufism. One wonders
how it is that if Ayn al-Qudat saw Ahmad al-Ghazali as his Sufi master (Zubda,
p. 7), engaged in Sufi practices such as dhikr and sama, provided spiritual
instruction throughout his letters (which are not fully integrated into this
study), and in both the Apologia and Zubdat al-haqaiq declared that he had
devoted himself to Sufism, Dabashi can claim he was not a Sufi?
Though Dabashi does much to distort the intellectual milieu of Ayn
al-Qudat, perhaps the most gaping hole is his understanding of his influence.
He argues that There is not the slightest indication that later philosophers
and Sufis even read Ayn al-Qudat (pg. 36), a claim so utterly false as to
demonstrate Dabashis complete unfamiliarity with the pertinent intellectual
traditions. Carl Ernst has clearly demonstrated that Mulla Sadra was well aware
of Ayn al-Qudats writings, and for over 800 years Ayn al-Qudat has been read
as a Sufi by Sufis in both India and Iran, not least among them Nizam ad-Din
Awliya, Masud Bakk and Gisu Daraz, to name a very few.

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Dabashi also demonstrates little familiarity with the tradition preceding

Hamadani. He believes the choice to use Persian was a subversive move
against the sacred Arabic of the dominant discourses and that his peculiar
Persian, full of Quran and hadith in Arabic is emblematic of his unique,
subversive imagination. But this is the style of Ahmad al-Ghazalis Sawanih
and especially the Ayniyyeh, the latter of which, though addressed to Ayn
al-Qudat, is never discussed by Dabashi. If to write in Persian was at this time
inherently anti-establishment, one must wonder at the Siyasat-nama of
Nizam al-Mulk and the Kimiya-yi saadat of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Dabashis
scant familiarity with recent scholarship in the field is again exposed when
he claims that Ahmad al-Ghazali quoted from Sanai in his Sawanih (pg. 130),
a matter clarified in the introduction to Pourjavadys critical edition (Tehran,
1980).
Though Dabashi often ignores the observations of secondary sources, at
other times he is completely dependent upon them. A sketchy outline of some
developments in the Persian literary tradition in chapter two seems to depend
entirely upon Furuzanfar, and in chapter one, at least sixteen citations from
readily available primary sources are cited from the secondary sources
(Osseiran and Farmanish). Dabashis failure to grapple with the literary
precedents for Ayn al-Qudats work is evident in his claim that the role of
women in Saljuq affairs was symbolically conducive to a mode of writing
perhaps best evident in the theo-erotic language of the Sufis. (pgs 812).
This is to ignore the role of the rich erotic imagery of both the Arabic and
Persian poetic traditions which Ayn al-Qudat, Ahmad al-Ghazali, Hakim Sanai
and many others translated into a spiritual discourse. It also ignores the
excellent work of Meissami on Persian court poetry and that of Thomas Bauer
on love in early Arabic literature, not to mention the superb contributions of
de Bruijn.
The errors of this work are simply too many to be addressed in one
review. Its inaccuracies, oversights and blatant misrepresentations indicate that
this book did not receive the care which its protagonist merits. Such a volume
does not belong in the Curzon series, which has produced many fine works
on other Sufi figures. Ayn al-Qudat is an exhilarating thinker who deserves to
be properly introduced to specialists and non-specialists alike. After over 600
pages of garbled and practically un-edited material, we are farther away than
ever from sharing his insights with others.

Joseph Lumbard
The American University in Cairo
Cairo, Egypt
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