Saint (Awliya) in Arabic is somewhat equivalent to the Arabic word wali, which means “custodian”, “protector”, or “preserver”. The term thus literally means “protector of (the words of) Allah”. In Islam, a “saint” is only someone who has displayed remarkable piety and profound insight into the words of Allah. There is no formal institution to appoint “saints” in Islam, and as such there are some that are revered locally/regionally, and some that are more widely recognized across the Ummah. For example, in our area Rainawari Srinagar Kashmir (Makhdoom Sahb) was considered a saint amongst the people of Kashmir, and his resting place (Makhdoom Sahb shrine) is a place of pilgrimage. However, I sincerely doubt that he is very well known beyond Kashmir. Islam has no formal saints and no formal method of accrediting people as saints! The pious people in layman’s language are considered as saints. In the traditional Islamic view, a saint is portrayed as someone “marked by [special] divine favor [and] holiness”, and who is specifically “chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles.” The saints have played a crucial role in the spread of Islam by educating the masses and deepening the spiritual concerns of the Muslims. They also played an important role in the formation of Muslim society. Awliya’ of Allah are those who firmly believe in the pillars of faith, i.e. belief in Allah, angels, divine books, messengers, Judgment Day and predestination. They also followed and adhered strictly to the Quran and traditions of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as this is the only means of knowing what is true and what is not. From Islamic creed point of view, the definition of awliya’ can never drift away from the Quran: “(Allah’s awliya’ are) those who believe and they are always in fear of Allah (Yunus: 63). In the history we come across great saints who played a crucial role in the society. In this article, we discuss in brief about the life of a great saint Shams Tabrizi. Shams al-Din Mohammad bin Ali bin Malik-e Dad or Shams al-Din Tabrizi or Shams Tabrizi (meaning “the Sun of Faith from Tabriz”) born in the 1180s in Tabriz, now in Iran, was the son of Imam Ala al-Din. From an early age, he would have mystic visions which were incomprehensible to his parents. From a young age, he was gifted with spiritual abilities which his parents could not comprehend. His father was said to be a good man of generous nature, although he was not on the spiritual path and thus Hazrat Shams was unable to reveal his mystic visions to him. This resulted Hazrat Shams feeling estranged from his father and others because he could not explain his spiritual sensibilities to those around him. He says in his Maqalat: “My father didn’t understand me at all. I was a stranger in my own town. My father was a stranger to me and my heart recoiled from him. I thought he might fall upon me. He’d speak kindly to me, but I thought he’d beat me and expel me from the house. (Maqalat 740)” He wrote in his autobiography that his father did not understand him at all. During his early years, it is said that a group of seventy saints were living in Tabriz. As a young boy, on the verge of puberty, he developed an aversion to food and starved for thirty or forty days. When offered food by his parents, he would refuse to eat it, hiding the food in his sleeves. Shams al-Din found his spiritual master in Hazrat Sheikh Abu Bakr Sallebaf who was a passionate Sufi master.
Young Shams would often be twirled around by his teacher in the Sufi tradition of ‘sama’. He also studied under Baba Kamal al-Din Jumdi. He was a highly educated man who travelled from place to place seeking a spiritual companion and valued the academic study of religion and not just the spiritual side of it. Hazrat Shams was a Shafi’i and he studied fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) extensively. One of the five major Shafi’i legal texts he specifically mentions he studied was al-Tanbih fil fiqh al-Shafi’i, written by Hazrat Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi (d. 1083), one of the leading Shafi’i jurisprudents of the eleventh century and one of the first teachers of the famous Baghdad Nizamiya College. He always supported the scholarly study of religion and he did not like the pretense of those who prided themselves solely on the spiritual path: “ At first first I wouldn’t mix with jurists, only with the dervishes. I’d say that the jurists are ignorant of dervish-hood. Now that I have realized what dervish-hood is and where they are, I find myself more eager for the company of jurists than dervishes, because the jurists have struggled to attain something. These others boast that we are dervishes. But where is the true dervish? (Maqalat 249)” He was thus very educated, although he hid this fact from religious scholars to an extent that his peers were confused about whether he considered himself to be a faqih (scholar of the law) or a faqir (Sufi ascetic). He says: “Someone asked my friend about me, “Is he a faqih or a faqir?” “Both faqih and faqir,” he replied. He asked, “Then why do all speak of his fiqh?” He answered, “For his poverty is of such a nature that it cannot be spoken about with that group… he speaks beyond the boundaries of knowledge and speaks of mysteries in a knowledgeable way in the cloak of knowledge.” (Maqalat 326) He was well-versed in ‘fiqh’ but he hide his education from his peers who would often wonder whether he was a scholar of the law ‘faqih’ or an ascetic ‘faqir’. He was a Persian Sufi poet and mystic who was the spiritual guru of the famous poet Rumi. While Jalaluddin Rumi is known all over the world, not many have heard of Shams, the person who inspired Rumi to write his most beautiful lines. Shams transformed Rumi’s outlook on Sufism and showed him the path to the divine majesty. Their closeness became the reason for the animosity of Rumi’s followers towards Shams. Rumi named one of his major works ‘Diwan-e Shams-e Tabrizi’ after his spiritual guide. In search of spiritual learning, Shams Tabrizi traveled all over the Middle East – Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Kayseri, Aksaray, Sivas, Erzurum and Erzincan. He hid his identity and disguised himself as a traveling salesman. He would stay in inns like merchants and not in Sufi lodges. Even though he ate very little and often went without food for several days, he still needed a source of income to cover his expenses during his travels. It is said that he wove baskets and trouser girdles to eke out a living. He had been a construction worker in his youth and during his wandering days in Erzincan, he tried to get some construction work. However, he was so frail that no one would hire him. Apart from using his manual skills, he would also give lessons to children on how to read the Quran. He even developed a method to teach the entire Quran in only three months. Shams Tabrizi spent most of his life as a wandering dervish in search of a spiritual companion. He longed to find that saintly and spiritual companion that he was looking for during his journey. He writes: “I implored God to allow me to mix with and be a companion of His friends (awliya-ye khwod). I had a dream and was told, “We will make you a companion of a saint.” I asked, “Where is this saint?” The next night I was told in a dream, “He is in Anatolia (Rum).” After a while, I had another dream and was told, “It’s not yet time. All things come in the fullness of time. (Maqalat 759-60)” He heard famous teachers speak and met Sufi saints, but he did not feel an affinity towards anyone. In his writings, he talked of dreams where God assures him that he would find the right companion when the time came. His wanderings lead him to Konya. He was almost sixty when he arrived at the city on November 29, 1244, where he was to have his fateful meeting with Rumi. In ‘Maqalat,’ Shams Tabrizi wrote that he had first met Rumi 16 years ago in Syria where he had heard Rumi speak possibly during a debate or a lecture. He had been favorably inclined towards Rumi since then but had felt that Rumi lacked the maturity to comprehend the spirituality of Shams. On that day in November, he was disguised as a merchant, dressed in black from top to toe. Rumi came riding on his mule with his retinue of disciples amid a busy marketplace where Shams stopped him with a question. Shams’ question to Rumi was ‘How is it that Abayazid did not need to follow, and did not say “Glory be to Thee” or “We worship Thee?” According to Shams, Rumi fully understood the depth of the question and its philosophical implications. There are many popular stories about the meeting of Rumi and Tabrizi. A popular myth tries to highlight the divine touch of Tabrizi. He is said to have thrown a stack of Rumi’s books in water and when Rumi’s students hurriedly pulled them out they found that none of the pages had become wet. Both myths and facts underline the fact that Tabrizi’s search for a disciple ended with Rumi. Rumi was an accomplished scholar and a respected teacher himself so the relationship was not of a typical one between a student and teacher; rather, it was a relationship of mutual respect, brotherhood and friendship. Shams advised Rumi that Sufism could not be learnt through books but by “going and doing”. In the company of Shams, the scholarly Maulana Rumi became spiritually transformed. The two mystics became inseparable and lived together for many months. With Tabrizi becoming the one focus of his life, Rumi could no longer pay attention to his students or his family. Rumi’s followers grew resentful of the intimacy between their teacher and Shams. They blamed Tabrizi for taking away their teacher from them and wanted him to leave. Thus, in February 1246 Tabrizi left for Syria without warning. Rumi was heart-broken. Angry with his students, he withdrew from them even more. Pain and longing flowed from his pen. He wrote thousands of couplets of his most insightful work. In his poems, Shams was the guiding light of God’s love for mankind. Rumi’s disciples realized their mistake and apologized profusely. When it was learnt that Shams was in Damascus, a letter was sent to him, requesting him to return. Rumi’s eldest son, Sultan Walad took a search party and went to Syria, returning with Shams to Konya in April 1247. Hazrat Shams and Maulana Rumi were inseparable and it is said that the two spent days, even months, together in a state of mystical communion. One biographer describes Mawlana’s spiritual transformation at the hands of Hazrat Shams: It is noted that the encounter with Shams triggered the completion of a paradigm shift in Rumi’s approach to piety and spirituality; he discovered that beyond the safe, dry and socially approved forms of obedience (prayer, sermonizing, discovering and applying the principles of law) and renunciation (fasting, controlling the passions and the ego), there is a meta-spirituality of love, which consists in joyously and creatively celebrating our relationship with God.” Joyous celebrations took place upon Shams’ return to Konya. People apologized to him. He himself was full of praise for Hazrat Walad and wrote that he had gone away for the sake of Rumi’s spiritual development. The two men resumed their discussions and spiritual communion. Shams remained in Konya with Rumi till 1248, the year he disappeared again mysteriously. Rumi went looking for him to Damascus twice but did not find him. The major work of Shams Tabrizi’s was ‘Maqalat,’ written in prose form, brings to the readers his thoughts on spirituality, philosophy and theology. He was an eloquent speaker who could move audiences with his profound ideas expressed in a simple way. It is reported that towards the end of 1247, Shams Tabrizi got married to a young woman who had been raised in Rumi’s household. She was named Kimia. She did not live long and died when she fell ill after being out in a garden. It is believed that Shams Tabrizi died in 1248. Rumi’s son Sultan Walad writes in his ‘Walad-Nama mathnawi’ that Tabrizi disappeared from Konya one night and was never seen again. Another version of his death says that he left Konya for Tabriz. On the way, he died in Khoy. There is a memorial in Khoy dating back to at least 1400, which is associated with his name. Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi described Hazrat Shams as being unrivaled in his knowledge of alchemy, astronomy, astrology, logic, theology and philosophy, although he kept this fact hidden in the company of religious people. Hazrat Sultan Walad, Mawlana Jalauddin Rumi’s son, describes him as “a man of learning and wisdom and eloquence and composition”. May ALLAH grant us hidayat and makes us from the ones who never miss their Salah… Ameen!
( The authors write regularly on “Islamic topics” exclusively for “Kashmir Horizon”. Views are their own)
[email protected]