The Question of Futuwwa in the Political Writings of Ian Dallas

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم 

وصلى الله على سيدنا محمد وعلى ءآله وصحبه وسلم 

Moussem  of Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Cape Town, 7 October 2024

Discourse by Ali Azzali

The topic of today's paper is “The Question of Futuwwa in the Political Writings of Ian Dallas.” I would like to begin this talk by referring to my last speech, delivered in the presence of Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi at Dallas House on the occasion of the graduation of Dallas College students, I believe in 2020.

On that occasion, when I took leave of the students and summed up their legacy and responsibility, at the end of the ceremony I read the famous advice of Shaykh Edebali to Osman Ghazi. Shaykh Edebali, a contemporary of Mevlana Rumi, was the head of the Ahilik Brotherhood, a brotherhood made up of various artisan guilds, including military guilds, and founded on the ethos of Futuwwa. Although the Ahilik were not structured as a traditional tariqa, their ethics were based on the teachings of tasawwuf, and they established a kind of independent 'republic' in the heart of Anatolia. Ibn Battuta, who visited the dergah of Harraz, wrote: "This organisation is called Futuwwa."  Shaykh Edebali was the spiritual master and advisor first to Ertuğrul Ghazi and later to his son Osman, the founder of the Ottoman dawlat. Osman often visited Shaykh Edebali's dergah, so much so that one night at the dergah he had the famous prophetic dream that foretold the glorious future of his dynasty, Their bond became so close that Osman married the Shaykh's daughter, Rabia Bala, in 1289. It was Shaykh Edebali who girded Osman with the ghazi sword. 

It is significant to mention that: “Sheikh Ede-Bali was not only a Sufi, but also the first Ottoman Qadi and mufti. He collaborated with many ulama of the time, took lessons from them and trained a large number of students. Dursun Faqih, one of his outstanding students and also his son-in-law, became the second mufti and Qadi of the Ottoman dawlat after Ede-Bali.”

This short address by a spiritual master to his disciple sums up the spirit of Futuwwa in one of its historical expressions. In these difficult times, our thoughts cannot but turn to another great leader and Fata, Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, Murid of the Tariqa Qadiriyya and liberator of Jerusalem. The importance of Salahuddin, however, will be discussed in more detail later.

Shaykh Edebali said:

“O my son!

Now you are an amir!

From now on, wrath is for us;

for you, calmness!

For us to be offended;

for you to please!

For us to accuse;

for you to endure!

For us, helplessness and error;

for you, forbearance!

For us, quarrel;

for you, justice!

For us, envy, rumor, slander;

for you, forgiveness!

O my son!

From now on, it is for us to divide;

for you to unite!

For us, sloth;

for you, warning and encouragement!

O my son!

Be patient, a flower does not bloom before its time.

Never forget: Let man flourish, and the State will also flourish!

O my son!

Your burden is heavy, your task hard, your power hangs on a hair!

May Allah be your helper!”

In a speech given at Achnagairn House in 1999 to a group of students from Istanbul, Shaykh Abdalqadir discussed the relevance of Mevlana Rumi from a perspective opposite to the usual academic discourse. He said that the foundations of the dawlat had to be uprooted in order to establish the modern nation-state. Secularization required the 'covering up' of a spiritual secret and the elimination of those who were the guardians of it. He explains:

“You could say there was not more kafir ethos that ever existed than the Mongol hegemony of the muslim lands nevertheless it was the force that came from Konya that turned these people into muslims. So, the conquest of the kufr was by the force of the people who came from another kind of army that came from Jalaluddin Rumi. You have to realise this because you then have to come to the most terrible date in the history of the muslims, the disaster of the kafir traitor Mustafa Kemal.

If you consider it, he had only one enemy which he, as it were, met on the field. At the end of World War I, the English were all going home... The French were collapsing… The only enemy he really had were a group of old gentlemen in this robe with the famous hikra of the Mevlevi tariqa. This was his enemy. Now, what you have to ask is, why was he more aware of Konya than anything, than anywhere or anybody? Why was he more afraid of Konya and its people than anybody? … As you know, he hanged and hanged until there were none of the Shuyukh left. He locked up the books in the tekkes that he closed down so the whole sufic operation was shut. Nobody could read the books”.

The dictator was aware that, in order to carry out his project, it was necessary to destroy the secret that had enabled the Ottoman forces not only to defeat the Mongol hordes, but also to lead them to Islam. In the spirit of futuwwa, the secret that had spread from the dergah of Konya five centuries earlier had created a new civilisation.

Shaykh Abdalqadir affirms:

“This is absolutely pure Islamic teaching, at the same time it speaks of a secret. And this secret, if it gets out, then the whole edifice of this other system which is kufr, which we would say is the correct translation of secularism, is destroyed. If you translate secularism as kufr then you have got a very clear picture because it is that al-kufr millatun wahidah, one millat, and this is what it is.”

Finally, I would like to conclude this introductory historical account with the testimony of Sir John Hobhouse, Lord Byron's friend and travelling companion, who in his diaries describes the defeat of Napoleon's army by the small forces of Ali Pasha Tepelenë in 1798 (conquest of Preveza):

“I had the account from an Albanian who was in the battle [,,,]. The Albanians continued some time on the hills, viewing their enemies in front. Their priests, of whom there was a great number, then began to pray with a loud voice, and the soldiers joined them in the holy exclamations. The whole body remained waving their heads, as it was described to me, and as I have myself seen in some religious ceremonies in Turkey, like a vast field of corn, and calling on the name of God with a fervour of tone and action that was soon wound up to the highest pitch of fury; as if with one voice, the word was given, ‘Out with your swords!’ and the Albanian army, both horse and foot, rushed down into the plain.”

1.

Let us now look at a definition of Futuwwa. Shaykh Abdalqadir introduces this term as: “what tawhid does or means or transforms in the human being, in the Muslim who takes on this knowledge.” The precondition is therefore to take on this knowledge: “It is a term which has almost vanished from the vocabulary of people of Fiqh and ‘Aqida, but significantly has been taken up and turned into its opposite by the political Arabs. The term is ‘Fata’. The plural in the masculine is Fityan, and in feminine is Fatayat. The dictionary definition is ‘a young man having attained the full vigor of his manhood.’”

So futuwwa stems from the knowledge of Tawhid. We can therefore affirm that it is the prophetic Knowledge manifested in action. He continues by saying: “It is a technical term which we trace of course back to the Qur’an... Futuwwa is a kind of nobility. People translate it as chivalry but it is not to do with horses. It is to do with the highest capacity or quality possible in knowledge for the servant of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala.” In the Book of Amal he affirms: “This is the motor power released by the Revelation and its Master. It is a striving, a reaching beyond, a self-transformation – it is Futuwwa. … Islamic Futuwwa predated and predesigned the christian rules of chivalry which created the whole of European civilisation in the Middle Ages. Futuwwa is the adoption of an attitude and conduct, elevated, so that it is the image of the People of Jannah.” Then he says: “Futuwwa is to maintain harmony among the brothers… Futuwwa is correctness in attitude and inner state… Futuwwa implies perfect harmony between the brothers.”

Shaykh Abdalqadir then mentions three ayats. He says: “There are others but these are the three most significant for us… We look first at 

1. Surat al-Kahf which is the eighteenth surat and at the thirteenth ayat. It is referring to the young men who were put into the cave and Allah says,

‘They were young men who had iman in their Lord and We increased them in guidance.’ (Surat al-Kahf, 13)

2. Surat al-Anbiya’ which is surat twenty one, ayat sixty: 

“They said, ‘We heard a young man mentioning them, they call him Ibrahim’.” (Surat al-Anbiya’, 60)

3. Surat al-Kahf, ayat fifty nine:

‘“Remember when Musa said to his servant, ‘I will not give up until I reach the meeting-place of the two seas.’” (Surat al-Kahf, 60)

Musa said this to his fata, to his young attendant. Here we have three examples of the use of this word and in each of them a young man is taken into a situation of knowledge and learning by Allah. The people of the Cave, remember, are men with iman in their Lord and, ‘We increased them in guidance,’ because they wanted a pure tawhid, they would not accept the idolatry so they submitted to this event of being preserved by Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, until they were in the company worthy of them. The second one is the Prophet Ibrahim, ‘alayhi salam, and it is the application of his knowledge of tawhid that conquers the mushrikun. The third one is a very important and significant ayat which tells about Sayyiduna Musa unfolding his hikma from Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and saying then to the young man that he will not give up until he has reached the meeting-place of the two seas. Because he is Nabiy he is also teaching the young man that you follow the way of the prophet so you will not give up until you reach the meeting-place of the two seas. To the Sufis, the meeting-place of the two seas is where, in the words of Ibn Ata’illah, the shari’at and the haqiqat meet, because for the person of that knowledge, the shari’at does not separate him from the haqiqat and the haqiqat does not separate him from the shari’at. He gives everything its due.”

The mention of the great Shadhili Shaykh Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari, which we have just read, was a constant reference in Shaykh Abdalqadir's teaching. It defined it unmistakably. In it, the motif of Futuwwa is at the core of his method of tarbiyah. In a speech delivered at the Moussem in 1993, he said:

“Allah makes times when the 'arifin withdraw. He makes times when the people of knowledge go into the desert, into the Sahara, and disappear. Shaykh Moulay al-Arabi ad-Darqawi said to Shaykh al-Huwari to go into the desert and plant sweet dates. He hid him in the desert. Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, radi Allahu ‘anhu, hid Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Qurshi in the desert, out of the way…

‘La ghaliba illa'allah.’

There is no victor except Allah, This is in your hands. Now you must do it. … This jihad is first to clean everything. There are times in tasawwuf when the tarbiyah of the Sufis is 'ilmun nafs, nafs, hawa, shaytan, to clean the heart. The purification of this age is not interior. The purification of this age is to make everything exterior clean. To make the behaviour clean, to make the street clean, to make the adab clean. To separate the enemy from the friend. This is the tarbiyah of this age. This is the jihad an-nafs of this age. It is that the market is not haram, that the money is halal. That the exchange is halal. That all the dunya exchange is halal. How can we make the hadrah if we are in a dirty place? Everything is clean. Everything about Islam is water. Before salat there must be wudu, before Hadratur-Rabbani there must be the Shari'ah of Islam…”

In an interview given a few years ago to Dr Riyaad Asvat, Shaykh Abdalqadir affirmed: “Tasawwuf is Futuwwa and its secret is Ma’rifa.’” Because: “Ma'rifatu'llah is embedded in the jewel.”

In the final chapter of the Book of Amal, the Shaykh states:

“What emerged from this exploration was that Futuwwa represented, as it were, the Himalayan aspects of nobility, but it was of the same earth, the same mineral as what lay in the slopes and valleys of human existence. It was not other, not cut off from, not an inaccessible zone, not of another element than what was the norm of Muslim behaviour.

The conclusion we have been forced to arrive at is that Futuwwa is the summit of what is the fundamental matter of the Deen.”

Shaykh Abdalqadir, at the end of a short essay that can be regarded as a modern handbook on futuwwa, The Muslim Prince, reports a very illuminating hadith that sums up the whole issue:

“It is mentioned that Mu’awwidh ibn ‘Afra said: ‘I brought the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, a plate of fresh dates and cucumber, and he gave me a handful of jewellery and gold.’” (Ash-Shifa of Qadi ‘Iyad)

2.

Having made these preliminary remarks, which are necessary for placing the issue of futuwwa in the Political Writings, we will examine a brief but significant text: The Interim is Mine. While The Time of the Bedouin could be defined as an analysis of the power structure that emerged during the French Revolution, leading to the affirmation of new oligarchies hiding behind the mask of democracy, The Interim is Mine examines the historical and ideological roots of the new system. It also explores how the dynamic energies released through interaction with Muslims during the Crusades were channelled in Europe to establish a new form of absolutism. It is important to bear in mind the following quotation from The Book of Amal: “Islamic Futuwwa preceded and anticipated the Christian rules of chivalry which created the whole of European civilisation in the Middle Ages.” 

Let me add that, in terms of subject matter and historical references, The Interim is Mine is the most English of the four texts that make up the Political Writings collection. Although the tragic and majestic figure of the great 2nd Earl of Essex occupies the stage, he cannot claim to be the play's sole protagonist. In fact, there is another, more discreet protagonist: Salahuddin al-Ayyubi.

Significantly, a quote from Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, opens the book:

“When nobility is suppressed – All government is subverted.”

In the first chapter, the Author asserts that: “Nihilism is the core doctrine of the present society.” Although philosophical reflection on nihilism, starting with Nietzsche, is endless, I think it is appropriate to turn to a great contemporary historian and philologist to understand the true nature of the phenomenon. Luciano Canfora in a famous interview stated:

“What is the subject of oligarchic politics in our time? In my opinion, oligarchic politics is about money and power, and their mutual relationship: Money feeds power and power feeds money. The one is an instrument for conquering, securing and expanding the other. [...] In other times, power and money could be said to be means, not ends. Politics was used for other things, such as overturning or balancing class relations, the promotion of culture, alliances and wars of expansion, the conquest of other lands and the 'civilisation' of one's own or other peoples.

Money, on the other hand, was seen as a tool, for good or bad, but always for something else; states raised money through taxation to fight wars, to expand borders, to glorify ruling houses, to feed the splendour of royal courts, and so on. For centuries, money-making was condemned, or at least suspected, as was usury. But with the financialisation of the economy, and moreover on a global scale, the mechanism of money producing itself, money invested to produce more money […] has ceased to be a means and has become an end. We are in a vicious circle…

If we were looking for a definition of nihilism, i.e. the absence of values and goals in collective life, we could say that nihilism occurs when what is a means also becomes an end. So the ultimate goal is to guarantee the alliance between a means and an end that is also a means: power for money and money for power. All this leads to the concentration of power and wealth in small, self-referential, self-insecure groups, besieged by the world of the excluded, enclosed in exclusive ghettos, perhaps gilded, but certainly artificial, sometimes even militarised. The tendency of the oligarchies of our time is a progressive closing in on itself.”

Let us now return to the 1993 Moussem:

“You see, He has put us on the earth for a journey in order that we should accomplish something because this is the zone of action, so we have to act in this world. In the akhirah it is a zone of vision and in the akhirah we will drink of the vision which is based on the action of this world. Sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallim said:

‘A man dies on what he lives and he is raised up on what he died.’

So you must take on this responsibility which is your life and understand that there is no other cause, than the cause of Allah subhana wa ta’ala. Islam is not a cause. Islam is a means to fulfilling this matter, it is the method to help you.”

While the masses of the world would be forced into obedience and submission to a system designed to prevent any challenge to the continuity of the financial egemony, the leadership of this new society secured for itself mobility and independence. Shaykh Abdalqadir writes: “History, social patterning, individual quality, brotherhood, real-value wealth, and the very genetic foundation of the individual and the group were declared out of order in the discourse.” “The materialist and godless new society had turned the human population at large into slaves – only now were called debtors.” In his final work, The Entire City, the author lays bare the basic dynamics of the process: “Trotsky commanded: ‘Replace the government of men with the administration of things.’ … This new foundational doctrine of the modern techno-world by its implementation in eliminating men from the process, eliminated or insisted on eliminating the activating human self and its psyche, and therefore by extension its existential and its inherited memory, in short its very D.N.A. as record. The result of this meant that an examination of process, historical or political, in the end had to submit to a now absolutist utilitarian and pragmatic evaluation.” Men could be reprogrammed.

What had to be eliminated is what in Islamic thinking is called fitra. The foundation of society and the guarantee of its continuity, the marriage bond, was replaced by “the individualist contractless ‘relationship’, itself a commercial term.” He explains: “It is because marriage as an institution, for it is essentially a financial institution, has been abolished that modern men, while they may fight as slave mercenaries, cannot fight wars. Corporations make wars. Men have been rendered passive as consumers and miners. In other words, un-manned, lacking a societal group identity. […] Once divorce emerges as the norm, or marriage is replaced by the ‘relationship’, …, the result is the isolated individual, and as such, the isolated individual is helpless to create a societal model. Marriage and inheritance – joining and transfer – are thus the warp and woof of the community.” 

3.

In the economy of the text, the reference to the family is necessary for the author to introduce a historical cycle in which family genealogy guaranteed the legitimacy of power. He writes: “Important families, that is inheritors of name, place and influence, have in the past always recorded the history of their former generations. […] In England, the crises of state recurred around legitimacy of rule and inheritance. The Plantagenet dynasty collapsed over these issues.” 

At this point, one could argue that modern money oligarchies are also dynastic. However, the representatives of contemporary oligarchies have never assumed any social responsibility, despite their fondness for calling themselves 'philanthropists', because they are traditionally as stateless and wandering as the money flows. 

Shaykh Abdalqadir sees the Tudor dynasty as the pinnacle of English society. Henry VII (1457-1509), at his accession to the throne: “adopted two political strategies to confer legitimacy on his reign. He traced in his Welsh forebears a direct line to King Arthur, the ancient British ruler, and the Welsh prince Cadwaladr. He added the dragon on his standard and added to this a cult of chivalry and its medieval sports which at the same time tuned a new loyal aristocracy to the Tudor throne.” This chivalric ethos “brought honour, nobility and loyalty to the nation’s elite.” Under his son, Henry VIII, England entered a new era. It was inaugurated by the "definitive abolition of papal rule" and “the liberation of his country from the dark idol-worshipping Papal system.” It was not a question of doctrine, in fact “he did oppose Luther as much as he did the Pope. His inner world was derived from his father’s teaching.” Shaykh Abdalqadir concludes: “He was the inheritor of the counter-church, chivalry. He was the Arthurian King of the Round Table, its Knights, and access to Divine Serenity on the plate from Heaven, the Grail.”

The chivalric order became the "anti-Rome." By that he meant that “its sources and evaluations were not Christian and indeed it rendered the Church irrelevant”. The Chivalric Order became “a completely independent and opposite religion to the cross and blood sacrifice doctrine of papal Rome”. Its aim was “the formation of an elite brotherhood under arms, bonded together by the mutually upheld set of high moral behavioural values.” “Put at its essential issue – knights dedicated to honour, valour and victory loathed with all their militant being a religion based on a man nailed to a cross. It was repellent because of its utter helplessness, it was a symbol of defeat and disgrace.”

The deception of the Papal Catholic Church, “that could only end in total nihilism,” was in fact that a mortal Messenger was renamed as a “the Son of God” and that he “was crucified, shedding his blood to ‘save’ mankind.’” A priesthood of initiates was then required to perform the magical rite of transforming bread and wine into the flesh and blood of god. Those who took part in this ritual were saved in the next world. “And so, by a magical wave of the arm in a cross-like gesture, the Rome of the Caesars becomes the Rome of the Popes.” The Christian aristocracy learned a clear truth from their interactions with the Muslim knights.

Allah, the Exalted, declares in Sura An-Nisa (4: 155-157):

“And on account of their kufr

And their utterance of a monstrous slander

Against Maryam,

And their saying, “We killed the Messiah,

‘Isa son of Maryam, Messenger of Allah.’

They didn’t kill him

And they did not crucify him

But it was made to seem so to them.

Those who argue about him

Are in doubt about it.

They have no real knowledge of it,

Just conjectures.

But they certainly did not kill him.

Allah raised him up to Himself.

Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.”

The series of religious wars launched by the Church to conquer Jerusalem from the Muslims, the Crusades, were the event in Europe that led to the “political emergence of the rites and practices of chivalry.” Shaykh Abdalqadir explains: “It would be very naïve to think that the militant conflict between the Papal Church and the Muslim community implied a mutual ignorance between the two parties. Both sides saw prisoners, taken, ransomed and sometimes absorbed. By the end of the chivalric age the great writers of Europe were utterly conversant with Islam, its beliefs and its people.”

As a consequence of the meeting between Muslim and Christian warrior elites “the European structuralist super-state of Papal Christendom was infiltrated and taught the lesson of Islamic brotherhood and leadership. The result was that by the time of the Tudor Dynasty there was a deep and utterly aware intellectual grasp of of Islam both as Deen and as social nexus, as can be witnessed in the delightfully ambiguous loyalty to both religions in the plays of Christopher Marlowe.”

The end of the world order emerged from “the sloughing off of Christianity” and  “in-deep power network of chivalric brotherhood … was fast approaching with the last days of the Tudors.” With the death of King Henry VIII, a new system began to emerge. It was accompanied by violent factionalism and a political crisis that would determine the development of the world for centuries to come. During the reign of “the Virgin Queen the stage was set to bring to confrontation the two fundamental doctrines of political power.” The emerging political doctrine was based on mercantilism, political intrigue, beheadings and the application of the natural sciences according to the method of Francis Bacon. We could call it proto-capitalism. Shaykh Abdalqadir explains: “This political crisis has been obscured for two reasons, firstly because history is written by victors… and more specifically because the legend of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen became essential for all the subsequent development of the modern State. The necessity of the Elizabethan icon lay in its value as a veil over the transfer of power from monarch to a new political class.”

This political crisis was the result of a clash between two factions. On one side: “the leading soldier of the realm, a scholar and an aristocrat, Chancellor of Cambridge University, and Earl Marshal of England, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and opposing him the Cecils, father and son.” He continues: “the true conflict was between a State under personal rule, held in check by a counselar brotherhood of trust and honour over and against structural rule in which nobody is to blame.” An analysis of the facts inevitably leads to the identification of the Cecils' motives with the feeling that Nietzsche defined as ressentiment, i.e. a resentment caused by envy, weakness and an inferiority complex, which, as a defence mechanism, leads to the adoption of a new system or a new morality in hostility to the alleged source of the frustration. The author writes: “The Cecilians headed by the deformed dwarf son of Burghley, emerged as that factional group joined together uniquely to see out the Essex men and to set up rule by committee.” Max Weber in The Sociology of Religion relates ressentiment to Judaism, an ethical salvation religion of a "pariah people."

What killed Essex "was a deep existential insight, the fruit of a life of futuwwah, that is, chivalric honour. It was Tacitean, and in that sense it was Shakespearean". He died because he had the courage to affirm his freedom with the question: "What, cannot princes err? cannot subjects receive wrong? is an earthly power or authority infinite?" He, like Marlowe and Raleigh, questioned the idea of monarchic infallibility. But that is the subject of another book.

Essex's death allowed the Cecils to create a new political class. This was to last for four hundred years. This new system “designed to avoid war, became the helpless follower of a counter-system called capitalism”. 

In conclusion:

“The affair of the brotherhood among an elite was over.” With the Cecils “the new social order began to take shape. On the face of it, rule by committee, by bureaucracy, by structuralist system had begun.”

Then Shaykh Abdalqadir then quotes Sir Walter Scott:

“There must be government in all society:

Bees have their Queen, and stag-herds

Have their leader;

Rome had her consuls,

Athens had her Archons,

And we, sir, have our Managing Committee.”

It is significant to note that Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour, who in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration in the form of a letter to Lord Rothschild announcing the British government's support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, was a maternal descendant of Sir Robert Cecil.

4.

But this mention of Palestine, and therefore of Jerusalem, is not accidental. I have deliberately left the reference to Chapter II of the text, 'What Saladin said', at the end. This is because the words we are about to consider must not be relegated to the past.

As we have seen, the Crusades led to significant encounters between Muslim and Christian warrior elites. These led the latter to adopt the Islamic model, despite fierce opposition from the Church.” The author goes on to mention an event that can be taken to symbolise the whole process. At the end of the I chapter he writes:

“In one of the battles of the Crusaders with the great Muslim monarch, Salahud-din, or as the Christians called him, Saladin, a knight taken prisoner  was put up for ransom. During his detention he met and dined with his Muslim captor.

They talked, In their talk Saladin initiated his prisoner into the ethos of their chivalry. Such was the harmony between them that after Saladin had taken him into his confidence, he released him in order that he could transmit his fellow knights the chivalric roots of Islamic war and peace. Saladin paid to his wazir the knight’s ransom money.” 

What Saladin Said.

The chapter consists of three passages based on a number of Qur'anic ayat. The third passage, which refers to the true nature of Sayyidina 'Isa, has already been mentioned. Due to time constraints, I will only quote the most relevant parts, Shaykh Abdalqadir begins by mentioning a hadith: "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘The Deen is behaviour.’

He then discusses the first point: the issue of kingship in the story of Talut in Sura al Baqara (2; 245).

Allah, the Exalted, says in the Qur’an:

“Their Prophet said to them,

‘Allah has appointed Talut to be your king.’

They said, ‘How can he have kingship over us

When we have much more right to kingship than he does?

He has not even got much wealth!’

He said, ‘Allah has chosen him over you

And favoured him greatly in knowledge

And physical strength.

Allah gives kingship to anyone He wills.

Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing.’”

At the end of the ayat, the discourse is interrupted for a saying of Abu'd-Darda about the Abdal. I will confine myself to a brief excerpt. The Abdal are: “the khalifs of the Prophets, the people Allah has chosen for himself and whom He has selected for Himself by His knowledge. They are forty true men. Thirty of them have a similar certainty to that of Ibrahim, the Friend of the All-Merciful. By them Allah drives away disliked things from the people of the earth and innovations which people have introduced. It is because of them that people have rain and provision. None of them dies without Allah putting someone else in his place.”

A few years ago, Cape Town was in the grip of a long drought. The dams were almost dry. There was talk of rationing water. The situation was critical. On the evening that Shaykh Abdalqadir, who had since moved to Paris with a group of young men, returned to Cape Town, an unexpected thunderstorm broke out. Just as the plane he was travelling in was preparing to land, a lightning storm hit. I have vivid memories of people on balconies in the pouring rain celebrating the blessing from heaven. At that moment, the drought was over.

Then the Shaykh returns to the matter of kingship in the story of Talut.

“Allah, the Exalted declares in the Qur’an (2: 246)

‘Their Prophet said to them,

The sign of his kingship

Is that the Ark will come to you,

Containing serenity from yout Lord

And certain relics left by the families

Of Musa and Harun.

It will be borne by angels.

There is a sign for you in that

If you are muminun.”

According to Ibn Abbas, this “serenity – Sakina – was a gold basin from the Garden in which the hearts of the Prophets were washed.” This tradition was transfigured in the myth of the Knights of the Round Table “in the Golden Dish, from which the knights ate a feast on which heavenly peace descended.” The Golden Dish was then christianised by the Church into the chalice containing the blood of Jesus. “Thus came the invention of the Holy Grail.”

The Qur’an continues (2; 247):

“How many a small force

Has triumphed over a much greater one

By Allah’s permission!

Allah is with the steadfast.”

Let’s go back to the Mossem of 1993:

“The basis of Islam is that there is no shirk. So what was this? It was that the Rasul, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was in fana' of the moment of the waqt so he was not present in that instant, it was directed from Allah. This is the foundation of knowledge. This was the centre of the victory of Badr. At Uhud they had soldiers, they had weapons, they had strength, and they lost. In Badr they were a few and they went on the Sabil of Allah and this moment was the truth of it and they had the victory of Badr.

This is the moment of the 'arifin. This is why Hasan al-Basri, radiya'llahu 'anhu, said, ‘I saw forty of the men of Badr and they all wore 'suf'.’"

It could be said that the seal of the Political Writings is the Tafsir of Shaykh Ahmad Ibn ‘Ajiba, “the greatest of the Sufic scholars,” to the Sura of the Cave, in the appendix to his last book. Indeed, this Sura contains "the source of all chivalry" and thus of the Ahl al-Futuwwa. Allah, the Exalted, says in the Qur’an (18: 10):

“When the noble young men took refuge

In the cave and said,

‘Our Lord, gives us mercy directly from You

And open the way for us to right guidance

In our situation.”

Shaykh Abdalqadir comments:

“The word used here is ‘fitya,’ the plural of ‘fatā,’ meaning a perfect young man. The important thing to grasp is that to have such a ‘fatā’ it is necessary to have him in the plural – ‘fitya’ is therefore the special group of excellence which is needed that mankind may be in turn ennobled."

The Shaykh concludes the II chapter with an invitation:

“Let us forge guarded circles – a fraternity of truth.”

In this pattern we can recognise “the essentials of the pure original nature, Fitra, from the ancient narration of the Companions of the Cave to the twelve Disciples of the Messenger of God, Jesus (‘Isa), on to the ten Companions of the Final Messenger of Allah.

In at-Tirmidhi it is recorded:

Salih bin Mismar al-Maruzi related to us from Ibn Abi Fudayn, from Musa bin Ya’qub, from Umar bin Sa’id, from Abdarrahman bin Humayd, from his father, from Sa’d bin Zayd, about a group of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah. The Messenger said, ‘Ten are in the Garden, Abu Bakr is in the Garden, Umar is in the Garden. And Utman, ‘Ali, Az-Zubayr, Talha, Abdarrahman bin ‘Awf, Abu Ubayda Al-Jarrah, Sa’id ibn abi Waqqas.’

He enumerated nine and was silent on the tenth.

The people said: ‘By Allah, Abu al-‘Awar, inform us of the tenth!’

He replied, ‘You have urged me by Allah, Abu al-‘Awar is in the Garden.’”

Ali Azzali

Moussem of Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi

7 October 2024

Cape Town