Three books I’m currently loving (in Arabic), and one book I’m anxiously waiting for (in English).

Tafsir: Umdat al-Tafsir by Ahmad Shakir

This is an abridgment of the great Qur’an commentary of Ibn Kathir. My shaykh, Saleh al-Jaafari, recommended two tafsirs to his students:

- Ibn Kathir

- Al-Jalalayn (with the Hashiya, or footnotes, of shaykh Al-Sawi)

The Azhari hadith expert, shaykh Ahmad Shakir, rahimahullah, wrote an abridgment of Ibn Kathir’s tafsir to make it more accessible to the normal reader. He removed all the isnads of the hadiths, only saying where they come from and how sound their isnad is, and removing the isra’iliyyat, or the questionable Jewish legends that entered Qur’an commentaries through Jewish converts to Islam.

The result is a great tafsir of great simplicity, explaining everything in an astonishingly clear way. I believe that the only complete print is the one by Dar al-Wafa and it is beautiful. It comes in three volumes and I absolutely love it. And by love it, I mean if I’m in my room and I pass by it, I look at it with a warm fuzzy feeling inside and I just wanna grab it and kiss it, that’s how much I love it.

Seera: Al-Anwar al-Muhammadiyya min al-Mawahib al-Ladunniyya by shaykh Yusef al-Nabahani

There is a great book known as Al-Mawahib al-Ladunniyya by the imam Al-Qastalani. It comes in two large volumes, and it is about Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. It is more than a biography because it doesn’t simply narrate the chain of events of his life -in fact that only makes the largest chapter of the book. The Israa and Mi’raj comes in another chapter, and then the rest of the chapters are devoted to the greatness of the Prophet, to the Quranic verses that speak about him, to his names and descriptions, how he is mentioned in the Torah and the Bible, the things that Allah made unique only for him or only for his umma, etc.

The only problem with the Mawahib, as its author admitted, is that he went off-topic very frequently and ended up discussing every science in the religion, making it a must-read for the advanced scholar but too deep and wide an ocean for the average reader. So the great lover of the Prophet - peace be upon him- shaykh Yusef al-Nabahani, wrote an abridgment of it, in which he removed all things off topic, keeping only the basic text dealing with Prophet Muhammad. He also explained all the difficult words that non-scholars would not know, and the end product turned out to be less than half the size of the original. It is thus one medium-sized volume. The print by the Lebanese Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya is beautiful. It is a must-read for every lover of the Master of Creation, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, and for everyone who wants to get a tiny glimpse of our Prophet’s great worth in the eyes of Allah (swt).

I cannot say alhamdulillah enough for allowing me to read portions of that book while sitting in the rawda of the Prophet’s Mosque and while sitting facing the door from which you greet the Messenger in his mosque. It was such a great blessing and a wonderful experience.

Madeeh: The Diwan of Shaykh Saleh al-Jaafari

Shaykh Saleh’s poems in praise of the Prophet are greatly loved in Egypt and many other places in the Islamic world. The newest print by Dar Jawami’ al-Kalim, Cairo, comes in 12 small volumes which can be bought separately. They are divided into three themes: Suluk and spiritual guidance (two volumes), Ilahiyyat: supplications to Allah, etc, (4 volumes), and Muhammadiyyat, or praise of Prophet Muhammad and his family and companions (6 volumes).

I ‘m currently reading the first of the Muhammadiyyat volumes and it is so deeply touching and beautiful. Reading it on the flights to Mecca and Medina, as well as on the return journey, was a great experience, especially since almost every single poem talks about longing to visit the Prophet- peace be upon him- in Medina.

Rumi’s Sun: The Teachings of Shams of Tabriz by Refik Algan and Camille Helminski

Camille Helminski wrote one of the most important books that I have ever read in my life, the book that corrected my intention in religion and made me start praying for the first time, and that book was Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure. It was also my first introduction to Sufism, after which Sufism became pretty much all I ever read about.

The next major turning point was in reading the teachings of Shams al-Tabrizi, as translated by William Chittick in Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi. I had never read anything like it, and it introduced me to the concept of Muhammadan Sufism, and the importance of mutaba’a, which later led me to interest in the Tariqa Muhammadiyya movements. But that book is also a very advanced read and many things are very hard to understand, and in other cases you don’t know who is saying what in the dialogue.

So here is another translation, some of the same teachings, some of other portions untranslated by Chittick because he didn’t translate the whole work but only about 2/3rd of it, and it is done Camille Helminski, thus combining aspects from the two most life-changing books I read. I expect this to be a much simpler read, but I cannot stress enough that it cannot replace Me & Rumi, but only complement it. I’ve ordered it from Amazon and am waiting anxiously for its arrival; I’ve also ordered with it another copy of Women of Sufism because I had lent the first copy to someone who loved it too much to give it back to me!

I had promised to write about my Umra and Ziyara experiences but I decided to first add that last post to feel a sense of (temporary) completion in the “Secrets of the Salaat” page.

And the other reason is that I just don’t know how to describe the beauty that I have seen… Perhaps I will post a poem about it by my shaykh or translate it or both.

In Letter 32 of The Hundred Letters of Sharafuddin Maneri, the master tells us how Allah “has combined in prayer, according to His own good pleasure, all the pillars of the Law.” I will try to add clarifications where necessary.

“In prayer one finds the meaning of fasting, and something more. Fasting is a kind of abstention done for a purpose. In prayer also, restraint is practice for a purpose. Moreover, it is fitting that you rest there and then go and do other things.” Thus as you restrain yourself from doing certain things in fasting, you must also abstain from doing what you want in the time of prayer and go to the mosque and pray, and then you may resume your affairs.

“In prayer there is purity of intention…” and testimony to the unity of Allah and to the prophethood of sayyidna Muhammad (pbuh). “…and in prayer there is the meaning of the religious tax, because five silver pieces must be given to the poor before one can recite the final prayer. At last let him recite: “O God, pardon me and other believers, that all may be at peace!” The formula for the Zakaat charity, which purifies your money, is five silver coins out of every 200 of your excess wealth. Likewise, the five prayers purify you and your time.

“In prayer too, one also finds the meaning of pilgrimage. During the pilgrimag, one enters the sacred precincts of Mecca and alights and sojourns there, while in prayer one sanctifies oneself and praises God.” Thus as you sanctify yourself by entering the Holy Sanctuary, you likewise sanctify yourself in prayer by standing before Allah.

“In prayer a person can also discover the meaning of holy war. Ablutions can be compared to donning armor. The prayer leader is like the general, while the people resemble the army. The leader stands in the front line in the sanctuary, where the battle will be joined. The people are drawn up in ranks behind him. United, they come to his aid. When they are victorious in their holy war, they share the booty among themselves. When the leader gives the final blessing of peace, he distributes the grace of the Lord of Glory.

Even though he may not be able to travel to Mecca, a believer who has prayed as also gone on pilgrimage. Though he has no property, he has also paid the charity tax. Though he may not have had the power to fast, he finds that he has, in effect, fasted. Devoid of the requisite strength, he has nonetheless fought a holy war.”

Ahlamdulillah, I returned a couple days ago from Umra and Ziyara. It was my first time and it was amazing, and I would go every year if I could. Will write more about it tomorrow insha’Allah.

The Assassins: possibly one of the earliest, the best organized, and the most famous terrorist organization in the world. The very words “assassin” and “assassination” are derived from their Arabic name, al-Hashaasheen, (the pot-smokers). They were created by the infamous Hassan al-Sabbah, champion of the cause of the Nizari offshoot of the Ismaili offshoot of Shiism, the Nizari Ismailis. He took possession of the formidable fortress of Alamut, the Eagle’s Nest, in Iran, from which he had all the leaders of the world shaking with fear. He believed in a cyclical order of the Universe, and proclaimed that the current cycle had ended: that the world itself had ended. Thus he proclaimed the beginning of Paradise. Secluding himself in a cell within Alamut, it is said he only emerged from it once or twice until his death. “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” - these are said to be his last words. Keeping all the world’s leaders in constant fear of his unstoppable assassins, no one could every conquer Alamut until the Mongol hords swept across, burning their library, and destroying almost all information about their secret spiritual teachings.

Three days ago, I had coffee with the Assassins.

The Old Man of the Mountain- the only man who scared Saladin. His name was Rashid al-Din Sinan, and he was the 21st Imam in the line of the Nizari Ismailis. From his castle in Misyaf, Syria, he sent his assassins to take care of all those who opposed him, whether Muslims or Crusaders. One time he struck an alliance with a Crusader king who visited him in Misyaf. In order to demonstrate the degree of training and loyalty of his followers, Sinan simply looked at two of his fidais - the self-sacrificing warriors- and asked them to jump off one of the towers of the castle. They jumped off to their deaths without a flinch.

The fidais are the most famous group in the well-organized hierarchy of the Assassins. In fact, they are the assassins in the Assassin order. They gave their life to the cause without fear, always striking their target in public where they could not escape after the job was done. This gave rise to many legends about them, and they became known as the Hashasheen. There are two main theories about the name:

- The first is that they took drugs before going in for the kill- making them absolutely fearless.

- The second theory is told by the famous traveler Marco Polo who claimed to have visited the castle of Alamut in 1273, just after its destruction by the Mongols, and it goes something like this:

Within Alamut, Hasan built the legendary “Garden of Earthly Delights”, which would play an important role in the initiatic rites of the Hashishins (also called the “Assassins”).

The garden lay in a beautiful valley nestled between two high mountains. Here he had imported exotic plants, birds, and animals from all over the world. Surrounding the garden were luxurious palaces of marble and gold, decorated with beautiful paintings and fine silk furniture. Streams of milk, wine, and honey flowed throughout this earthly paradise, while fountains gushed with wine and pure spring water.

The initiate, after being knocked out by a powerful potion mixed with hashish, would be carried into the garden. When he awoke from his slumber, he would be greeted by a host of beautiful teenage girls (houris), who sang and danced and played lovely instruments for him. As he drifted into an ecstatic daze, the girls would go to work on the initiate, giving him a full-body tongue massage, while one girl performed oral sex on him. Eventually, the bedazzled young man would climax into the girl’s mouth “as softly and slowly and blissfully as a single snowflake falling.” (Robert Anton Wilson, from Prometheus Rising) No wonder Hasan could demand absolute loyalty from his followers, no questions asked . . .

This was only a small part of Hasan’s system, which was divided into seven degrees. The Hashishins combined both the exoteric (communicated, “God’s Law”) and esoteric (subjective, mystical) doctrines of Islam. Sabbah was a noted alchemist, and a student of Sufism, so part of the initiatic curriculum for the future Hashishins involved mastering occult methods for reaching higher planes of consciousness. Of course, they were also taught how to properly kill a man using poison or a dagger. Initiates were trained to learn multiple languages, as well as the dress and manners of merchants, monks and soldiers. Moreover, they were taught to fake beliefs and devotion to every major religion of that era. In this way, an Assassin could pretend to be anyone from a well-to-do merchant to a Sufi mystic, a Christian, or a common soldier.

The Hashishin Order was set up much like your traditional bureaucratic organization. At the top of the hierarchy sat Hasan, who preached absolute devotion to a transcendental God. Below him were the grand priories (enlightened mystics), the propagandists, and finally the fidais, who were the lowest ranking Hashishins. The fidais were self-sacrificers (called “the destroying angels”) who were willing to commit any atrocity their master demanded of them, including suicide. They dressed in white tunics with red sashes: colors that represented innocence and blood. (Source).

I had coffee with three fidais and the imam of the Nizari Ismailis of Misyaf. I had arrived at Misyaf with my friend and an Australian couple we picked up on the way, but found the castle to be closed. Determined to see it, we began asking around in the village for the person who had the key when all of a sudden this man of grand appearance walks by, surrounded by two old men, and asks “who are these people?”. It sounded like he was a man of great importance.

Turns out that he was the religious leader of the Nizari Ismaili community at Misyaf, which was still predominantly Nizari Ismaili. He’s not however the leader of Nizari Ismailis as a whole, because that would be the Aga Khan in India, who had payed for the castle’s renovation. The shaykh took us to his office, while giving us information about their history on the way, and showing us the old house of their 9th Imam, Ahmad, and showing us the tomb of a great female saint of their sect, known as “the keeper of secrets” as well as the tomb of one of their Master Propagandists (Da’i al-Du’aat). Everything there was green and covered with Shii writings and swords, and they told us that their colors are Green and Red: Green for Islam, Red for Revolution. Next to the tomb of the Keeper of Secrets was a poem, painted on the wall. The first line said something along the lines of “Ask help from the Ikhwan al-Safa (The Brethren of Purity), for they are the supporting pillars.”

We sat down with the Imam at his office, which was connected to the tomb of the Master Propagandist, and he made us some coffee to drink, when three young men in army fatigues came and sat around us. “These three men,” the shaykh said, “are Ismaili fida’is. But don’t be scared.” One of them looked at me with piercing eyes. He gave us some Turkish Coffee to drink, which none of us liked, and while we forced ourselves to drink it, the fida’i nearest to me started explaining the chemistry behind why coffee removes acidity from the stomach. Did he read this in a magazine or do they still teach them “the arts”?

The shaykh was amazing- very funny, and very knowledgeable. He asked me to translate everything he said to the Australian couple. He said that he had learned 3000 English words but his preoccupation with studying Monotheism, Jurisprudence, and the Spiritual Sciences of the Ikhwan al-Safa kept him from practicing the language.

The Brethren of Purity are among the most mysterious figures in the history of Islam. No body knowns for sure who they were. All we know is that they complied an “encyclopedia” of wisdom, made of some 55 treatises covering every science from Mathematics to Physics to Astronomy to the Spiritual and Mystical Sciences. Some say that they were Sufis from Iraq, others that they were scientists from Al-Andalus lead by the famous scientist and Alchemist al-Majriti, while the dominant theory among scholars is that they were Ismailis.

The Shaykh pointed toward a tomb on a mountain and said that burried there is Sinan and the Ikhwan al-Safa. I asked him about the number of the Ikhwan al-Safa who wrote the famous treatises and he said that they were four, with three assistants for each of them.

Had we discovered the true identity of the Ikhwan al-Safa? Were they Nizari Ismailis? Would we have discovered a copy of their famous Epistles in the library of Alamut had the Mongols not burned it down? I don’t know. But here’s something interesting: One of the most famous letters of the Ikhwan al-Safa is a story called “The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity” which has been published in English. In fact, it was one of the famous Crusader Kings who asked a Jewish Rabbi to translate it for him. It has been published recently by Fons Vitae.

This is perhaps the oldest story of environmental issues and animal rights, in which animals complain to the King of the Jinn about how humans mistreat them. So how does strengthen the theory of the link between the Assassins and the Brethren of Purity?

The shaykh told us that all the legends about the Hashish are completely wrong. He said their original name was Hasheeshiyyin (The Grass People), not Hashasheen. He explained that they lived on grass and ate and pickled plants. They never smoked drugs, he claimed, and their main interest was always primarily in spirituality. This version also goes along with the famed asceticism and austerity of Hassan al-Sabbah. So were the Assassins nature-loving vegetarian scientists? Allah only knows. They were most generous and offered to provide us with a farm to sleep in for the night, but we thanked them and said that we had to stick to our schedule.

They were most kind toward the Australians and offered them some Yerba Matte, a favorite drink of the inhabitants of the mountains of Syria and Lebanon. Of course the Australians had no idea what they were drinking and were worried they were being drugged. Explaining his generosity to foreigners he said, “We do not dance with swords with the American president”, alluding to the ruler of Bahrain who did just that, and distancing himself from the Arab leaders who befriend the enemies of Islam. “We only give coffee to noble people,” he said, “and I give them coffee because they are with you,” he continued; “translate that to them so they understand.” “It’s good that they are Australians, because we haven’t put down our swords since the Crusades, and had they been Dutch or Danish we would have cut off their heads,” he said, laughing afterwards and saying, “don’t translate, don’t translate.” He was referring to the controversies surrounding the Danish cartoons against the Prophet and the Dutch movie against the Qur’an. And of course, he was only joking.

I asked the shaykh for a booklet on their teachings but he smiled and said, “you know that we cannot divulge the secrets.”

My friend also told them how popular their castle of Misyaf has now become with the release of the highly successful new video game: Assassin’s Creed, and that they should expect the number of tourists to increase.

The shaykh had called the house of the man who had the keys to the castle and ordered him to come open it to us despite the fact that he had guests at his house, so he came and begrudgingly allowed us to rush through it for five minutes. While speaking to him on the phone he said, “You must come open it for they are our guests from Jordan, the land in which Jaafar al-Tayyar is burried.” Jaafar al-Tayyar is Jaafar ibn Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him), the brother of Ali ibn Abi Talib, and thus a very important figure for Shiites.

Why do they still have fida’is, the Australian girl asked me after we left. But to that, I had no answer. It seems they have kept their hierarchies since the days of the Crusades. “Don’t believe what they say about us”, one of the Ismailis sitting with us had said, “for we are Muslims, and that means we love all humanity.”

——

Recommended reading/viewing:

Non-fiction:

- Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes.

- Ikhwan al-Safa, The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity.

Documentary:

- “Crusades” with host Terry Jones (by The History Channel)

Historical Fiction:

- Robert Shea, The Saracen: Land of the Infidel

and its sequel,

- The Saracen: The Holy War