Tafseer al-Tustari By Sahl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī pdf download

Tafseer al-Tustari By Sahl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī

Great Commentaries on the Holy Qurʾān translated by Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler

TAFSEER AL-TUSTARI BY SAHL B. ʿABD ALLĀH AL-TUSTARĪ

Sahl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī was probably born in 203/818 in Tustar (pronounced in Persian as Shūshtar) in Khūzistān, south-western Iran, and it is here that he spent the early years of his life.2

When still a young boy, he was introduced to Sufism by his maternal uncle Muḥammad b. Sawwār, and at the age of seven begged his uncle to allow him to wear the patched frock (muraqqaʿ) — an indication that he had been initiated into the mystical path.3 Sahl would rise in the early hours and watch his uncle performing his nightly vigil.4

It was his uncle who initiated Sahl into the Sufi practice of remembrance of God (dhikr Allāh), when one night he told him to recite inwardly with-out moving his tongue the words, ‘God is with me, God is watching over me, God is my Witness (Allāhu maʿī, Allāhu nāẓirī, Allāhu shāhidī)’. To begin with, Sahl’s uncle told him to recite these words three times.

Then, when Sahl reported to him that he had done this, he instructed him to recite the words seven times every night, and when Sahl had accomplished this, he finally increased the number to eleven times each night, urging the young Sahl to continue this practice every day until he went to his grave, and explaining to him that he would derive great benefit from them in this world and the next.

Tustarī relates that he soon experienced from this practice a sweetness (ḥalāwa) in his heart, and he states that after continuing the practice for two years, this sweetness was felt in his innermost being or ‘secret’ (sirr).

His uncle later said to him, ‘Sahl! If God is with someone, and beholds him and watches over him, can he then disobey Him? You should never do so.’5

This teaching concerning the remembrance of God that his uncle had instilled in him had a profound influence on Tustarī, and was to become a cornerstone of his mystical doctrine, as we shall see. Muḥammad b. Sawwār also imparted to his nephew some instruction in Qurʾānic exegesis, and ḥadīth.6

Little is known about Muḥammad b. Sawwār’s spiritual background other than that he may have had some connection to Maʿrūf al-Karkhī (d. 200/815), whom, according to Tustarī, he once described as ‘one of the significant masters and spiritual forbears’.7

Tafsīr al-Tustarī

Even as a child, Tustarī showed a strong inclination to lead an ascetic, solitary and contemplative life.8 He attended lessons with a Qurʾān teacher only on the condition that he should be allowed to return home after one hour lest his spiritual concentration (himma) be dissipated.9

It was said that he lived on barley bread alone until the age of twelve.10 At the age of thirteen, he experienced a spiritual crisis in the form of a profound question that persistently troubled him.

He requested that he should be allowed to travel to Basra to discover whether any of the learned men of that city would be able to answer his question. Finding no one who was able to help him there, he traveled on to the island of ʿAbbādān (in present-day southwestern Iran), where a famous ribāṭ or spiritual refuge and retreat is said to have been established by followers of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.

It was here that Tustarī met Abū Ḥabīb Ḥamza b. ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAbbādānī, who was at last able to provide him with an answer to his question.11

He remained with Abū Ḥabīb for some time, in order to benefit from his knowledge and become trained in the ways of Sufi adab, that is, the disposition and modes of conduct proper to the mystical path.12

It was also in ʿAbbādān, Tustarī relates, that one night he saw the words: God, there is no god save He, the Living, the Eternal Sustainer [2:255], written in green light on one line across the sky from East to West.13

After this period of training under a spiritual master, Tustarī returned to his native town of Tustar, where for some twenty years he mainly lived a solitary life, subjecting himself to exceptionally rigorous ascetic disciplines with periods of sustained and severe fasting

— indeed, he is cited many times in Sufi literature as exemplifying the benefits of hunger and fasting. The following account is taken from the Risāla of Qushayrī:

Then I returned to Tustar. By that time, my diet had been reduced to the point that [my people] would buy barley for me for a dirham, grind it, and bake it into bread for me. Every night about dawn, I would break my fast with merely an ounce [of that bread], without salt or condiment.

The dirham lasted a year for me. After that, I resolved to break my fast once every three days, then once every seven days, then once every twenty-five days. I continued this practice for twenty years.14

Although based in Tustar during this period, after a few years Tustarī did make another journey away from his hometown, performing the pilgrimage to Mecca in the year 219/834. According to some reports, it was at Mecca that he first encountered Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 245/860).15

It is not known whether or not Tustarī formally became a disciple of Dhū’l-Nūn, staying with him and remaining in service to him for a period of time, but there is little doubt that a strong spiritual association was established between the two mystics.16

One report does state that Tustarī traveled to Egypt to visit Dhū’l-Nūn, where the latter taught him about the nature of true trust in God (tawakkul), which is in fact one of the key doctrines that Tustarī expounds in his Qurʾān commentary.17

Moreover, a report in the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ of Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/998) indicates that Tustarī certainly held for Dhū’l-Nūn deference akin to that which a disciple would traditionally hold for his master, for when asked why in earlier years he had refrained from teaching, he answered:

‘I did not like to engage in discourse concerning mystical knowledge as long as he [Dhū’l-Nūn] was alive, out of reverence and respect for him.’18

Later, both the philosopher/mystic Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī Maqtūl (d. 587/1191), and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) was to assume in different ways a definite transmission of knowledge from Dhū’l-Nūn to Tustarī. Suhrawardī linked the two mystics not only to each other but to the Hermetic tradition. He explained that of the two currents of ancient wisdom which together formed the basis of his ‘Philosophy of Illumination’ (Ḥikmat al-ishrāq), the current which he called the ‘Pythagorean leaven’, that is, the branch of Greek/Pythagorean wisdom that had been transmitted through Hermes, had come down to Dhū’l-Nūn and from him had passed to Tustarī and his ‘party’, whence it had been transmitted to the East.19

According to Ibn ʿArabī, both Tustarī and Junayd had derived mystical teachings from Dhū’l-Nūn, as well as from other mystics.20

A comprehensive study of the sayings and teachings of Dhū’l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, and a careful collation between these and the corpus of sayings collected from Tustarī is required before the extent and nature of the influence of Dhū’l-Nūn on Tustarī’s thought can be ascertained.

Suhrawardī was not alone in linking both Dhū’l-Nūn and Tustarī to the Hermetic tradition,21 and there is at least some circumstantial evidence to support this. Dhū’l-Nūn was born and brought up in Ikhmīm, Upper Egypt, a major center of Hermeticism in the Graeco-Egyptian world.22

 Ibn Nadīm names him as being among the philosophers who spoke about the art of alchemy, and two works on alchemy, now no longer extant, were said to have been written by him under the guidance of the famous alchemist, Jābir b. Ḥayyān (d. ca 200/815).23

 Yet the numerous sayings in the name of Dhū’l-Nūn that have been preserved in the works of Sufism are entirely concerned with the mystical path.24

Dhū’l-Nūn was known as ‘the leader (imām) among the Sufis’,25 and is said to have been the first mystic to have made a distinction between allusion (ishāra) and outward expression (ʿibāra), as well as devising the concept of mystical states and stations.26 As for Tustarī, one anecdote cer-tainly indicates that he had knowledge of alchemy,27 and he included both alchemy and astronomy