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A wali (wali Arabic: وَلِيّ, walīy; plural أَوْلِيَاء, ʾawliyāʾ), the Arabic word which has been variously translated “master”, “authority”, “custodian”, “protector”,[1][2] is most commonly used by Muslims to indicate an Islamic saint, otherwise referred to by the more literal “friend of God“.[1][3][4]
When the Arabic definite article “al” (ال) is added, it refers to one of the names of God in Islam, Allah – al-Walī (الْوليّ), meaning “the Helper, Friend”.
In the traditional Islamic understanding of saints, the 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“.[5] The doctrine of saints was articulated by Muslim scholars very early on in Islamic history,[6][7][5][8] and particular verses of the Quran and certain hadith were interpreted by early Muslim thinkers as “documentary evidence”[5] of the existence of saints. Graves of saints around the Muslim world became centers of pilgrimage — especially after 1200 CE — for masses of Muslims seeking their barakah (blessing).[9]
A Persian miniature depicting the medieval saint and mystic Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1123), brother of the famous al-Ghazali (d. 1111), talking to a disciple, from Meetings of the Lovers (1552).
Since the first Muslim hagiographies were written during the period when the Islamic mystical trend of Sufism began its rapid expansion, many of the figures who later came to be regarded as the major saints in orthodox Sunni Islam were the early Sufi mystics, like Hasan of Basra (d. 728), Farqad Sabakhi (d. 729), Dawud Tai (d. 777–781), Rabia of Basra (d. 801), Maruf Karkhi (d. 815), and Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910).[1] From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, “the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism … into orders or brotherhoods”.[10] In the common expressions of Islamic piety of this period, the saint was understood to be “a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection … [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples”.[10] In many prominent Sunni creeds of the time, such as the famous Creed of Tahawi (c. 900) and the Creed of Nasafi (c. 1000), a belief in the existence and miracles of saints was presented as “a requirement” for being an orthodox Muslim believer.[11][12]
Aside from the Sufis, the preeminent saints in traditional Islamic piety are the Companions of the Prophet, their Successors, and the Successors of the Successors.[13] Additionally, the prophets and messengers in Islam are also believed to be saints by definition, although they are rarely referred to as such, in order to prevent confusion between them and ordinary saints; as the prophets are exalted by Muslims as the greatest of all humanity, it is a general tenet of Sunni belief that a single prophet is greater than all the regular saints put together.[14] In short, it is believed that “every prophet is a saint, but not every saint is a prophet”.[15]
In the modern world, the traditional Sunni and Shia idea of saints has been challenged by puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements such as the Salafi movement, Wahhabism, and Islamic Modernism, all three of which have, to a greater or lesser degree, “formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints.”[1] As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements has indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to resist “acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or … [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations”.[16] However, despite the presence of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint veneration continues to thrive in many parts of the Islamic world today, playing a vital role in daily expressions of piety among vast segments of Muslim populations in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco,[1] as well as in countries with substantial Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and the Balkans.[1]
Names
A Persian miniature depicting Jalal al-Din Rumi showing love for his disciple Hussam al-Din Chelebi (ca. 1594)
Regarding the rendering of the Arabic walī by the English “saint”, prominent scholars such as Gibril Haddad have regarded this as an appropriate translation, with Haddad describing the aversion of some Muslims towards the use of “saint” for walī as “a specious objection … for [this is] – like ‘Religion’ (din), ‘Believer’ (mu’min), ‘prayer’ (salat), etc. – [a] generic term for holiness and holy persons while there is no confusion, for Muslims, over their specific referents in Islam, namely: the reality of iman with Godwariness and those who possess those qualities.”[17][better source needed] In Persian, which became the second most influential and widely spoken language in the Islamic world after Arabic,[1] the general title for a saint or a spiritual master became pīr (Persian: پیر, literally “old [person]”, “elder”[18]).[1] Although the ramifications of this phrase include the connotations of a general “saint,”[1] it is often used to specifically signify a spiritual guide of some type.[1]
Amongst Indian Muslims, the title pīr baba (पीर बाबा) is commonly used in Hindi to refer to Sufi masters or similarly honored saints.[1] Additionally, saints are also sometimes referred to in the Persian or Urdu vernacular with “Hazrat.”[1] In Islamic mysticism, a pīr’s role is to guide and instruct his disciples on the mystical path.[1] Hence, the key difference between the use of walī and pīr is that the former does not imply a saint who is also a spiritual master with disciples, while the latter directly does so through its connotations of “elder”.[1] Additionally, other Arabic and Persian words that also often have the same connotations as pīr, and hence are also sometimes translated into English as “saint”, include murshid (Arabic: مرشد, meaning “guide” or “teacher”), sheikh and sarkar (Persian word meaning “master”).[1]
In the Turkish Islamic lands, saints have been referred to by many terms, including the Arabic walī, the Persian s̲h̲āh and pīr, and Turkish alternatives like baba in Anatolia, ata in Central Asia (both meaning “father”), and eren or ermis̲h̲ (< ermek “to reach, attain”) or yati̊r (“one who settles down”) in Anatolia.[1] Their tombs, meanwhile, are “denoted by terms of Arabic or Persian origin alluding to the idea of pilgrimage (mazār, ziyāratgāh), tomb (ḳabr, maḳbar) or domed mausoleum (gunbad, ḳubba). But such tombs are also denoted by terms usually used for dervish convents, or a particular part of it (tekke in the Balkans, langar, ‘refectory,’ and ribāṭ in Central Asia), or by a quality of the saint (pīr, ‘venerable, respectable,’ in Azerbaijan).”[1]
History
Further information: Holiest sites in Islam and List of Sufi saints
A Mughal miniature dated from the early 1620s depicting the Mughal emperor Jahangir (d. 1627) preferring a Sufi saint to his contemporary, the King of England James I (d. 1625); the picture is inscribed: “Though outwardly kings stand before him, he fixes his gazes on saints.”
According to various traditional Sufi interpretations of the Quran, the concept of sainthood is clearly described.[19] Some modern scholars, however, assert that the Quran does not explicitly outline a doctrine or theory of saints.[1] In the Quran, the adjective walī is applied to God, in the sense of him being the “friend” of all believers (Q2:257).[20] However, particular Quranic verses were interpreted by early Islamic scholars to refer to a special, exalted group of holy people.[5] These included 10:62:[5] “Surely God’s friends (awliyāa l-lahi): no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow,”[5] and 5:54, which refers to God’s love for those who love him.[5] Additionally, some scholars[1] interpreted 4:69, “Whosoever obeys God and the Messenger, they are with those unto whom God hath shown favor: the prophets and the ṣidīqīna and the martyrs and the righteous. The best of company are they,” to carry a reference to holy people who were not prophets and were ranked below the latter.[1] The word ṣidīqīna in this verse literally connotes “the truthful ones” or “the just ones,” and was often interpreted by the early Islamic thinkers in the sense of “saints,” with the famous Quran translator Marmaduke Pickthall rendering it as “saints” in their interpretations of the scripture.[1] Furthermore, the Quran referred to the miracles of saintly people who were not prophets like Khidr (18:65–18:82) and the People of the Cave (18:7–18:26), which also led many early scholars to deduce that a group of venerable people must exist who occupy a rank below the prophets but are nevertheless exalted by God.[1] The references in the corpus of hadith literature to bona fide saints like the pre-Islamic Jurayj̲,[21][22][23][24] only lent further credence to this early understanding of saints.[1]
Collected stories about the “lives or vitae of the saints”, began to be compiled “and transmitted at an early stage”[1] by many regular Muslim scholars, including Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894),[1] who wrote a work entitled Kitāb al-Awliyāʾ (Lives of the Saints) in the ninth-century, which constitutes “the earliest [complete] compilation on the theme of God’s friends.”[1] Prior to Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s work, the stories of the saints were transmitted through oral tradition; but after the composition of his work, many Islamic scholars began writing down the widely circulated accounts,[1] with later scholars like Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 948) making extensive use of Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s work in his own Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ (The Adornment of the Saints).[1] It is, moreover, evident from the Kitāb al-Kas̲h̲f wa ’l-bayān of the early Baghdadi Sufi mystic Abu Sa’id al-Kharraz (d. 899) that a cohesive understanding of the Muslim saints was already in existence, with al-Kharraz spending ample space distinguishing between the virtues and miracles (karāmāt) of the prophets and the saints.[1] The genre of hagiography (manāḳib) only became more popular with the passage of time, with numerous prominent Islamic thinkers of the medieval period devoting large works to collecting stories of various saints or to focusing upon “the marvelous aspects of the life, the miracles or at least the prodigies of a [specific] Ṣūfī or of a saint believed to have been endowed with miraculous powers.”[25]
In the late ninth-century, important thinkers in Sunni Islam officially articulated the previously-oral doctrine of an entire hierarchy of saints, with the first written account of this hierarchy coming from the pen of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 907-912).[1] With the general consensus of Islamic scholars of the period accepting that the ulema were responsible for maintaining the “exoteric” part of Islamic orthodoxy, including the disciplines of law and jurisprudence, while the Sufis were responsible for articulating the religion’s deepest inward truths,[1] later prominent mystics like Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) only further reinforced this idea of a saintly hierarchy, and the notion of “types” of saints became a mainstay of Sunni mystical thought, with such types including the ṣiddīqūn (“the truthful ones”) and the abdāl (“the substitute-saints”), amongst others.[1] Many of these concepts appear in writing far before al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Arabi; the idea of the abdāl, for example, appears as early as the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), where the word signifies a group of major saints “whose number would remain constant, one always being replaced by some other on his death.”[26] It is, in fact, reported that Ibn Hanbal explicitly identified his contemporary, the mystic Maruf Karkhi (d. 815-20), as one of the abdal, saying: “He is one of the substitute-saints, and his supplication is answered.”[27]
An Mughal miniature of A Discourse between Muslim Sages (ca. 1630), thought to be executed by the court painter Govārdhan.
From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, “the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism—the mysticism of Islam—into orders or brotherhoods.”[10] In general Islamic piety of the period, the saint was understood to be “a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection … [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples.”[10] It was by virtue of his spiritual wisdom that the saint was accorded veneration in medieval Islam, “and it is this which … [effected] his ‘canonization,’ and not some ecclesiastical institution” as in Christianity.[10] In fact, the latter point represents one of the crucial differences between the Islamic and Christian veneration of saints, for saints are venerated by unanimous consensus or popular acclaim in Islam, in a manner akin to all those Christian saints who began to be venerated prior to the institution of canonization.[10] In fact, a belief in the existence of saints became such an important part of medieval Islam[11][12] that many of the most important creeds articulated during the time period, like the famous Creed of Tahawi, explicitly declared it a requirement for being an “orthodox” Muslim to believe in the existence and veneration of saints and in the traditional narratives of their lives and miracles.[14][11][12][3] Hence, we find that even medieval critics of the widespread practice of venerating the tombs of saints, like Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), never denied the existence of saints as such, with the Hanbali jurist stating: “The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, by the acceptance of all Muslim scholars. And the Qur’an has pointed to it in different places, and the sayings of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are only people who are innovators and their followers.”[28] In the words of one contemporary academic, practically all Muslims of that era believed that “the lives of saints and their miracles were incontestable.”[29]
In the modern world, the traditional idea of saints in Islam has been challenged by the puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements of Salafism and Wahhabism, whose influence has “formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints.”[1] For the adherents of Wahhabi ideology, for example, the practice of venerating saints appears as an “abomination”, for they see in this a form of idolatry.[1] It is for this reason that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which adheres to the Wahhabi creed, “destroyed the tombs of saints wherever … able”[1] during its expansion in the Arabian Peninsula from the eighteenth-century onwards.[1][Note 1] As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements have indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to also resist “acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or … [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations.”[16] At the same time, the movement of Islamic Modernism has also opposed the traditional veneration of saints, for many proponents of this ideology regard the practice as “being both un-Islamic and backwards … rather than the integral part of Islam which they were for over a millennium.”[30] Despite the presence, however, of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint-veneration continues to thrive in many parts of the Islamic world today, playing a vital part in the daily piety of vast portions of Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco,[1] as well as in countries with substantive Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and the Balkans.[1]
Definitions
Detail from an Indian miniature depicting the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (d. 1659) seeking the advice of a local saint named Mian Mir (d. 1635), undated but perhaps from the late seventeenth-century
The general definition of the Muslim saint in classical texts is that he represents a “[friend of God] marked by [special] divine favor … [and] holiness”, being specifically “chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles.”[5] Moreover, the saint is also portrayed in traditional hagiographies as one who “in some way … acquires his Friend’s, i.e. God’s, good qualities, and therefore he possesses particular authority, forces, capacities and abilities.”[1] Amongst classical scholars, Qushayri (d. 1073) defined the saint as someone “whose obedience attains permanence without interference of sin; whom God preserves and guards, in permanent fashion, from the failures of sin through the power of acts of obedience.”[31] Elsewhere, the same author quoted an older tradition in order to convey his understanding of the purpose of saints, which states: “The saints of God are those who, when they are seen, God is remembered.”[32]
Meanwhile, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 869), the most significant ninth-century expositor of the doctrine, posited six common attributes of true saints (not necessarily applicable to all, according to the author, but nevertheless indicative of a significant portion of them), which are: (1) when people see him, they are automatically reminded of God; (2) anyone who advances towards him in a hostile way is destroyed; (3) he possesses the gift of clairvoyance (firāsa); (4) he receives divine inspiration (ilhām), to be strictly distinguished from revelation proper (waḥy),[1][33][34] with the latter being something only the prophets receive; (5) he can work miracles (karāmāt) by the leave of God, which may differ from saint to saint, but may include marvels such as walking on water (al-mas̲h̲y ʿalā ’l-māʾ) and shortening space and time (ṭayy al-arḍ); and (6) he associates with Khidr.[35][1] Al-Tirmidhi states, furthermore, that although the saint is not sinless like the prophets, he or she can nevertheless be “preserved from sin” (maḥfūz) by the grace of God.[1] The contemporary scholar of Sufism Martin Lings described the Islamic saints as “the great incarnations of the Islamic ideal…. spiritual giants with which almost every generation was blessed.”[36]
Classical testimonies
Main article: Miracles of the Saints (Islam)
The doctrine of saints, and of their miracles, seems to have been taken for granted by many of the major authors of the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 700–1400),[1] as well as by many prominent late-medieval scholars.[1] The phenomena in traditional Islam can be at least partly ascribed to the writings of many of the most prominent Sunni theologians and doctors of the classical and medieval periods,[1] many of whom considered the belief in saints to be “orthodox” doctrine.[1] Examples of classical testimonies include:
- “God has saints (awliyā) whom He has specially distinguished by His friendship and whom He has chosen to be the governors of His kingdom… He has made the saints governors of the universe… Through the blessing of their advent the rain falls from heaven, and through the purity of their lives the plants spring up from the earth, and through their spiritual influence the Muslims gain victories over the truth concealers” (Hujwiri [d. 1072-7]; Sunni Hanafi jurist and mystic)[1]
- “The miracles of the saints (awliyā) are a reality. The miracle appears on behalf of the saint by way of contradicting the customary way of things…. And such a thing is reckoned as an evidentiary miracle on behalf of the Messenger to one of whose people this act appears, because it is evident from it that he is a saint, and he could never be a saint unless he were right in his religion; and his religion is the confession of the message of the Messenger” (al-Nasafī [d. 1142], Creed XV; Sunni Hanafi theologian)[37]
- “The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, and acknowledged by all Muslim scholars. The Qur’an has pointed to it in different places, and the Hadith of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are innovators or following innovators” (Ibn Taymiyya [d. 1328], Mukhtasar al-Fatawa al-Masriyya; Sunni Hanbali theologian and jurisconsult)[38]
Seeking of blessings
The rationale for veneration of deceased saints by pilgrims in an appeal for blessings (Barakah) even though the saints will not rise from the dead until the Day of Resurrection (Yawm ad-Dīn) may come from the hadith that states “the Prophets are alive in their graves and they pray”.[citation needed] (According to the Islamic concept of Punishment of the Grave—established by hadith—the dead are still conscious and active, with the wicked suffering in their graves as a prelude to hell and the pious at ease.) According to Islamic historian Jonathan A.C. Brown, “saints are thought to be no different” than prophets, “as able in death to answer invocations for assistance” as they were while alive.[9]
Types and hierarchy
A drawing of The Two Poet Saints Hafez and Saadi Shirazi (ca. 17th century), thought to be executed by a certain Muhammad Qāsim
Saints were envisaged to be of different “types” in classical Islamic tradition.[1] Aside from their earthly differences as regard their temporal duty (i.e. jurist, hadith scholar, judge, traditionist, historian, ascetic, poet), saints were also distinguished cosmologically as regards their celestial function or standing.[1] In Islam, however, the saints are represented in traditional texts as serving separate celestial functions, in a manner similar to the angels, and this is closely linked to the idea of a celestial hierarchy in which the various types of saints play different roles.[1] A fundamental distinction was described in the ninth century by al-Tirmidhi in his Sīrat al-awliyāʾ (Lives of the Saints), who distinguished between two principal varieties of saints: the walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh on the one hand and the walī Allāh on the other.[1] According to the author, “the [spiritual] ascent of the walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh must stop at the end of the created cosmos … he can attain God’s proximity, but not God Himself; he is only admitted to God’s proximity (muḳarrab). It is the walī Allāh who reaches God. Ascent beyond God’s throne means to traverse consciously the realms of light of the Divine Names…. When the walī Allāh has traversed all the realms of the Divine Names, i.e. has come to know God in His names as completely as possible, he is then extinguished in God’s essence. His soul, his ego, is eliminated and … when he acts, it is God Who acts through him. And so the state of extinction means at the same time the highest degree of activity in this world.”[1]
Although the doctrine of the hierarchy of saints is already found in written sources as early as the eighth-century,[1] it was al-Tirmidhi who gave it its first systematic articulation.[1] According to the author, forty major saints, whom he refers to by the various names of ṣiddīḳīn, abdāl, umanāʾ, and nuṣaḥāʾ,[1] were appointed after the death of Muhammad to perpetuate the knowledge of the divine mysteries vouchsafed to them by the prophet.[1] These forty saints, al-Tirmidhi stated, would be replaced in each generation after their earthly death; and, according to him, “the fact that they exist is a guarantee for the continuing existence of the world.”[1] Among these forty, al-Tirmidhi specified that seven of them were especially blessed.[1] Despite their exalted nature, however, al-Tirmidhi emphasized that these forty saints occupied a rank below the prophets.[1] Later important works which detailed the hierarchy of saints were composed by the mystic ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī (d. between 1194 and 1207), the spiritual teacher of Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1220), and by Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), who evidently knew of “a highly developed hierarchy of God’s friends.”[1] The differences in terminology between the various celestial hierarchies presented by these authors were reconciled by later scholars through their belief that the earlier mystics had highlighted particular parts and different aspects of a single, cohesive hierarchy of saints.[1]
Sufism
In certain esoteric teachings of Islam, there is said to be a cosmic spiritual hierarchy[39][40][41] whose ranks include walis (saints, friends of God), abdals (changed ones), headed by a ghawth (helper) or qutb (pole, axis). The details vary according to the source.
One source is the 12th Century Persian Ali Hujwiri. In his divine court, there are three hundred akhyār (“excellent ones”), forty abdāl (“substitutes”), seven abrār (“piously devoted ones”), four awtād (“pillars”), three nuqabā (“leaders”) and one qutb.
All these saints know one another and cannot act without mutual consent. It is the task of the Awtad to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform the Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessings the imperfection may be remedied.[42]
Another is from Ibn Arabi, who lived in Moorish Spain. It has a more exclusive structure. There are eight nujabā (“nobles”), twelve nuqabā, seven abdāl, four awtād, two a’immah (“guides”), and the qutb.[43]
According to the 20th-century Sufi Inayat Khan, there are seven degrees in the hierarchy. In ascending order, they are pir, buzurg, wali, ghaus, qutb, nabi and rasul He does not say how the levels are populated. Pirs and buzurgs assist the spiritual progress of those who approach them. Walis may take responsibility for protecting a community and generally work in secret. Qutbs are similarly responsible for large regions. Nabis are charged with bringing a reforming message to nations or faiths, and hence have a public role. Rasuls likewise have a mission of transformation of the world at large.[44]