The Autobiography of ‘Alā’ al-Dawla al-Simnānī

(1261–1336)

Introduction

Abū al-Makārim Rukn al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ‘Alā’ al-Dawla al-Biyābānakī al-Simnānī was an important Sufi master and writer under the Mongol Īlkhānid dynasty that ruled Iran from 1256 to 1335. Born into a family of wealthy landlords in Simnān, in north central Iran, al-Simnānī joined his father in the service of the Īlkhānid prince Arghūn. Arghūn, like others of his dynasty, displayed great tolerance toward Christianity but is himself said to have a been a follower of Buddhism; Buddhist priests were in any case among his closest advisers. Al-Simnānī was raised for a life at court: both his mother's and his father's lineages included courtiers of the Khwārazmshāhs, the dynasty that had come to an end with the arrival of the Īlkhānids; his maternal uncle served as chief judge under the Īlkhānids until his execution in 1301; his paternal uncle rose to the rank of chief minister of Iran before falling from favor and being executed in 1299; and his father served intermittently as master of the guards, master of the treasury of Iraq, and governor of Baghdad until his execution in 1295/96. Al-Simnānī served as a companion of Prince Arghūn, who was six to ten years older, from the time they were both children.

Al-Simnānī appears to have been increasingly dissatisfied with court life as he entered young adulthood and began to be drawn to a mystical career, but he was strongly dissuaded by his family from giving up royal service. Following a dramatic mystical experience on the battlefield, however, al-Simnānī abruptly left the court in 1286 and thereafter devoted himself to a life of seclusion in his hometown, Biyābānak. He devoted himself entirely to mystical endeavors and experienced a great deal of success; by the time of his death in 1336, he had become one of the most respected religious scholars of the Īlkhānid empire. He used his considerable wealth to construct a large Sufi complex called Ṣūfiyābād-i Khudādād, where he instructed a large group of disciples including several Īlkhānid princes and courtiers.

Al-Simnānī had a keen sense of the narratability of his life and wrote several autobiographical tracts, some of which constitute complete treatises; others take the form of subsections in larger works. The bulk of his autobiographical writings are in Persian, but a number of Arabic texts exist that range from highly structured apologiae pro vita sua to detailed anecdotes of his life at court and the process by which he secured permission to retire to Simnān and devote himself to Sufism. The selection translated here is taken from one of his two most important works, al-‘Urwa li-ahl al-khalwa wa-l-jalwa (The Bond for the People of Reclusion and Unveiling), written in 1320–21, which contains the longest of his Arabic autobiographical writings. This selection describes al-Simnānī's conversion experience, his establishment of a large endowment to support Sufi teaching establishments—khānqāhs—and a confrontation with Satan in which al-Simnānī is almost tempted to abandon his ascetic life and return to the pursuit of wealth and position.

There are several references in the text to the creation and preservation of charitable endowments (sing. waqf, pl. awqāf). This singular development of Islamic culture allowed a benefactor to endow an institution, such as a school or a hospital, with the income from a specific source, such as a parcel of land or the rent from a building, in perpetuity. Such endowments often included provisions for the salary of one or more employees: the endowment's executor, teachers, bookkeeper, cleaning staff, and the like. In al-Simnānī's time, these salaries were often transformed into sinecures from which family members or descendants of the benefactor could derive a tax-free income, and were even bought and sold, though this was a clear abuse of their original purpose. The detailed account al-Simnānī gives of the care with which he set up his religious endowments, prohibiting relatives, descendants, and political figures from being involved and preventing the executorship of the endowment from passing down within one family, contrasts sharply with the young al-Simnānī he describes earlier whose only concern was the accumulation of wealth and power. His chagrin at the hereditary executorship of religious endowments in his day perhaps echoes his wealthy landowning roots and an alienation from his family.

By his own account, al-Simnānī's many short autobiographical pieces are intended to serve the didactic function of illustrating his teachings through examples from his personal experience and demonstrating the way to the True Path: “for it [is] impossible for anyone to understand [how I came to know the True Path] without hearing the account of my life from beginning to end.”^[1]

Bibliography

Al-‘Urwa li-ahl al-khalwa wa-l-jalwa. Ed. Najīb Māyil-i Hirāwī. Teheran: Mawla, 1983. 396–400.

Elias, Jamal J. The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ‘Alā’ al-Dawla al-Simnānī. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.

Finding the Straight Path
[al-‘Urwa, pp. 396–400]

On how I came to know the Straight Path from among the various paths, and the group deserving of salvation from among the various schismatic sects, it being impossible for anyone to understand this without hearing the account of my life from beginning to end

O eager student and traveler on the right path! If you have acquired a new awareness and possess a receptive heart and if you seek hidden knowledge and guidance to the Righteous Path, then know that from childhood to adulthood I sought privileges, thinking little of other matters, loving only noble things and despising the trivial, such that I could not content myself with being the companion of anyone other than the sultan of my time [i.e., Arghūn], and I was not satisfied until I had displaced all of my contemporaries in the role of his servant and companion. I served him for ten years after leaving the madrasa when I was a boy of fifteen, trained in the arts and letters, but completely ignorant of the rational and religious sciences. I surpassed all other youths of my kind in my service to him, and he favored me and kept me by his side to the point that I became the object of envy for the highest princes and ministers in his state because I served him in love and companionship. He was proverbial in his generosity and unanimously acclaimed for it everywhere. My purpose in serving him was only companionship and the desire to please him, not wealth and property. I ignored offering my prayers and was so engrossed in his company and occupied in his service that I did not have time for study or the subtleties of what I had read and memorized until I entered my twenty-fourth year.

Then a rebuking Voice summoned me during the combat that transpired between Arghūn and the army of his uncle, Sultan Aḥmad, just below Qazvīn in the year 683 [1284]. The moment I uttered the phrase “God is Most Great!” and attacked the enemy, the veils were lifted by the strength of this Rebuker and I saw the Afterlife and all that is in it, just as it is mentioned in the Qur’ān and the sayings of the Prophet. This powerful condition stayed with me all that night until the next morning. When I sat down to eat, the condition subsided, but its effect remained in my soul. In my heart there arose a beckoning to withdraw from humanity and, at the same time, a command to make up for all of my forfeited prayers. However, I was unable to leave the sultan's service. I did not seek any companionship after that experience, and I forced myself to offer ten days' worth of prayers every night and to memorize five verses of the Praiseworthy Qur’ān, for until then I did not know any of it by heart save the five short chapters, the four which begin with the command “Recite!” [al-qalāqil], and the Opening Chapter.

Matters remained thus until the middle of the month of Sha‘bān in the year 685 [October 1286], when I was struck by a malady so grave that the sultan's physicians proved incapable of finding a cure. I therefore asked his permission to return to Simnān for treatment. I departed Tabriz on the sixteenth of Sha‘bān 685 [October 7, 1286] heading toward Simnān. When I reached Ūjān in the region of Arrān, I realized that I had been restored to perfect health without any medication, and I understood that this was because of the blessing of abandoning the court's company, turning away from wrongdoers and their wrongful deeds, and moving toward truth and its devotees. My desire to abandon the world, to strive in obedience to God, and to eliminate any pretext for falling short in the service of my Lord and Creator, all increased while I sought forgiveness for having spent time in the service of one who worshiped idols.^[2]

When I reached Simnān, in the month of Ramadan, I occupied myself with learning what I had to of religious obligations, for I knew nothing at all of them, nor, in fact, anything of the legal sciences. I worked hard and succeeded in learning what I had to that winter. I established my spiritual practice on the basis of what is written in the book Food for Hearts [Qūt al-qulūb] of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī—may God sanctify his secret. I yearned to dissociate myself from the world, so I distributed my wealth, freed my slaves, provided my wife with her due, and gave my son more than my father had given me. Then I began to live at the khānqāh [Sufi lodge] named after the great master al-Ḥasan al-Sakkākī al-Simnānī, who was an associate of Shaykh Abū Sa‘īd ibn Abī al-Khayr and Shaykh al-Ḥasan al-Kharaqānī and the Shaykh of Shaykhs Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Dāstānī from whom many chains of authoritative transmission derive. He was a disciple of Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bustī who was his master, and Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ḥamawī al-Juwaynī, and had studied with and benefited from the great Shaykh Abū al-‘Abbās al-Qaṣṣāb al-Āmulī—may God sanctify their spirits. Shaykh al-Ḥasan al-Sakkākī was honorable and diligent, devoted to and accepted by the saints of his age, standing firmly in body, words, and deeds upon the path of the Prophet, his heart illuminated by the light of mysteries of the pure path attributed to the Sufis.

I constructed other khānqāhs and conferred upon them waqf endowments of my remaining property, double what I had given to my son and his mother. I stipulated that my descendants not serve as executors, employees, or supervisors of the endowments I created. I composed a registered endowment document and forbade the sultan's judges, scholars, and courtiers from being appointed to manage the endowments, audit their expenses, record them into the registers, or enter them for the purpose of residing, seeking temporary lodging, or eating at the table of our disciples. May God destroy them, for they are the vilest of men in character, lowest in resolve, most loathsome in beliefs, most repulsive in character, most disgusting as companions, and most vulgar in speech.

I entrusted the position of executor after me to one of my disciples who had traveled the Sufi path to the point of becoming a mystical guide, expansive by nature, generous, mindful of being neither prodigal nor miserly, possessing patience, fortitude, and benificence, pure of heart and body, of complete reliance on God, sincerely repentant and just in word and deed in all matters. And I entrusted the position after him to one like him from among the disciples, not to one of his children. I forbade executorship, supervision, and employment to the children of any executor, supervisor, or employee, even if they be ascetic, worshiping mystics, lest they confuse it with their inheritance. For we have seen in this age the making of hereditary charitable endowments and the appointment of heirs as executors, supervisors, and employees, thereby mixing up property. God will repay these people for coveting these properties—great is His power! Strangest of all is that the owners of charities like to buy them, despite being fully cognizant of the fact that they are charitable endowments! May God guide them away from this heedless behavior!

Satan came whispering in my breast and tempted my soul, saying: “You have chosen a momentous thing arbitrarily, without being certain. A sensible person cannot just abandon the delights of the world—the highest of which is being close to the sultan and the clearest of which is the fulfillment of the soul's desire and heart's delight in keeping to one's goal from the days of his youth—without giving it any serious consideration. There is nothing more delightful than being alive and the best part of a person's life is passing one's youth without a care in whatever one's soul desires. You are ruining the joy in your life by wearing coarse cloth, eating chaff, keeping constant night vigils, eating too little, and fasting all the time. If perchance after a while you realize the futility of your behavior, and wish to return to what you once had, then even if it were easy for you to reacquire all the money and property you have given away, and simple for you to again grow close to the sultan, how will you regain the lost days of your youth? Remorse over the loss of your sweet, fresh life will only gain you weariness and sorrow!”

But I said that all the prophets and saints have urged people to abandon the world and turn away form their base desires toward obedience to God— may He be exalted—and toward building a place for themselves in the Afterlife. He said, “How do you know that what they said is true in the specific context of lifting the mystical veil [kashf al-ḥijāb]?” I replied, “Indeed, I sought the world and its delights and I attained its highest stations; but then my soul turned away from it and its devotees in revulsion. I abandoned it voluntarily, not because I had to. I will not return to what I have abandoned out of weariness, boredom, or complacency. Indeed, from these practices and acts of worship I find such nonwearying delights that in each hour I long to experience what I had in the previous hour. True delight is that which does not tire the one who has it.”

He said: “These are rhetorical and persuasive words, but a seeker of truth must not heed that which is not demonstratively proven. Do we not hear how God—may He be exalted—commands His prophet to demand proof from his adversary in His Book: `Say: Bring forth your argument!' [Q 27:64].” His words stirred my soul, even though it was not disposed to heed them, being occupied with delightful religious exercises and acts of worship, striving to change its despicable characteristics and past habits into noble and praiseworthy attributes. So my soul cried out to God and said beseechingly: “O Lord! You have spoken and Your words are true: `Or, who listens to the distressed when he calls on Him' [Q 27:62], and You have commanded us to pray with Your words: `Call on me. I will answer your prayer' [Q. 40:60]. I am calling on You with the prayer of the destitute and requesting You as one who has no recourse but to beseech You, certain that he has no way out except Your door! So hear my request, answer my prayers even if You do not fulfill my desires, and reveal to me a retort to my enemies so that Satan and his arguments will be silenced by incontrovertible proof!”

An unseen voice called to me: “Do not be in haste! Follow in the footsteps of the Beloved of God and persevere in the worship of God. He will open unto you the gates to that which you seek!”

After this I strove to establish a daily regimen of meditation and prayer, as stipulated in the Food for Hearts, and of Qur’ānic recitation. I was careful that not a single breath be wasted in something that did not assist me in my faith. And my time became completely consumed in my religious exercises so that not a moment was left for me to spend on any of my associates.

Notes