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Al-Hallaj
Al-Hallaj (Abu'l-Mugith Al-Husayn bin Mansur al-Ḥallaj) or Mansour Hallaj (Mansur-e Hallaj) (b. c. 858 CC [244 AH], Tur, Fars province, Abbasid Caliphate [present day Iran[ – d. March 26, 922 CC [309 AH], Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate [present day Iraq]) was a Persian mystic, poet, and teacher of Sufism. He is best known for his saying: "I am the Truth" (Ana'l-Ḥaqq), which many saw as a claim to divinity, while others interpreted it as an instance of annihilation of the ego, allowing God to speak through him. Al-Hallaj gained a wide following as a preacher before he became implicated in power struggles in the Abbasid court and was executed after a long period of confinement on religious and political charges. Although most of his Sufi contemporaries disapproved of his actions, Hallaj later became a major figure in the Sufi tradition.
Al-Hallaj was born around 858 CC in Pars Province of the Abbasid Empire to a cotton-carder (Hallaj means "cotton-carder" in Arabic) in an Arabized town called al-Bayḍa'. His grandfather was a Zoroastrian magus, -- a Zoroastrian priest. His father moved to a town in Wasit famous for its school of Qur'an reciters. Al-Hallaj memorized the Qur'an before he was 12 years old and would often retreat from worldly pursuits to join other mystics in study at the school of Sahl al- Tustare. During this period Al-Hallaj lost his ability to speak Persian and later wrote exclusively in Arabic. Al-Hallaj was a Sunni Muslim.
When he was twenty, al-Hallaj moved to Basra, where he married and received his Sufi habit from 'Amr Makkī, although his lifelong and monogamous marriage later provoked jealousy and opposition from the latter. Through his brother-in-law, al-Hallaj found himself in contact with a Zaydi Shi'a clan that supported the Zanj Rebellion.
Al-Hallaj later went to Baghdad to consult the famous Sufi teacher Junayd of Baghdad, but he was tired of the conflict that existed between his father-in-law and 'Amr Makkī and he set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca, against the advice of Junayd, as soon as the Zanj Rebellion was crushed.
After returning to his family in Baghdad, al-Hallaj began making proclamations that aroused popular emotion and caused anxiety among the educated classes. These included avowing his burning love of God and his desire to "die accursed for the Community", and statements such as "O Muslims, save me from God" ... "God has made my blood lawful to you: kill me". It was at that time that al-Hallaj is said to have pronounced his famous shath -- his famous outrageous utterance -- "I am the Truth". For this utterance, al-Hallaj was denounced at the court, but a Shafi'i jurist refused to condemn him, stating that spiritual inspiration was beyond his jurisdiction.
Al-Hallaj's preaching had by now inspired a movement for moral and political reform in Baghdad. In 296 AH/908 CC, Sunni reformers made an unsuccessful attempt to depose the underage caliph Al-Muqtadir. When he was restored, his Shi'a vizier unleashed anti-Hanbali repressions which prompted al-Hallaj to flee Baghdad. However, three years later he was arrested, brought back, and put in prison, where he remained for nine years.
The conditions of Al-Hallaj's confinement varied depending on the relative sway his opponents and supporters held at the court, but he was finally condemned to death in 922 CC on the charge of being a Qarmatian rebel who wished to destroy the Kaaba, because he had said "the important thing is to proceed seven times around the Kaaba of one's heart." According to another report, the pretext was his recommendation to build local replicas of the Kaaba for those who are unable to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The queen-mother interceded with the caliph who initially revoked the execution order, but the intrigues of the vizier finally moved him to approve it. On 23 Dhu'l-Qa'da (March 25) trumpets announced his execution the next day. The words he spoke during the last night in his cell are collected in Akhbar al-Hallaj. Thousands of people witnessed his execution on the banks of the Tigris River. He was first punched in the face by his executioner, then lashed until unconscious, and then hanged and decapitated. Witnesses reported that Al-Hallaj's last words under torture were "all that matters for the ecstatic is that the Unique should reduce him to Unity", after which he recited the Quranic verse 42:18:
Those who do not believe in it are impatient for it, but those who believe are fearful of it and know that it is the truth. Unquestionably, those who dispute concerning the Hour are in extreme error.
Al-Hallaj's body was doused in oil and set alight, and his ashes were then scattered into the river. A cenotaph (a monument) was "quickly" built on the site of his execution, and drew pilgrims for a millennium until being swept away by a Tigris flood during the 1920s.
Some question whether al-Hallaj was executed for religious reasons as has been commonly assumed. The legal notion of blasphemy was not clearly defined in Islamic law and statements of the kind made by al-Hallaj were treated inconsistently by legal authorities. In practice, since apostasy was subsumed under the category of zandaqa (views contrary to central Islamic doctrine), which reflected the Zoroastrian legacy of viewing heresy as a political crime, crimes of apostasy were prosecuted only when it was politically convenient. It was far from conventional to punish heresy in the tenth century, and it is thought that al-Hallaj would have been spared execution except that the vizier of Caliph Al-Muqtadir wished to discredit certain figures who had associated themselves with al-Hallaj. (Previously al-Hallaj had been punished for talking about being at one with God by being shaved, pilloried and beaten with the flat of a sword, not executed because the Shafi'ite judge had ruled that his words were not "proof of disbelief.")
Al-Hallaj addressed himself to popular audiences encouraging them to find God inside their own souls, which earned him the title of "the carder of innermost souls" (hallaj al-asrar). He preached without the traditional Sufi habit and used language familiar to the local Shi'a population. This may have given the impression that he was a Qarmatian missionary rather than a Sufi. His prayer to God to make him lost and despised can be regarded as typical for a Sufi seeking annihilation in God, although it may also be interpreted as an expression of a desire to sacrifice himself as atonement on behalf of all Muslims. When al-Hallaj returned to Baghdad from his last pilgrimage to Mecca, he built a model of the Kaaba in his home for private worship.
Al-Hallaj was popularly credited with numerous supernatural acts. He was said to have lit four hundred oil lamps in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre with his finger and extinguished an eternal flame in a Zoroastrian fire temple with the tug of a sleeve.
Among other Sufis, Al-Hallaj was an anomaly. Many Sufi masters felt that it was inappropriate to share mysticism with the masses, yet Al-Hallaj openly did so in his writings and through his teachings. This was exacerbated by occasions when he would fall into trances which he attributed to being in the presence of God.
Hallaj was also accused of hulul ("incarnationism"). The basis of this charge seems to be a disputed verse in which the author proclaims mystical union in terms of two spirits in one body. This position was criticized for not affirming union and unity strongly enough. There are two spirits left whereas the Sufi fana' texts speak of utter annihilation and annihilation in annihilation (the annihilation of the consciousness of annihilation), with only one actor, the deity, left. It may be that in speaking of the unity with the divine in terms of hulul, Hallaj does not mean the fusion (or, mingling) of the divine and human substances but rather, he has in mind a heightened sense of awareness that culminates in the fulfillment of a spiritual – super-sensory – vision of God’s presence.
Al-Hallaj may be the most "Christlike" figure in Islam. There are conflicting reports about his most famous shath (his most famous outrageous utterance), Ana l-Ḥaqq ("I am The Truth"), which was taken to mean that he was claiming to be God, since al-Ḥaqq "the Truth" is one of the names of God in Islam. While meditating, al-Hallaj uttered "I am The Truth". The earliest report, coming from a hostile account of Basra grammarians, states that he said it in the mosque of Al-Mansur, while testimonies that emerged decades later claimed that it was said in private during consultations with Junayd Baghdadi. Even though this utterance has become inseparably associated with his execution in the popular imagination, owing in part to its inclusion in his biography by Attar of Nishapur, the historical issues surrounding his execution are far more complex. In another controversial statement, al-Hallaj claimed "There is nothing wrapped in my turban but God." Similarly, al-Hallaj would point to his cloak and say, Ma fī jubbati illa l-Lah -- "There is nothing in my cloak but God." A-Hallaj also wrote:
Al-Hallaj's principal works, all written in Arabic, include:
- Twenty-seven Riwayat (stories or narratives) collected by his disciples in about 290 AH/902 CC.
- Kitab al-Tawasin, a series of eleven short works.
- Poems collected in Diwan al-Hallaj.
- Pronouncements including those of his last night collected in Akhbar al-Hallaj.
His best known written work is the Kitab al-Tawasin, in which he used line diagrams and symbols to help him convey mystical experiences that he could not express in words. Ṭawasin is the broken plural of the word ta-sin which spells out the letters ṭa and sin placed for unknown reasons at the start of some surahs in the Qur'an. The chapters vary in length and subject. Chapter 1 is an homage to the Prophet Muhammad, for example, while Chapters 4 and 5 are treatments of the Prophet's heavenly ascent to Mi'raj. Chapter 6 is the longest of the chapters and is devoted to a dialogue of Satan (Iblis) and God, where Satan refuses to bow to Adam, although God asks him to do so. Satan's monotheistic claim—that he refused to bow before any other than God even at the risk of eternal rejection and torment—is combined with the lyrical language of the love-mad lover from the Majnun tradition, the lover whose loyalty is so total that there is no path for him to any "other than" the beloved. This passage explores the issues of mystical knowledge (ma'rifa) when it contradicts God's commands for although Iblis was disobeying God's commands, he was following God's will. His refusal is due, others argue, to a misconceived idea of God's uniqueness and because of his refusal to abandon himself to God in love. Hallaj criticizes the staleness of his adoration. Al-Hallaj states in this book:
Few figures in Islam provoked as much debate among classical commentators as al-Hallaj. The controversy cut across doctrinal categories. In virtually every major current of juridical and theological thought (Jafari, Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi'i, Ash'ari, and Maturidi) one finds his detractors and others who accepted his legacy completely or justified his statements with some excuse. His admirers among philosophers included Ibn Tufayl, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra.
Although the majority of early Sufi teachers condemned al-Hallaj, he was almost unanimously canonized by later generations of Sufis. The principal Sufi interpretation of the shathiyat which took the form of "I am" sayings contrasted the permanence (baqa) of God with the mystical annihilation (fana) of the individual ego, which made it possible for God to speak through the individual. Some Sufi authors claimed that such utterances were misquotations or attributed them to immaturity, madness or intoxication, while others regarded them as authentic expressions of spiritual states, even profoundest experience of divine realities, which should not be manifested to the unworthy. Some of them, including al-Ghazali, showed ambivalence about their apparently blasphemous nature while admiring the spiritual status of their author. Rumi wrote: "When the pen (of authority) is in the hand of a traitor, unquestionably Mansur (al-Hallaj) is on a gibbet (the gallows)."
The supporters of al-Hallaj have interpreted his statement as meaning, "God has emptied me of everything but Himself. " According to them, al-Hallaj never denied God's oneness and was a strict monotheist. However, he believed that the actions of man, when performed in total accordance with God's pleasure, lead to a blissful unification with God. Malayalam author Vaikom Muhammad Basheer draws parallel between "Ana al-Ḥaqq" and Aham Brahmasm, the Upanishad Mahavakya which means 'I am Brahman' (the Ultimate Reality in Hinduism). Basheer uses this term to intend God is found within one's 'self'. There was a belief among European historians that al-Hallaj was secretly a Christian, until the French scholar Louis Massignon presented his legacy in the context of Islamic mysticism in his four-volume work La Passion de Husayn ibn Mansur Hallaj.
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al-Ḥallaj, in full Abu al-Mughith al-Ḥusayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, was a controversial writer and teacher of Islamic mysticism (Sufism). Because he represented in his person and works the experiences, causes, and aspirations of many Muslims, arousing admiration in some and repression on the part of others, the drama of his life and death has been considered a reference point in Islamic history.
Al-Ḥallaj was born in the southern Iranian community of Tur in the province of Fars. According to tradition, his grandfather was a Zoroastrian and a descendant of Abu Ayyub, a companion of Muhammad. At an early age al-Hallaj went to live in the city of Wasiṭ, an important Iraqi center for textiles, trade, and Arab culture. His father had become a Muslim and appears to have supported the family by carding (disentangling) wool.
Al-Ḥallaj was attracted to an ascetic way of life at an early age. Not satisfied with merely having learned the Qurʾan by heart, he was motivated to understand its deeper and inner meanings. During his adolescence (c. 874–894), at a time when Islamic mysticism was in its formative period, he began to withdraw from the world and to seek the company of individuals who were able to instruct him in the Ṣufi way. His teachers, Sahl at-Tustari, ʿAmr ibn ʿUthman al-Makki, and Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd, were highly respected among the masters of Ṣufism. Studying first under Sahl at-Tustari, who lived a quiet and solitary life in the city of Tustar in Khuzistan, al-Ḥallaj later became a disciple of al-Markki of Basra. During this period he married the daughter of the Sufi Abu Yaʿqub al-Aqṭaʿ. He concluded his instruction in the mystical way under al-Junayd of Baghdad, a brilliant intellect, under whom al-Makki had likewise studied.
During the next period of his life (c. 895–910), al-Hallaj undertook extensive travels, preaching, teaching, and writing. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he followed a strict discipline for a year. Returning to such regions as Fars, Khuzistan, and Khorasan, he preached and wrote about the way to an intimate relationship with God. In the course of his journeys, al-Hallaj attracted many disciples, some of whom accompanied him on a second pilgrimage to Mecca. Afterward, he returned to his family in Baghdad and then set out by sea for a mission to lands hitherto not penetrated by Islam—India and Turkistan. Following a third pilgrimage to Mecca, he again returned to Baghdad (c. 908).
The milieu in which al-Hallaj preached and wrote was filled with social, economic, political, and religious tensions—all factors that contributed to his later arrest. His thought and activity had been provocative and had been interpreted in various ways, some of which left him highly suspect in the eyes of civil and religious authorities. The mystical Ṣufi movement, in general, had aroused considerable opposition, and its thought and practice had yet to be coordinated with developments in jurisprudence, theology, and philosophy.
Al-Ḥallaj’s propensity for travel and his willingness to share the profundity of his mystical experiences with all who would listen were considered breaches of discipline by his Sufi masters. His travel for missionary purposes was suggestive of the subversive activity of the Qarmaṭians, a 9th-century movement with Ismaʿili affiliations that was founded by Ḥamdan Qarmaṭ in Iraq, whose acts of terrorism and whose missionaries were undermining the authority of the central government. Through his wife’s family, he was suspected of having connections with the destructive Zanj rebellion in southern Mesopotamia that was carried out by oppressed black slaves inspired and led by outside dissidents. The alleged involvement of al-Hallaj in an attempt at political and moral reform upon his return to Baghdad was an immediate factor in his arrest, and it did nothing to improve his image in the eyes of the political leaders.
Al-Ḥallaj has been identified as an “intoxicated” Sufi in contradistinction to a “sober” one. The former are those who, in the moment of ecstasy, are so overcome by the presence of the divine that awareness of personal identity is lost and who experience a merging with ultimate reality. In that exalted state, the Sufi is given to using extravagant language. Not long before his arrest, al-Ḥallaj is said to have uttered the statement “Ana al-haqq” (“I am the Truth”—i.e., "I am God"), which provided cause for the accusation that he had claimed to be divine. Such a statement was highly inappropriate in the view of most Muslims. Furthermore, this was the kind of theosophical (divine wisdom) idea that was associated with the Qarmaṭians and the supporters of the Zanj slaves. There was no consensus about al-Ḥallaj, however. The long, drawn-out trial proceedings were marked by indecision.
After his arrest in Sus and a lengthy period of confinement (c. 911–922) in Baghdad, al-Ḥallaj was eventually crucified and brutally tortured to death. A large crowd witnessed his execution. He is remembered to have endured gruesome torture calmly and courageously and to have uttered words of forgiveness for his accusers. In a sense, the Islamic community (ummah) had put itself on trial, for al-Ḥallaj left behind revered writings and supporters who courageously affirmed his teachings and his experience. In subsequent Islamic history, therefore, the life and thought of al-Ḥallaj has been a subject seldom ignored.
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Mason, Herbert (1983). Memoir of a Friend: Louis Massignon. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Massignon, Louis (translated by Herbert Mason) (1982). The Passion of al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Rodziewicz, Artur (2022). The Mystery of Essence and the Essence of Mystery: Yezidi and Yaresan Cosmognonies in the Light of the Kitab al-Tawasin. Macmillan.
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Shah, Idries (1964). The Sufis. Garden City: Doubleday.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hallaj
https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Hallaj
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