In his Kifaya, Rabbenu Abraham ben HaRambam (1186–1237) states the principle that his Pietist Path (Suluk al-Khass) is a Jewish one that had been lost but rediscovered in Islamic Sufism. For example, in defending the way that he and his fellow Jewish Sufis adopted special clothing that was similar to the attire of the Islamic Sufis, he insisted:
Do not regard as unseemly our
comparison of that [the true dress of the prophets] to the conduct of the Sufis,
for the latter imitate the prophets [of Israel] and walk in their footsteps,
not the prophets in theirs. [1]
And
using the exact and precise Sufi terminology of khirqa,murid,and tariq from
the Islamic Sufi initiation ceremony he explains:
By casting his cloak over [Elisha],
Elijah hinted to him, as if in joyful annunciation, that his garments and dress
as well as the rest of his conduct would be like his. Thus he announced to him
the fact that Elijah’s spiritual perfection would be transferred to him and
that he [Elisha] would attain the degree which he himself had attained. Thou
art aware of the ways of the ancient saints [awliya] of Israel, which
are not or but little practised among our contemporaries, that have now become
the practice of the Sufis of Islam, “on account of the iniquities of Israel,”
namely that the master invests the novice [murid] with a cloak [khirqah]
as the latter is about to enter upon the mystical path [tariq]. “They
have taken up thine own words” (Deuteronomy 33:3). This is why we moreover take
over from them and emulate them in the wearing of sleeveless tunics and the
like. [2]
(emphasis mine)
Some scholars receive,with some reserve,
Rabbenu’s stated belief that the Jewish prophetic practices were lost and hidden
in Islam, and they frequently opine that his reforms and innovations were
simply his highly creative and original adoption and development of Islamic practices in Jewish prayer and
contemplation. Others say that he had
observed the profound spirituality and decorum of Islamic devotions and liturgy and was simply impressed by their
potential to increase the kind of kavanah in Jewish worship that could
lead to devekut. Whichever
combination of these possibilities we prefer, we should also remember that the
area of Northern Egypt itself was a place where a cross-fertilisation of the eremitic
and ascetic ideas held by the three
Abrahamic contemplative traditions was an established, easily observed, and
highly active process—though it may rarely have been formally acknowledged.
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Then,
as now, there are Jews who want to
make the communal liturgy more
beautiful and more conducive to the
development of individual reflection;
who seek to go the extra mile in the observance of all the ethical and ritual commandments; who (above all)
wish to develop their personal and private contemplative devotions to the
point where they may lose the self in
order to find God.
Liturgical and devotional intentionality was a major part of the motivation behind the European Hasidic movement pioneered by the Baal Shem Tov. The search for a developed "interior life" was also the impetus behind many “New Age”groups that sprang up in the hippie 1960’s, groups which frequently looked outside Judaism— to India and the Far East— for inspiration.
In the last seventy years or so, within Judaism, popular kabbalistic and spirituality-based movements have burgeoned globally in response to the lacuna such people had felt in many congregational and denominational settings, and many mediational groups within our Nation are currently hoping to develop the philosophic and contemplative tools which many hope may hasten the promised return of ruah hakodesh and nevuah. This is an explicit aim of our own Tariqa and one which we share with Rabbenu Abraham’s circle.
During the mediaeval period, the Hasidim of Cairo and Northern Egypt were engaged in the same search for inspiration as all the aforementioned groups and (like the members of our own Tariqa) they looked towards Islamic Sufism for some guidance and stimulation. They found it in abundance during the Mamluk era because at that time Islamic Sufism was very much in the ascendant.
With
its strong similarities to both the ancient Jewish ecstatic/prophetic kabbalah,
and to the later Beshtian movement’s focus on contemplative activity, Islamic Sufism gave a kick-start to these pious Cairene Jews, enabling
them to take the best of what they saw and learnt from the
mystics of Islam, filter it through a strict halakhic lens, and then
incorporate it into a new system of Jewish
spiritual activity. It was no
small enterprise. During the period
between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries it became a huge and popular movement that spread over
most of the Egyptian and Syrian Jewish
world, and its influential echoes would be discernable in the practice of the Safed mystics.
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Our
Tariqa is commited to the principle that the main area of our study and the source of our contemplative and devotional practice is the Hebrew
Scriptures, and principally the Torah of Moses and the Elijan mesorah.
But
our Foundation statement also indicates that we should follow the
example of the Egyptian Pietists
and also learn from the early Islamic Sufi texts and practitioners. It is well known that Ibn
Pequda and the Maimunis quoted from the
Quran itself,with or without adaptation or attribution.
Abraham
ben HaRambam, his colleague Abraham He-Hasid, Obadyah Maimuni, and David ben
Joshua Maimuni all stated quite clearly that they believed their Jewish-Sufi
movement to be a renewal of the
lost prophetic silsila of the
Biblical Schools of the Prophets—the memory of certain aspects of which
had been preserved in the eremitical,devotional, and meditative thought and
practices of Islamic Sufism. So one
might wonder:
Who
and What were they “seeing”?— What was it that they were observing,
witnessing, and imitating in Cairo that sparked their interest and profound
admiration?
Cairo
was actually the site of the Sa’id
al-Su’ada (Salihiyya), the very first major Sufi Khanqah to have
been founded in Egypt (by Saladin in 1173) and built to house three hundred sufis.
Significantly, we know that these sufis performed frequent and regular
discourses and lectures in the public spaces of Cairo. Though the
second-class status of Jews as dhimmis would have precluded their participatory presence
in Mosques, they may well have observed more private practices and lectures, even if that may have only been through open porticos or windows. We know, for example that there was an Islamic-Sufi
Zawiya in the heart of the Jewish
Quarter during Rabbenu Abraham’s
nagidship.
In
crowded and overpopulated Cairo, which was larger than most major European
cities at this time, the houses were often multi-storey and tightly packed and
we can only surmise what educational cross-fertilisation might have transpired
in private conversations or even meetings in such close-quartered situations.
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Turning
now to mention briefly the Islamic-Sufi authors and leaders who were certainly
familiar to the Mediaeval Egyptian
Pietists
In
his detailed and panoramic essay: Sufis and Jews in Mamluk Egypt, Professor Paul Fenton lists many of the
Islamic-Sufi exemplars whose presence in Cairo must have had a significant role
in the development of the Jewish Pietist movement in Ayyubid and Mamluk times.
Here
is a concise introductory summary of some of the
personages he mentions, re-presented here in the hope that members of our Tariqa Eliyahu
HaNabi who wish to examine such Islamic influences may use this information to
direct and focus their researches for the
benefit of us all:
- The poet ‘Umar Ibn al-Farid (d. 1235),
- Abu l-Ḥasan al-Shadhili (1196-1258)
- Ahmad al-Badawi (1199-1276),
- Abu l-Abbās al-Mursī (1219–1287)
- Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (1259-1309).
Abu
l-Hasan al-Shadhili (1196-1258)—one of the greatest
Sufi Shaykhs in Egypt— was known to have discussions with the Jews of
Cairo. Though his official lodge was in
Alexandria, he had a Jewish
optician in Cairo and it seems extremely likely to me that he might have met Rabbenu Abraham (in his capacity as
Leader of the Jewish community there) or other members of his circle.
Some
of the stellar Moslem Teachers and Saints in the above shortlist were the founding generators of major Sufi Orders —and their presence in
the Cairo of our spiritual predecessors must surely have been a great
inspiration to Jews seeking Sufi contact.
After all, these people and their followers were the living and local
exemplars that the Jewish Pietists
encountered (either in person or in an observing crowd) during public
cermonies and lectures.
When
they speak of the admiration they felt
for the Sufi Way, their comments must have been based on what they saw
and read and heard.
Rabbenu Abraham was not imagining what Sufi practice was when
he wrote the Kifaya, he was
living in one of its major Egyptian Sufi centres.
In his magisterial
and profound study Judaism, Sufism,
and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt,
Elisha Russ Fishbane writes:
We have direct testimony of pietists
personally observing Sufi rites in the first half of the thirteenth century and
an explicit acknowledgement of adopting similar, if not identical, rites in
their own circles. [3]
In many instances, Sufi terms were
adopted by the pietists in their original forms, while in others cases Hebrew
terms were applied in novel ways, as with derekh roughly supplanting taṛīqah as a designation for the spiritual path and, most
significantly, the term hasid ̣ replacing sụ̄fī
as the chief appellation of the devotee.[4]
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One
of the key practices of the Egyptian
Pietists, a lengthy exposition of which is
found in the Kifaya, is the practice of geo-physical
seclusion. The many varieties of seclusion (Khalwa/hitbodedut) that
Rabbenu Abraham described and proposed for his group in the Kifaya
included a specific forty-day practice that he and his colleagues were sure to
have witnessed in Cairo.
This
classic Sufi practice of geo-physical khalwah —a forty day isolation-retreat,
often in darkness, and involving fasting,the avoidance of day-time sleep, and
rising to perform contemplative exercises (often involving prostrations) at midnight—was a core recommended practice of the Cairene Jewish Sufis.
Although Rabbenu Abraham, like Ibn Pequda,
lauded interior “solitude in the crowd”,
he also envisaged that those who were on the highest levels of human intellectual
and spiritual attainment would actually be required to practice such
total physically isolated and secluded
retreat if they were to become prophets.
Though this was not not expected of all members, it was certainly the
mark of those engaged in the final Maqamat (Station) of the Kifaya’s
system, and it was a principal element in the Murshid of Rabbenu David
Maimuni II.
Rabbenu
Abraham clearly refers to this type of isolated retreat as follows:
We also see the
Sufis of Islam proceed in this war against the self to the combating of sleep, and perhaps
that practice is derived from the
statement from David: “I will not give sleep to mine eyes,nor slumber to
mine eyelids,and also from his statement: “At midnight I will rise to give
thanks to Thee” and the like. It may
furthermore be inferred from the
statement of the messenger,peace
be upon him,concerning his seclusion on the
mountain in His Presence,exalted be He: “So I fell down before the Lord, the forty days and forty nights that I fell down,” that he, peace
be upon him,was in one state during that period,by day and by night,and that
he did not sleep in the course of it, just
as he did not eat...
Observe then these wonderful
traditions and sigh with regret over how they have been transferred from
us and [have]made their appearance...
among other nations. [meaning Islam].[5]
Though
the ascetic-contemplative practice of solitary isolation in small and dark places is described in our own
scriptures (notably in relation to the Mosaic Cleft in the Rock, and
the Cave of Elijah), the
practice of khalwa/hitbodedut was also a key practice of the Prophet of Islam himself, and it became
an essential hallmark devotion of the Islamic Sufis during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries— the very period in which the Egyptian Pietists were
first formulating their own ascetic schemata.
It has actually been demonstrated that it was
also in Egypt (during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) that total khalwah (
under the direction of a Teacher) first became
an initiatory and often obligatory practice for Islamic-Sufis.
It
is also this practice of the forty day “arba‘īnīyah” retreat that the
famous letter from Benyamin to Hayyim
ben Hananel refers.[6]
Professor
Russ-Fishbane writes:
Abraham Maimonides explicitly referred
to the Sufi practice of solitary retreat in dark places (al-khalawāt fī’l-mawādị‘ al-mudallamah ̣ ), which his colleague Abraham ibn Abī’l-Rabī‘ {Abraham HeHasid} had praised
as an original discipline of the ancient prophets.[7]
The
activities of the Islamic-Sufi hermits in the Muqqatam mountains of Cairo[8]
would have been extremely familiar to Rabbenu Abraham’s circle—and it does not
require any stretch of the imagination to consider that some of the Pietists
would also have practised khalwah there themselves. We know that
Rabbenu Abraham’s father in law, Hananel ben Samuel—who was described by his
contemporaries as “the greatest of the Pietists”— practiced forty-day seclusion
in the mountains....and sometimes retreats of an even longer duration. Professor Russ-Fishbane concludes:
We can only assume that the practice
of solitary meditation, whether daily or nightly in one’s home or undertaken on
periodic “journeys” to the surrounding mountainside, was a basic discipline
common to pietists and Sufis alike in early thirteenth-century Egypt. (See also
Daniel ibn al-Māshitaḥ’s description of those pietists and
disciples of the prophets who trust in God to provide for their needs and
seclude themselves in the mountains and wilderness (inqitạ̄ ‘ al-hasidim wa-talmide ha-nevi ̣ ’im fī’l-jibāl wa’l-barādī) in his Rectification of Religion,
in II Firk. I.3132, 69, verso.)
Further
afield,in the region of the Giza
Pyramids we also know that there was a Synagogue with a Jewish Sufi retreat
centre at Dammuh which is known to have hosted both annual Jewish pilgrimages
and incubatory retreats— with what is thought to be certain rooms that acted as
Pietist solitary isolation-retreat cells. It is also taught that Rabbenu Obadyah Maimuni died there in
the Dammuh complex while on such a retreat.
[9]
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In
his Sufis and Jews in Mamluk Egypt,[10]
Professor Fenton reminds us that the Cairo Genizah is replete with
fragments of Islamic-Sufi texts that
might well represent the kind of material that one could find in the library of a mediaeval Jewish Pietist. He
also points out the great
significance that their very presence in
a genizah—a reposititory for “holy” texts— indicates that they were held
in the utmost respect by our Jewish Sufi forebears in Cairo.
He lists the following Islamic-Sufi authors and texts who are represented in the Cairo Genizah, reminding us that these
are but a small proportion of that
category:
- The Risala of al-Qushayri (d.1072)
- Poems by al-Hallaj (858-922)
- The Mahasin al-Majalis of the Andalusi mystic Ibn al-Arif (1088-1141)
- The Munqid min al-dalal, of al-Gazali, (1058-1111)
- The Kalimat al-tasawwuf, Raqım al quds and the Hayakil al-nur of Suhrawardī (1154-1191)
(Many scholars have related the works of Al
Gazali to those of Rabbenu Abraham, and the Ishraqi works of Suhrawardi
to many Pietist manuscripts especially those of Rabbenu David ben Joshua
Maimuni. For this reason, perhaps these
two authors might be high in our list
for group study)
In
the latter part of the Mamluk period
under examination, several nascent Sufi Orders were also represented in Cairo.
Professor Fenton mentions:
- The Shadhiliyya,
- The Rifaíyya,
- The Burhaniyya
- The Qadiriyya
And Boaz
Shoshan in his Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo [11]adds:
- The Wafaiyya
- The Ahmadiyya
- The Qalandariyya
- The Khalwatiyya
Most
scholars opine that the Shadhiliyya and the
Rifaiyya Orders were to
become the regionally predominant orders in the
centuries during which the Mediaeval
Jewish Pietist movement was to spread throughout Egypt and Syria under the
patronage of the Maimuni Nagidim. Al-Qinai
(d.1195) and Al-Shadhili (d.1258) were perhaps the
most important Sufi Saints in the
Northern regions of Egypt, but it was al-Shadhili whose disciples
were eventually to grow into a formal Sufi Order three generations after the
founder’s death.
These then, are the Islamic-Sufi
authors and groups who deserve
our special study if we are to
delve into the historical factors and the inspirational texts which so moved
Rabbenu Abraham and the Egyptian Pietists.
They believed that our very own
Jewish and prophetic systems of asceticism, spiritual growth, and
contemplation were hidden there— just waiting
for us to restore and develop them anew.
May our Tariqa Eliyahu HaNabi
advance this area of study to enrich our practice of Judaism and, to borrow a phrase from the Kifaya,
in this way may our understanding of the Sufi Path become an instrument for
the rebirth of Israel.
[Part of the Jewish tradition] has
been transferred to the nations among whom [the Jews] reside and has become
[re]established among the Jewish people through [the influence of] the nations.
Providence has ordained that [Jewish tradition] will disappear from among them
while they reside [among the nations], until they repent and turn in repentance
unto God, on account of which they will be delivered. In this way, the nations
will become the instrument for the rebirth of [Israel]…
Kifaya of Rabbenu Abraham ben HaRambam[12]
©Nachman
Davies
(for
inclusion in The Mitkarevim)
Safed
Jan 4 2023
[1] S. Rosenblatt, ed., The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides, II, p32
[2] Rosenblatt II: 263&foll.
[3]
(citing: Rosenblatt’s Highways:
266, ll. 4–5, 9–10, and 322, ll. 5–7)
[4] Russ-Fishbane
E., Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt, p 52
[5]
Rosenblatt 2 p322)
[6] Russ-Fishbane,p 115
[7]
Russ-Fishbane, 120
[8] These Muqqatam mountains are the same place to which the famous “Jewish addict to Sufism” had retired in permanent retreat. [recorded in a letter to David Maimuni II sometime between 1355 and 1367]
[9] Russ- Fishbane, p.113
[10] Paul B. Fenton, “Sufis and Jews in Mamluk Egypt,” in Stephan Conermann, ed., Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle Islamic Period, Jews in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Sultanates (1171-1517),Bonn University Press, 2017, pp.41-62
[11] In Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization),1993,Cambridge University Press.
[12] (TS Ar. 22.12, ll. 10–16) a fragment from the lost last section of
the Kfaya quoted in Russ Fishbane p242)
