Hafiz belonged to the great sect from which so many of the most famous among Persian writers have sprung. Like Sa'di and Jami and Jelaleddin Rumi and a score of others, he was a Sufi. The history of Sufiism has yet to be written, the sources from which it arose are uncertain, and that it should have found a home in Mahommadanism, the least mystical of all religions, is still unexplained. Some have supposed that Sufiism was imported from India after the time of Mahommad; some that it was a development of the doctrines of Zoroaster which the Prophet's successors silenced but did not destroy. In reply to the first theory it has been objected that there is no historic proof of relations between India and Mahommadan countries after the Mahommadan era and before the rise of Sufiism, by which the doctrines of the Indian mystics could have been propagated; and as for the second, it seems improbable that Sufiism, of which the essential doctrine is unity, could have borrowed much from a religion as sharply opposed to it as that of Zoroaster, whose creed is founded upon a dualism. A third theory is that the origins of Sufiism are to be looked for in the philosophy of the Greeks, strangely distorted by the Eastern mind, and in the influence of Christianity; but though the works of Plato are frequently quoted by mystical writers, and though it seems certain that they owe something both to the Neo-Platonic school of Alexandria and to the Christian religion, this would not be enough to account for the great perversion of Mahommad's teaching.
Baron Sylvestre de Sacy suggested the following explanation of the matter.* The second century of the Hejira was a time of fermentation and of the rise of sects. This was due in the first place to the introduction of Greek philosophy, and in the second to the rivalry between the partisans of Ali and those of the Ommiad and Abbaside Khalifs. It was among the followers of Ali that the doctrines of the union of God and man, the infusion of the Divinity in the imams, and the allegorical interpretation of religious ceremonies grew up. Daulat Shah in his Biography of the Persian Poets traces back mysticism as far as to Ali himself, though it is probable that he is imputing to the son-in-law of the Prophet beliefs which were of a somewhat later date. By force of circumstances the Alides were placed in opposition to the ruling Khalifs, and were obliged to find a justification for their attitude, and for submitting to the observances enjoined by those whom they refused to recognise as true representatives of Mahommad. They read the Koran by the light of a new creed, and interpreted it in a manner far different from that intended by its author. From the moment when the division between Shi'ite and Sunni sprang into being, the Shi'ites, or followers of Ali, made the eastern provinces of the Khalifate their stronghold. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a mysticism, in every way contrary to the true spirit of the Koran, made in those provinces nearest to India so rapid a progress, because, before the conquest of Persia by the Arabs, Indian mysticism had already struck root there. That is to say, that there had grown up, side by side with Zoroastrianism, a mysticism eminently congenial to the peculiar temper of the Persian mind—so congenial, indeed, that it was not stamped out by the Arab conquerors, but insinuated itself into the stern and practical creed which they forced upon a nation of dreamers and metaphysicians. The author of the Dabistan, a book written in the seventeenth century, containing the description of twelve different faiths, relates that there existed in Persia a sect belonging to the Yekaneh Bina, of those whose eyes are fixed upon One alone: “They say that the world has no external or tangible existence; all that is, is God, and beyond him there is nothing. The intelligences and the souls of men, the angels, the heavens, the stars, the elements, and the three kingdoms of nature exist only in the mind of God and have no existence beyond.” “If this Indian doctrine of Maya, or Illusion,” adds M. de Sacy, “had been transferred to Persia, there is every reason to believe that mysticism, grounded on the doctrine that all things are an emanation from God and that unto him they shall return, may be traced to the same source.”
The keynote of Sufiism is the union, the identification of God and man. It is a doctrine which lies at the root of all spiritual religions, but pushed too far it leads to pantheism, quietism, and eventually to nihilism. The highest good to which the Sufis can attain, is the annihilation of the actual—to forget that they have a separate existence, and to lose themselves in the Divinity as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.* In order to obtain this end they recommend ascetic living and solitude; but they do not carry asceticism to the absurd extremes enjoined by the Indian mystics, nor do they approve of artificial aids for the subduing of consciousness, such as opium, or hashish, or the wild physical exertions of the dancing dervishes. The drunkenness of the Sufi poets, say their interpreters, is nothing but an ecstatic frame of mind, in which the spirit is intoxicated with the contemplation of God just as the body is intoxicated with wine. According to the Dabistan there are four stages in the manifestation of the Divinity: in the first the mystic sees God in the form of a corporal being; in the second he sees him in the form of one of his attributes of action, as the Maker or the Preserver of the world; in the third he appears in the form of an attribute which exists in his very essence, as knowledge or life; in the fourth the mystic is no longer conscious of his own existence. To the last he can hope to attain but seldom.
This losing of the soul in God is only a return (and here we come near to such Platonic doctrines as those embodied in the Phædrus) to the conditions which existed before birth into the world. Just as in the Dialogue the immortal steed which is harnessed to the chariot of the soul, longs to return to the plain of birth, and to see again the true justice, beauty, and wisdom of which it has retained an imperfect recollection, so the soul of the Sufi longs to return to God, from whom it has been separated by the mortal veil of the body. But this reunion is pushed much further by the Eastern philosophers than by Plato; it implies, according to them, the complete annihilation of distinct personality, corresponding to the conditions, quite unlike those described by the Platonic Socrates, which they believe to have existed before birth. There is nothing which is not from God and a part of God. In himself he contains both being and not being; when he chooses he casts his reflection upon the void, and that reflection is the universe. There is a fine passage in Jami's Yusuf and Zuleikha in which he sets forth this doctrine of the creation. “Thou art but the glass,” the poet concludes, “his is the face reflected in the mirror; nay, if thou lookest steadfastly, thou shalt see that he is the mirror also.” In a parable, Jami illustrates the universal presence of God, and the blind searching of man for that by which he is surrounded on every side. There was a frog which sat upon the shores of the ocean, and ceaselessly day and night he sang its praise. “As far as mine eyes can see,” he said, “I behold nothing but thy boundless surface.” Some fish swimming in the shallow water heard the frog's song, and were filled with a desire to find that wonderful ocean of which he spoke, but go where they would they could not discover it. At last, in the course of their search, they fell into a fisherman's net, and as soon as they were drawn out of the water they saw beneath them the ocean for which they had been seeking. With a leap they returned into it.