Sa'du'd-Dín Ḥamawí was another of the disciples of Najmu'd-Dín Kubrá who attained some celebrity, and is said Sa'du'd-Dín Ḥamawí. by Jámí (Nafaḥát, p. 492) to have composed a number of works, of which only the Kitáb-i-Maḥbúb , or “Book of the Beloved,” and the Sajanjalu'l-Arwáḥ, or “Mirror of Spirits,” are mentioned by name. These books are described by Jámí as full of “enig­matical sayings, cyphers, figures, and circles, which the eye of understanding and thought is unable to discover or solve.” He seems to have been subject to prolonged trances or cataleptic seizures, one of which lasted thirteen days. Specimens of his verses, both Arabic and Persian, are given in the Nafaḥát, according to which his death took place about the end of A.H. 650 (= February, 1253), at the age of sixty-three. He was acquainted with Ṣadru'd-Dín al-Qúnyawí, of whom we shall speak further on in connection with Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí.

We now come to the other Najmu'd-Dín, known as “Dáya,” who was, according to Jámí, the disciple both of Najmu'd-Dín Dáya. Najmu'd-Dín Kubrá and of Majdu'd-Dín. In his most important work, the Mirṣádu'l-'Ibád, or “Watch-tower of [God's] Servants,” of which a fine old MS. (Or. 3,242) transcribed in A.H. 779 (= A.D. 1377-78) is preserved in the British Museum, he gives his full name (f. 130^a) as Abú Bakr 'Abdu'lláh b. Muḥammad Sháháwar, and explicitly speaks (f. 17^a) of Majdu'd-Dín Baghdádí—“the King of his time”—as his spiritual director. Of his other works, the Baḥru'l-Ḥaqá'iq, or “Ocean of Truths,” written at Sívás in Asia Minor, whither he had fled from the advancing Mongols, in A.H. 620 (= A.D. 1223), is the most celebrated. In Asia Minor he foregathered, according to Jámí, with Ṣadru'd-Dín of Qonya and the celebrated Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí. He died in A.H. 654 (= A.D. 1256).

Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín Abú Ḥafṣ 'Umar b. Muḥammad al-Bakrí as-Suhrawardí was another eminent mystic of this Shihábu'd-Dín Suhrawardí. period, who was born in Rajab, A.H. 539 (=January, 1145), and died in A.H. 632 (= A.D. 1234-5). Of the older Shaykhs who guided his first footsteps in the mystic path were his paternal uncle, Abu'n-Najíb as-Suhrawardí, who died in A.H. 563 (= A.D. 1167-68), and the great Shaykh 'Abdu'l-Qádir of Gílán, who died about two years earlier. Of his works the most famous are the 'Awárifu'l-Ma'árif, or “Gifts of [Divine] Knowledge,” and Rashfu'n-Naṣá'iḥ, or “Draughts of Counsel.” The former is common enough in manuscript, and has been printed at least once (in A.H. 1306 = A.D. 1888-89) in the margins of an edition of al-Ghazálí's lḥyá'u'l-'Ulúm published at Cairo. Ibn Khallikán, in the article which he devotes to him (de Slane's translation, vol. ii, pp. 382-4), quotes some of his Arabic verses, and speaks of the “ecstasies” and “strange sensations” which his exhortations evoked in his hearers. “I had not the advantage of seeing him,” says this writer, “as I was then too young.” Sa'dí of Shíráz, who was one of his disciples, has a short anecdote about him in the Bústán (ed. Graf, p. 150), in which he is represented as praying that “Hell might be filled with him if perchance others might thereby obtain salvation.” He was for some time the chief Shaykh of the Ṣúfís at Baghdád, and seems to have been a man of sound sense; for when a certain Ṣúfí wrote to him: “My lord, if I cease to work I shall remain in idleness, while if I work I am filled with self-satisfaction: which is best?” he replied, “Work, and ask Almighty God to pardon thy self-satis­faction.” He must not be confused with the earlier Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín “al-Maqtúl.” Shihábu'd-Dín Yaḥyá b. Ḥabsh as-Suhrawardí, author of the Ḥikmatu'l-Ishráq, or “Philosophy of Illumination,” a celebrated theosophist and thau­maturgist, who was put to death at Aleppo for alleged heretical tendencies by Saladin's son, al-Maliku'dh-Dháhir, in the year A.H. 587 or 588 (= A.D. 1191 or 1192) at the early age of thirty-six or thirty-eight, and who is, in consequence, generally distinguished by the title of al-Maqtúl, “the slain.” This latter seems to have been a much more original and abler, if not better, man, and his “Philosophy of Illumination,” still unpublished, impressed me on a cursory examination as a remarkable work deserving careful study.

We now come to one who is universally admitted to have been amongst the greatest, if not the greatest, of the many Shaykh Muḥiy­yu'd-Dín ibnu'l­'Arabí. mystics produced in Muslim lands—to wit, Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín ibnu'l-'Arabí, who was born at Murcia, in Spain, on July 28, A.D. 1165, began his theological studies at Seville in A.D. 1172, and in A.D. 1201 went to the East, living in turn in Egypt, the Ḥijáz, Baghdád, Mosul, and Asia Minor, and finally died at Damascus on November 16, A.D. 1240. As a writer he is correctly described by Brockelmann (vol. i, pp. 441 et seqq.) as of “colossal fecundity,” 150 of his extant works being enumerated. * Of these the most celebrated are the Fuṣúṣu'l-Ḥikam (“Bezels of Wisdom”) and the Futúḥátu'l-Makkiyya (“Meccan Victories” or “Disclosures”), of which the first, written at Damascus in A.D. 1230, has been repeatedly lithographed, printed, translated, and annotated in the various lands of Islám, while the second, a work or enormous extent, has also been printed in Egypt. The fullest account of his life with which I am acquainted occurs in al-Maqqarí's Nafḥu'ṭ-Ṭíb min Ghuṣni'l-Andalusi'r-Raṭíb (“the Breath of Fragrance from the fresh branch of Andalusia,” Cairo ed. of A.H. 1302 = A.D. 1884-85, vol. i, pp. 397-409), and a very full biography is also given by Jámí in the Nafaḥátu'l-Uns (ed. Nassau Lees, pp. 633-45). He was, like most of the mystics, a poet; many of his verses are quoted in the Naf'u'ṭ-Ṭíb, and his Díwán has been lithographed by Mírzá Muḥammad Shírází, of Bombay, in a volume of 244 pages. His poems are described by Jámí as “strange and precious.” By many doctors of theology he was looked at askance as a heretic, and in Egypt several attempts were made to kill him, but his admirers were both numerous and enthusiastic, and at the present day, even in Shí'ite Persia, he still exercises a great influence, greater, perhaps, than any other mystagogue. He claimed to hold converse with the Prophet in dreams; to have received his khirqa, or dervish-cloak, from Khiḍr; and to know the science of alchemy and the “Most Great Name” of God. He was acquainted with the mystical poet, 'Umar ibnu'l-Fáriḍ, and asked his permission to write a com­mentary on his Tá'iyya, or T-qaṣída, to which request the other replied, “Your book entitled al-Futúḥátu'l-Makkiyya is a commentary on it.” He believed in the value of dreams, and in man's power to render them by his will veridical: “It behoves God's servant,” he said, “to employ his will to produce concentration in his dreams, so that he may obtain control over his imagination, and direct it intelligently in sleep as he would control it when awake. And when this concentration has accrued to a man and become natural to him, he discovers the fruit thereof in the Intermediate World (al-Barzakh), and profits greatly thereby; wherefore let man exert himself to acquire this state, for, by God's per­mission, it profiteth greatly.” His style is obscure, probably of set purpose, after the fashion of the Muslim Theosophists and mystics, whose unorthodox ideas must always be clad in words which are susceptible of a more or less orthodox inter­pretation, if they would not share the fate of Ḥusayn b. Manṣúr al-Ḥalláj or Shaykh Shihábu'd-Dín “al-Maqtúl.” Thus on one occasion Shaykh Muḥiyyu'd-Dín was taken to task for the following verse which he had composed:—

“O thou who seest me, while I see not Thee,
How oft I see Him, while He sees not me!”

He at once repeated it again with the following additions, which rendered it perfectly unexceptionable:—