We arrive at the last chapter, “Upon the Sufis;” the most abstruse of the twelve, but to which we are well enough prepared by the contents of the former.

Súfism, according to the Dabistán, belongs to all religions; its adherents are known, under different names among the Hindus, Persians, and Arabians; it appears to be nothing else but the rationalism of any sort of doctrine. It could never be the religion of a whole nation; it remained confined to the pre­cincts of schools and societies.

In the work before us we find it stated, that the belief of the pure Súfis was the same as that of the Ashrakians (Platonists): we know what the Muham­medans have made of it. According to the Imám Koshairi, quoted by Jâmi,* the Muselmans, after Muhammed's death, distinguished the eminent men among them by no other title but that of “the companions of God's apostle.” These were, in the second generation, called Tábáyún, “followers.” Afterwards the Islamites were divided into divers classes; those among them who particularly devoted themselves to the practice of religion, were named “servants of God,” which name was, after the rise of numerous sects, claimed by some from among all the different sectaries. It was then that the follow­ers of the orthodox doctrine, in order to preserve the purity of their faith and the strength of their piety, assumed the name of Súfis, which name became celebrated before the end of the second cen­tury of the Hejira, that is, before the year 815 of our era. We may believe one of the greatest scholars of Muhammedism, Ghazáli, who ranged himself among the Súfis of his time towards the end of our eleventh century, when he declares that in their society he found rest in believing one God, the prophet, and the last judgment: this is the faith of the orthodox Súfis.

The assumption of any particular name carries men, who so distinguish and separate themselves from their fellows, much further than they them­selves at first intended, particularly when the dis­tinction and separation are founded upon vague and indeterminate notions of metaphysics. Under the impression, that there are secrets upon which their salvation depends, they will stretch reason and imagination to penetrate them. The Súfis are divided, according to their own phraseology,* into three classes: “the attracted, the travellers, and the attracted travellers;” the last of whom combine the qualities of the two former. I will class them here, with respect to their doctrine and manners, into five orders.

1. The religious Súfis, in general, are occupied with something beyond the limits of our natural consciousness; they exercise to the utmost their inward organ or inner sense, and acquire a philo­sophic imagination—

Such was the prophetic gift of Muhammed, and as long as they adhere to his sayings, they are the ortho­dox Súfis, whom I have already mentioned.

2. Another order endeavor to comprehend, to fix, and to explain the attributes of God; the holy object sanctifies their efforts; unattainable, it exalts their souls above themselves; incomprehensibility yields to the sacred power of self-intuition; myste­rious darkness to celestial light; their intellect, no more terrestrial, “knows its own sun and its own stars;”* by continual mental excitement they produce in themselves (according to their own phra­seology) a state of intoxication; in the full enjoy­ment of their liberty, they approach the Supreme Being, and finally fancy an intimate union with their Creator. These are the mystic Sufis.

Man, to express his most fervent adoration of the Divinity, uses the expressions by which he is wont to address the object of his most tender affections; he has but the fire of earth to kindle in sacrifice to heaven; and to elevate his soul to the Supreme Being, he makes wings of the most lively sentiments which he ever experienced, and can excite in him­self. The intensity of inward feeling breaks loose in outward demonstrations, gesture, song, and dance —

Such in the poet's eye is the dance of angels, but less refined must be that of mortals, and really one sort of it strangely contrasts with the usually grave deportment of bearded ample-robed Muselmans, from Muhammed, who gave the example, down to the Durvishes of our days, who, with frantic howls and vehement whirling motions, by ludicrous and unseemly exhibition, destroy the whole gravity of inward intention. Mohsan Fani adduces some instances of dancing, and quotes throughout his work verses of mystical poetry upon Divine love, in glowing expressions belonging to profane passion. It is known how equivocal in their meaning they appear in the works of Jelal eddin Rumi, Sâdi, Hafiz, and others.*

3. It was not always vehement enthusiasm which was nourished in the contemplation of one Supreme Being; mysticism, in Súfis of a milder character, became quietism: he to whom all things are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy peace and rest of spirit. I have quoted the words of an English bishop, Jeremy Taylor, and might borrow similar passages from a more ancient Chris­tian bishop, Synesius,* for expressing a sort of purely spiritual pantheism. But there is another, which seems not to exclude materialism: the great cause from which the infinite series of all material and spiritual existences originates, is enveloped, as it were, with the vest of the universe; never known as to its essence, but always felt in its manifesta­tions; it is

In short, God is all, and all is God. This appeared not more incomprehensible, but less com­plicated than any other system to the pantheistical Súfis.

4. After excessive efforts to transcend the limits of his nature, the philosophic inquirer re-enters into himself, and coerces his futile attempts by the precept: “Know thyself.” Having, as it were, recovered himself, and feeling that every thing pro­ceeds from the depth of his mind, he sees himself in every thing; heaven and earth are his own; “he demands from himself whatever he wishes;” for he is every thing; he finds the God whom he sought in himself, in his own heart, and says, “Who knows himself, knows God.” This is religious psychology, the creed of the egotist class of Súfis.

It is a fact which appears incredible, but is too well attested for the admission of a doubt, that Súfis believed themselves to be gods, and adhered to their belief, amid torments, until death.* This psycho­logical fact may be explained by considering that, according to Súfism, God is nothing else but an idea of the highest perfection; he, says our author, from whose sight both worlds vanished, who in the steps of right faith arrived at the rank of perfect purity, from truth to truth, became God; that is, he became one with his own idea of perfection, which cannot be disputed to him; his divinity is an illusion, but nothing else to him is the world; it is all and nothing, dependent upon his own creation and annihilation.

V. Transacting as it were directly with the Divine Being, the Súfis throw off the shackles of the posi­tive religion; pious rebels, they neither fast nor make pilgrimages to the temple of Mecca, nay, they forget their prayers; for with God there is no other but the soundless language of the heart. From excess of religion they have no religion at all. Thus is confirmed the trite saying that “extremes meet.” “The perfection of a man's state,” says Jami, “and the utmost degree to which saints may attain, is to be with­out an attribute, and without a mark.” The most fervent zeal sinks into the coldest indifference about religion. The author of the Dabistán declares positively,* that “whoever says that the Muselmans are above the Christians, does not know the true Being.” But the whole creed of an emancipated (this is the name I give to one belonging to the fifth order of Súfis) uniting in himself the egotist, panthe­istic, and mystical Súfi will be found in the follow­ing verses of Jelal-eddin Rúmi, before mentioned:

* “O Moslims! what is to be done? I do not know myself; I am neither Jew, nor Christian, nor Gueber, nor Moslim; I am not from the East nor from the West; nor from land nor sea; neither from the region of nature nor from that of heaven; not from Hind nor China; not from Bulgaria nor Irak, nor from the towns of Khorassan. I am neither water nor dust, wind nor fire; not from the highest nor deepest, neither self-existent nor created; I am not from the two worlds, no son of Adam, not from hell nor from heaven, nor paradise. He is the first, the last, the interior, the exterior; I know but him, Yahu! Yahu! Menhu! I looked up, and saw both worlds to be one; I see but one— I seek but one—I know but one. My station is without space, my mark without impression; it is not soul nor body; I am the soul of souls. If I had passed one single day without thee, I would repent to have lived one single hour. When one day the friend stretches out his hand to me in solitude, I tread the worlds under my feet, and open my hands. O Shams Tabrizi,* I am so intoxicated here that, except intoxication, no other remedy remains to me.

We know, by the preceding, what the Súfi is not; we shall now learn what he is.

* “O Moslims! I am intoxicated by love in the world. I am a believer—an unbeliever—a drunken monk; I am the Shaikhs Bayazid, Shubli, Juneid, Abu Hanifa, Shafei, Hanbeli; I the throne and tent of heaven, from the dust up to the Pleyads; I am whatever thou seest in separation and enjoyment; I am the distance of two bows-length* around the throne; I am the Gospel, the Psalter, the Koran; I am Usa and Lat,* the cross, the Bál and Dagon,* the Kâbah, and the place of sacrifice. The world is divided into seventy-and-two sects, but there is but one God; the believer in him am I; I am the lie, the truth, the good, the evil, the hard and the soft, science, solitude, virtue, faith, the deepest pit of hell, the greatest torment of flames, the highest paradise, Huri, Risvan,* am I. What is the intent of this speech? Say it, O Shams Tabrizi! The intended meaning is: I am the soul of the world.”

After having sounded human nature in its depth, and viewed it in its various forms, the Muhammedan philosophers conceived a high idea of man in general, and call him insan kamil, “the perfect man.” He is the reunion of all the worlds, divine and natu­raf, universal and partial; he the book, the pure, sublime, and venerable pages of which are not to be touched, nor can be comprehended, but by those who have thrown off the dark veils of ignorance. His soul is to his body what the universal soul is to the great world, which bears the name of “the great man.”

Sir William Jones refers,* for a particular detail of Súli metaphysics and theology, to the Dabistán. These are given with a particular phraseology, for which it is not easy to find corresponding expres­sions in any European language; and which I have endeavored, to the best of my power, to explain in my notes. A particular signification is attached even to the most common terms, such as state, station, time, duration, existence, non-existence, possibility, presence, absence, testimony, sanctity, annihilation, etc., etc. Besides, we find particular divisions and classifications: different attributions and names of the Deity, the unity of which is to be preserved in all; the division of spirits, prophetism, true and false miracles, revelation, inspiration; four sorts of mankind, as many of life and death; seven degrees of contemplative life, in each of which degrees the Súfi sees a different color; four lights of God; four sorts of manifestations, the sign of which is annihilation, called “the science,” or “positive knowledge.” Further we meet with a metem­psychosis for the imperfect soul, and an appearance for the perfect; even with a geography of the invisible, the land of shades in the towns of Jabilkha, Jabilsa, and Barzah, etc., etc.; and, in addition, manifo lpinions of Asiatic philosophy.

Here should be pointed out how Muhammedan or other Súfis may be confounded with the Hindu Yogis or Sanyásis, although in reality distinguishable from each other. The Yajur veda, and other sacred books of the latter inculcate the precept that a man ought to acquire perfect indifference concerning the whole exterior world, and in all places to lay aside the notion of diversity. This is what a Yogi or Sanyasi endeavors to attain: he quits every thing, house, wife, children, even his caste; the world has no more right upon him than he upon the world. In this he agrees with the Súfi; but the latter generally aspires to the divine gift of inspiration, prophetism, mystical enthusiasm, whilst the common state of a Yogi is that of complete impassiveness or torpor.

It is only towards the end of the Dabistán that Mohsan Fani mentions particularly the Sabeans, whose religion was, from the very beginning of the work, treated of under different names of the ancient Persian religions, such as Yezdanians, Jamsaspians, etc., etc.