Attar and the Passion of Hallaj for Death
Majid Naficy
This is the English translation of the seventh chapter of my book In Search of Joy: A Critique of Death-Oriented, Male-Dominated Culture in Iran (Baran publisher, Sweden, 1991). Preface - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
No one doubts that the Persian mystic, Hosein Mansur Hallaj (858-922) in a certain period of his life began to say this ecstatic sentence in Arabic: "Ana-l-haqq"(I am the truth, that is, God), and also that he was hanged by al-Muqtadir, the Abbasid Caliph, in Baghdad. Except for these two points, there is a difference of opinion regarding the life and thought of this half-legendary figure among both our predecessors and contemporaries. Ali Sharia'ti, a modern Moslem ideologist, in his speech “Ali: A Perfect man” delivered at Hoseinyeh Ershad, Tehran on December 11 and 12, 1969 called him "mentally ill", and Ali Mirfetrus, an ex-leftist writer, in his popular book “Hallaj” published in 1978, Tehran, almost labeled him a Marxist. Among earlier writers, also, some called him a god-worshiper, but some an atheist. Most of his “works” are, without any doubt, falsely attributed to him, and there is doubt as to the authenticity of the rest. From texts written about him, the narrative of the Persian mystic poet, Farid-ol-Din Attar of Nayshabur (1145-1221) in his book Tazkerat-ol-Oliya (The Accounts of Our Leaders), which was written three centuries after the time of Hallaj, is the only document that illustrates a complete picture of the life and thought of Hosein Mansur Hallaj. It is not clear how much this narrative relates to reality, and it is possible that it is completely false. However, in this chapter, as can be seen from its title, I only deal with Hallaj narrated by Attar and not the true figure, as he might have been. Thanks to this testimony, Hosein Hallaj is called "the lord of martyrs of mystics", and along with Imam Hoseyn (625-680) of the Shiites have inspired the passion for death. If we want to understand this tendency, we should examine Attar's narrative.
Attar portrays Hallaj as a passionate mystic, who knows by saying "I am God" he will be hanged, yet he is not afraid of saying so. He accepts martyrdom for the sake of becoming a martyr, because he enjoys being tortured and torn apart, and considers his murderers and those who stoned him to death have a higher position than his own followers. Before this brutal murder, Hosein tortured himself during his lifetime, and it is expected that after death on the day of reckoning, he, even with his head chopped off, feels the responsibility to return the heads of the beheaded people to them. In fact, when he says "I am God", he refers to this kind of self-annihilation, because only through torturing one's self can man become God. His philosophy of life is based on admiration of death and an endless passion for reaching that golden moment.
What has Hallaj has done that makes him worthy of being killed? While he is in prison, Ibn Ata, one of his friends, sends a messenger telling him that if he repents, he will be released. However, Halaj refuses to do this. Furthermore, through magic, he frees three-hundred inmates, but he remains in the prison:
On another day they said: Where have the prisoners gone? He answered: I released them. They said: why did you not go? He said: God is angry with me. So, I did not go. *
Shebli, one of Hallaj's mystic colleagues, who repents and thus is freed, describes the reason for God's anger with Hallaj as follows:
It is narrated that Shebli said: That night I went to his grave and I prayed until dawn. Then I chanted and said: O God, he was your slave, faithful, knowledgeable and monotheistic. Why did you cause him this travail? I fell asleep. I dreamt that it was the day of resurrection, and God proclaimed: I did this to him because he told our secret to others.
This secret, indeed, is the slogan of "I am God”, for which Hallaj was hanged. According to Attar, this aphorism has no hint of atheism, and Hallaj's fault is only in disclosing it. Apparently, Attar, with reference to the Quranic Surah Al-Qasas, 28-30, in which God speaks to Moses through a tree, attempts to find identity between saying" I am God" and Islamic monotheism:
I am surprised that one could accept that through a tree one could hear "I am God", and no tree is there, but one cannot accept that through Hosein one could hear "I am God" and no Hosein is there.
In other words, God speaks through Hosein, and he has become God's spokesman. Does this mean that Hallaj had a revelation as a prophet? Not at all. Because, although Hosein is the spokesman of God, the owner of the speech and his spokesman have become one and the same:
And they all agreed to kill him because he said: I am God. They said: say that He is God. He said: yes, all is He. You say that God is taken away. However, Hosein is taken away. The surrounding ocean is not taken away nor does it shrink.
"The surrounding ocean" signifies a pantheistic unity between God and Hosein. In this ocean, every drop is connected with other drops and all segments together make the whole. If there is not a difference between God and Hosein, why is it necessary that he suffer so much pain for asceticism and martyrdom? The following aphorism of Hallaj clarifies the issue:
They asked: by which path can one reach God? He said: it is two steps, and you will be there. Let go the world and let go the hereafter, and you have reached the Lord.
In another place, Hallaj describes these two steps as "asceticism of body" and "asceticism of soul”:
The world depends on asceticism of ego, and the hereafter on the asceticism of heart and selflessness.
Satan represents ego, whom we should kill. In the end of his narrative, Attar explains this as follows:
It is narrated that when he was on the scaffold Satan came and asked: One "I" I said, and one you said. Why would yours cause blessing and mine a curse? Hallaj said: you embraced "I", but I distanced myself from this. I was blessed and you were not, as you saw and heard. Now you should understand that "I-hood" is not proper, and distancing oneself from "I-hood" is very proper.
What Hallaj does and says before his execution demonstrates how he separated himself from selfishness. His first lesson is trust in God, and, fasting is the first step. Man has to separate himself from earthly food and abstain from eating or drinking:
It is narrated that once in a desert, he asked Ebrahim, the diver: what are you doing? He answered: I am building a trust in God. Hallaj said: throughout your life, you have built your belly, when will you be able to disappear in God? This means that not eating is the principle of trust in God, and your whole life has been spent in trusting in your belly.
Another aspect of asceticism is inherent in suppression of libido. Of course, according to Attar, Hallaj was married. Also, as he approached death, his son asked his advice. Nevertheless, the whole ascetic scene in which Hallaj is depicted is empty of the relationship between sexes. In addition, when women are mentioned, they only bring misfortune. Besides the Hallaj's wife two other women are referred to: One of them is a woman whom Hallaj suddenly remembers when he is being torn apart. At this time, Hallaj addresses his servant who is among the viewers, as follows:
It is narrated that when young, he had looked at a woman. He told his servant: whoever does not disobey God like that, will not go through this torment.
From the above quotation one can infer that Hallaj saw his scaffolding as retribution for an "unclean" look which he cast at a woman in his youth. This punishment coincides with the biblical and quranic principle of stoning to death of adulterers. After all, as the Bible, says: whoever looks at a woman with lust, he has committed adultery with her at heart. (Matthew 5: 28) The second feminine character appears when Hallaj is finished:
A hag came carrying a jug in her hand. when she saw Hosein, she said: hit him, hit him hard. Because this idiot cotton-carder has no business with the words of God.
After this episode, they chopped Hallaj's tongue. Women represent life and being alive, and for an ascetic who hates life and loves death, it is natural that death wears the mask of an old woman who expresses joy at his death.
Asceticism for Hallaj is not only prohibitive of eating or sex, but it is also geared toward what one should do, that is, the pressure and torture with which one burdens one's self. Furthermore, this type of torture is either mental or physical:
It is narrated that he performed four hundred units of prayer and assumed that it was his obligation. They said: in your position, what is the purpose of this hardship? Neither comfort nor hardship affects the friends of God, because they are mortal.
Torture in worship, is accompanied by torturing of the body:
It is narrated that once there were four thousand persons with him in the desert, walking toward the House of God in Mecca. There, he stood naked in the sun for one whole year. Until his flesh melted, dripping on the rock, and his skin became parched. But he did not budge from his place. Every day they brought him a loaf of bread and a jug of water. He broke his fast with the crusts of the bread and left the rest of it on top of the water jug. And they say that scorpions had nested in his baggy pants.
Moreover, Hallaj seeks seclusion, and it is natural that in his solitude he makes friends with insects and reptiles:
It is said that in the beginning of his mortification he had a garment that he had not taken off for twenty years. One day they forced him to take it off. It was infested with many stinging insects. They weighed one of them. It weighed one pound. It is narrated that someone approached him. He saw a scorpion circling around him. He wanted to kill it. Hallaj said: leave it alone. For twelve years it has been my friend circling around me.
Now such a person who has mortified his soul and body surprisingly achieves his full potential in life. He can conjure the best foods in the desert in one blink of an eye. In reality, he has buried his creative powers with his own hands, now in fantasy he imagines himself a capable magician:
A tribe in the desert asked him for figs. He lifted his hand in the air and put down a tray of fresh figs before them. Once they asked for halvah, and there appeared a tray of still warm halvah for them. They said: this halvah belongs to the Baghdad bazaar. He said: to me Baghdad and the desert are the same.
The Persian idiom "red tongue destroys green head" probably alludes to the story of Hallaj. In the following passage, he illustrates his green head:
After that, they said: we have to have ripe dates. He said: plant me in the ground. They did so. Fresh dates were raining down from him such that they were sated.
The magical power of Hallaj goes much beyond this:
The first night that they imprisoned him, they returned and did not see him in prison. They looked everywhere in the prison but could not find him. The second night neither he nor the prison was seen. The more they looked for the prison the less they found it. The third night, they saw him in the prison. They said: where were you the first night? And where were you and the prison the second night? Now you both appeared. What is going on? He said: The first night I was with the Lord, for this reason I was absent. The second night the Lord was here, for this reason none of us were present. And the third night I was sent back for the protection of religion.
Hallaj's philosophy of poverty is welded with his philosophy of love. While he was dying, he describes this philosophy as follows:
It is narrated that a dervish in the crowd asked him what is love? He said: you see it today; you see it tomorrow and you see it the day after tomorrow. That day he was murdered and the second day he was burnt and the third day his ashes were given to the winds. That was what he meant by love.
As Hallaj's philosophy of poverty is not friendship with the poor but glorification of poverty, so his philosophy of love is not love of life but love of death. He does not die in order to defend life but dies because he loves death. The more cruel his death, the better it would be for him. "Men on scaffolds go up to meet God”, not because they have to die for the appreciation of life, but because such a death is more painful:
When they took him under the scaffold, he prayed toward kiblah near the market, and stepped on the ladder. They said: What is the meaning of this? He said: Men's heavenly journeys begin at the scaffold.
If Hallaj's martyrdom was for the sake of life, he naturally should curse his murderers and enemies and ask his followers to continue on his path. But he did not do this:
Then he went to the scaffold. The group of his followers said: what do you foresee for us who are your followers and what of those who reject you and will stone you? He said: They have two rewards and you have only one. Because you have good intentions toward me, and they move by the power of monotheism for the sake of religion. And in religion, monotheism is a principle whereas good intentions are secondary.
Thus, the story of Hallaj's martyrdom reaches its climax:
So, they cut his hands. He laughed. They said: why this laughter? It is easy to remove hands from a person whose hands are tied. He is a real man who can cut the hands of immoralities which steal the hat of stamina from the head of the throne. Then, they cut his feet. He smiled and said: with this foot I traveled on the earth. I have another foot by which I am going to travel in both worlds now. If you could, cut that foot. Then he rubbed both his cut bleeding arms on his face, so both his forearms and his face became bloody. They asked: why did you do that? He said: I bled a lot, and I know that my face has turned yellow. Perhaps you think that the yellow of my face is caused by fear. I rubbed blood on my face, so I appear red-faced to you because the reddish cheeks of men is their blood. They said: if you changed the color of your face by rubbing blood, why did you contaminate your forearms? He said: I was making ablution. They said: ablution for what? He said: there is a two-unit-prayer in love whose ablution is not complete unless by blood. So, they poked out his eyes. There was fury in the crowd. Some were crying and some were stoning him. Then they wanted to cut his tongue. He said: delay until I say a word. He looked up toward the heavens and said: God, do not deprive them of your blessing because they tormented me so much, and do not take their state away from them. Praise be to God, that I cut my hands and feet for your sake and if they cut my head off, they do this to observe your majesty on the scaffold. So, they cut his nose and ears, and threw stones.
Hallaj not only treated his body and soul with hostility in life, but also, he betrayed the torn parts of his body and the ashes of his corpse after death. By revealing to his servant how to prevent the Tigris from flooding, he, in fact, blocks the uprising and dissuades his followers from taking revenge:
It was the time for night prayer that they cut his head. While being beheaded, he smiled and gave up life. The uproar of the people was intense, and Hossein took the ball of destiny to the end of the course of submission, and from each single part of his body, this voice was heard: "I am God". The next day they said that this upheaval will exceed that of his lifetime. So, they burned the parts of his body and yet, the voice of "i am God" was heard from his ashes; just as when he was being killed from each drop of his blood which was dripping, appeared: "God". They became frustrated. So, they flung the ashes into the Tigris. Again, it was heard "I am God" in the current of the water. However, Hossein had said that when they fling my ashes into the Tigris, Baghdad will be in danger of drowning in a flood, so you must take my garment to the water, otherwise it will get the hell out of Baghdad. When the servant saw this happen, he brought the garment of the sheikh to the Tigris. So the water went as usual and the ashes became silent. Then they gathered his ashes and buried them.
Thus, it becomes clear that the phrase "I am God" which Hallaj utters, as narrated by Attar, has no other meaning than love for death and hate of life. If you want to reach God, you must kill your spirit and choose asceticism and seclusion. You should make yourself ready both physically and spiritually for that golden moment of death. Belittle yourself in order to become great; kill yourself in order to become alive. This is the slogan of "I am God". Between this slogan and the philosophy of pantheism in sufism there is an inseparable unity. We all become one, only if each one dies. The philosophy of poverty makes our bodies ready for this unification, and the philosophy of love readies our spirit. "Si morgh" become Simorgh, but at the expense of annihilation of si morgh.*
This kind of self-denial leads to an equality among the mystics, but they become people who despise life and themselves and praise death and torture. As a result, it is easy to understand that this herd of self-denigrated people who reject life might gather under the banner of a charismatic leader and see him as their touchstone of unity. In order to spread the religion of death on the earth they uproot life and the living.
In addition to the pantheistic interpretation of "I am God", we encounter two other interpretations of this slogan: one is worship of a single person as God, and the other, worship of humanity as God or humanism. In the first version, one specific person is worshiped by others as God and individual tyranny enjoys the highest divine support. This power is no longer a "divine gift" granted to a monarch or a theocrat as vali faqih in the Islamic Republic of Iran; rather this person is God himself who has left the heavenly throne with all of its majesty and has settled on an earthly throne. The cult of one person as God has a long history. It is not necessary to mention the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt or the Christian concept of the Trinity. In a tendency within Shiism well-known Gholat (The exaggerators), we find many examples of worshiping one person as God, including Ali- allahis who worship Ali, the first Imam of Shiites. M. Moein, the lexicographer writes about this sect, as follows:
A faction within the Gholat, who consider Ali son of Abu-Taleb divine, and believe that in order to manage the affairs of his people and help his prophet, he appeared in human form with complete power. That human is indeed Ali (salute to him) who once disguised as Ibrahim went into the fire. In each cycle, God embodied the prophets and leaders until he reached Mohammad and Ali. This cult believes in the reincarnation of divine light into the Imams. They say in this cycle, God appeared in Ali, thus the cycle is called Ali-allah, and after him in his famous descendants. They believe that Mohammad is the messenger of Ali-allah, and we should not follow the present Koran. Because the book that Ali-allah has given to Mohammad is not that one. Some say that it is the book of Ali-allah, but because the Caliph Uthman has compiled the Koran, it is not reliable.*
There is a close connection between Ali-allahis, who also call themselves "Ahl-a Haqq" (The People of God), and Hallaj who said "Ana-l-haqq" (I am God). The Hallaj's epoch is the time of conception and growth of the Gholat tendencies in Shiism. He was only sixteen years old when the hidden Imam of the Shiites began his greater occultation (885 AD). The same year, the holy black stone in Kaaba was stolen and broken by an extreme Shiite sect, called Qarmatis, and was kept by them in the Persian Gulf for a while. Based on this historical background, one can accept the literal meaning of Hallaj"s slogan. He said: I am God, and by "I", he meant "himself" and not humanity as a whole. One can look at the whole altercation of Hallaj with the official Sunnism in this context. The letter in which he has ordered his followers to "destroy the Kaaba", or this rumor that he wanted to write a Koran like that of Mohammad, are by no means proof of Hallaj's humanism. In this case, blasphemy has remained within the framework of religion. Allah, his messenger, book, and house are rejected only to pave the way for the divine sovereignty of one individual. This tendency might give birth to an ideological touchstone for a mass movement, but cannot be looked upon as a humanistic outlook and thus be defended. The experience of the Iranian revolution in 1978-82 which led to the establishment of a theocracy in the country, is a living example. The government slogan "God! God! Save Khomeini until the coming of the Messiah" which, if not a belief but a desire on the part of religious leaders of the Velayat Faquh regime in order to connect Khomeini's movement directly to the reemergence of Mahdi, the Shiites’ Messiah, and the day of resurrection, clearly presents Khomeini's interest in the slogan of "I am God".
According to the humanistic interpretation of "I am God", including in the book Hallaj written by Ali Mirfatroos, the word "I", is considered not as a specific person, but rather humanity in its entirety. Rejection of God in heaven neither leads to the worship of one divine individual on the earth, nor necessitates human self-deprecation in order to reach a pantheistic god. Conversely, appreciation of the human individual, and his or her body, soul and society prevail and God and religion only are considered as a personal affair. One can clearly see the emergence of such a doctrine in Europe at the time of the Renaissance. Then, along with the fall of divinity of the Pope, we encounter the fall of many other divine idols. The earth is no longer assumed to be the center of the universe. Science finds its source of inspiration in observation and analysis of reality and not dogmas issued by holy scriptures. Sociology and history replace the annals of prophets and kings. The painter's brush draws nature, and the hammer of the sculptor forms the beautiful and naked human body. In political and social movements, democracy and the national state become main slogans.
These events and the like constitute the background for the emergence of the cultural renaissance in Europe. There were similar events in the epoch of Hallaj: destruction of the Kaaba, emergence of a variety of religious and social movements and economic crises and finally the prevalence of philosophy and science and the appearance of persons such as Zakaria Razi, the chemist. However, one cannot find any hint of humanism in words or deeds attributed to Hosein Mansoor Hallaj. If one wants to conjecture based on the existing documents, one would be better off accepting the first interpretation of "I am God" rather than the humanistic one. At any rate, the slogan of "I am God" is so vague that both Ali-allahis and Attar, the mystic can chant it, and also be admired by a Marxist. Nevertheless, one cannot doubt that the Attar pantheistic interpretation of this slogan has been universally accepted in our culture.
*- All quotations are translated from Persian to English by me from Tazkerat-ol-Oliya, edited by Mohammad Este'alami, Tehran, Amir Kabir, 1986 chapter 72, on Hallaj.
*- In his mystical verse narrative, The Conference of Birds, Attar tells us the story of thirty birds (si morgh) who search for the mystical bird Simorgh, and finally realize that they themselves are the goal.
*- M. Moein A Persian Dictionary, Tehran, Amir-Kabir Publication, 9 edition, 1996, p.1202.
*- This chapter was written in 1987 and first published in the Persian periodical Kankash, No. 6, Washington, 1990
Ed:
Your essay about Attar is scholarly and historical but gives insight into Persian mentality.