Beliefs in the Unity of Being
It is an indisputable fact that even those who reject and deny philosophy have adopted these beliefs.
Within the belief of “Unity of Being” (waḥdat al-wujūd), the Sufis are divided into two groups. Some have considered existents, as we have presented above, to be the manifestation of realities that are fixed as forms of knowledge in the knowledge of God; in this case, the universe consists of relative and contingent existents seen in the mirror of non-existence; no being possesses its own existence; that Existence is only existent inasmuch as it is the manifestation of the Absolute God, the manifestation of God’s attributes, and inasmuch as it is receptive to His existence.
At the same time, God’s knowledge of His own essence, the fixation of all existents as forms of knowledge in this knowledge, and the embodiment of this fixation in material form are not subject to time; that is, it is incorrect to think and understand that at one time God did not know His own essence, then He knew it; that in this knowledge the universe was fixed in a summarized form, and then at the appointed times they appeared in detail. This is the case at every moment; that is, God, in terms of His essence, is absolute from everything, from all attributes, even from absolute being itself; He cannot be limited by any limitation.
At the same time, His knowledge is a necessity of His essence; that is, it is impossible for Him not to know, or to be without knowledge even for a moment. Just as fire necessarily burns and water necessarily drowns, and it is impossible to separate burning from fire or drowning from water, so too does Allah know His own essence, and knowledge is inseparable from Him; it subsists with His essence. In this knowledge, the created things are fixed at every moment, and this fixation manifests the universe at every moment. The universe emerges from God’s knowledge at every moment and at every moment entirely passes away.
Just as it is impossible to conceive a beginning before God’s beginning, so too is there no end after His end. In this respect, creation — that is, origination — does not exist; there is only manifestation, and this proceeds in a constant flow; this belief necessitates the acceptance that the world has neither a beginning nor an end. The philosophers have expressed this with the phrase, “The form of the world is temporally originated-eternal (ḥadīth-i qadīm).” That is, the universe is a manifestation which, in relation to God’s essence, is considered to have come into being later, but which has neither a beginning before it nor an end after it.
This belief is to accept that the world exists not by God’s will, but necessarily, that it was not created from nothing and will not cease to exist; this is to reject the attributes of will, creation (takwīn), volition (mashīʾa), and creatorship, and to deny the Resurrection and the Hereafter. However, those who accept this belief resort to interpretation by saying that the world is created anew at every moment, and that each new creation is, in relation to the previous one, the Hereafter; among them are also those who say that transmigration (tanāsukh)—that is, for the sake of perfection, a person will return to the world after death, be cast into the realms of animals, plants, and inanimates, that the parts of the universe come from the “Realm of Dispersion (Nashr)” to the “Realm of Gathering (Ḥashr),” and that dispersion and gathering occur in this world.
In short, this system of belief, which has been kneaded with Iranian and Greek philosophy and Islamized through interpretation, has not the slightest relation to Islam and cannot have any.
The second group are those who do not depart from the sharia (sharia, the sacred law). According to them, the universe was brought into existence from nothing and will again cease to exist. All that is reported in the Book and the Sunnah—that is, in the Qur’an and the hadith—are realities and cannot be interpreted away. They have an inner aspect (bāṭin), but this pertains to spiritual taste (dhawq), even to self-effacement (fanāʾ), to annihilation of the self; the existence of an inner aspect does not negate the apparent meanings.
The existence of the world is between two non-existences, and since nothing exists by its own existence, but only by God’s decree and will, existents are, in relation to Allah, non-existent. In every existent, God’s power, will, artistry, and wisdom become manifest; the fact that the world and those within it are loci of manifestation (maẓhar) of God is for this reason; yet God’s essence is holy and transcendent above all things. The belief of this second group conforms to the sharia and the principles of Islam.
According to those who accept Sufism with the first belief, everything is according to its capacity (istiʿdād), that is, according to the manifestation of one of God’s attributes from it, and for this reason, every act is correct and appropriate according to the capacity of the one who performs it. According to the second group, evil and harm arise through acquisition (iktisāb) from the environment and upbringing. In essence, that is, in fitra (innate nature), there is good. Therefore, responsibility does not fall away. Even if an evil act is considered appropriate to the capacity and upbringing of the one who commits it, resistance to that evil is likewise correct and appropriate according to the same belief.
Essentially, in this world of opposites, evil reveals good; the ugly manifests the beautiful. The recompense for deeds, as stated in verse 41 of surah XXX, is also embodied in this world; the result of good is reward, the result of evil is punishment, and this is a foretaste of the recompense in the Hereafter.
The people of Sufism say: this path cannot be traversed by knowledge alone, but guidance without knowledge is rare, if it occurs at all. For them, knowledge is a means; as long as it makes a person aware of his incapacity and ignorance, as long as it leads him to nothingness, it is beneficial; but if it leads to self-assertion and ego, it is harmful. Knowledge, which is not an end but only a means, as well as aptitude and temperament, play a major role in Sufism.
There are Sufis who, with the belief in the unity of being and the conviction that every act is appropriate according to the capacity of its doer, abandon themselves to seeing everything as permissible (ibāḥa), and say that everything is truth; the true actor is He, the doer is only His locus of manifestation, merely an instrument, even the body is accidental, pleasure belongs to the spirit (rūḥ), and they conclude that the sharia was established for the order of the world.
For them, “For one who knows himself, his father’s blood is lawful; for one who does not know himself, his mother’s milk is forbidden.” There are Sufis who, in the spiritual journey called sulūk, have fallen into such ecstasy that they see no existence other than God, have uttered various words, have seen themselves as the world, have considered themselves the axis of the universe, have reached the station that the true saints call “Mezlaka-i akdām—the place where feet slip,” and have perished there.
There are Sufis who, the more they exalted themselves, the more they reached selfhood instead of nothingness, and in the realm of existence in which they convinced themselves, dared to claim equality not with the greatest saints but with the prophets, considered prophethood a meritorious station, claimed to be a mahdi or a new founder of religion; among these, there have been those who, having shed religious beliefs, deceived the people who rely on beliefs, turned to making their world their only concern because they did not believe in the Hereafter, became playthings for those who sought to destroy spiritual supports and undermine material existence, succeeded in their path, or were “removed by the sword of the sharia”—that is, executed according to religious law—and have been seen and passed away.
There are Sufis who have passed through all these stations, returned to the station where they began the path, have seen God’s power and wisdom in everything and every being, have considered all beings as God’s signs (āyāt), but have realized that God’s essence is holy and transcendent above everything and every being, have understood that this realization is itself utter incapacity, have fallen into blame (malāma), and, out of incapacity for not being able to serve that holy and transcendent being as He deserves, have abased themselves, declaring their nothingness and utter nonexistence.
It is seen that this belief is almost like wine; just as one who drinks and loses himself reveals his subconscious feelings and asserts his identity, so too does the one who, in this belief, transforms his knowledge into vision, his vision into experience and being, or who, after acquiring this knowledge, tries to benefit from it, assert his own identity.
The Spread of Sufism in Anatolia
For a belief to spread, social and economic conditions must be present, and there must be a crisis in every aspect in the area where it will spread. Sufism, whether it adopts the extreme belief in the unity of being or aims to adhere to the sharia, can also be considered, in a sense, a fatalistic belief.
According to those who believe in the extreme unity of being, every event occurs because it is necessary, and there is wisdom in every event; in that case, to resist that event is to resist the manifestation of God. But a contrary result arises from this conception. Is it not the case that there is no existence other than Him; is not the one who resists that manifestation also Him? Is not resistance itself one of His manifestations? Does this not arise from the oppositions among God’s names? Is not God both the Merciful (al-Raḥmān) and the Subduer (al-Qahhār)? To think in this way requires a mature power of analysis, and this analysis relatively saves Sufism from fatalism. But not everyone possesses this power. For this reason, Sufism expands its domain more easily and more widely in the most troubled, most confused, and worst conditions.
In the twelfth century, the situation in Anatolia was such that it required the servant to attach himself to God and destiny, and the individual to turn away from society and immerse himself in the inner world; in such a period, when nothing could be done, hope remained only with Allah. Moreover, the Mongol invasion also caused a human influx in Anatolia, both before and together with the Mongols. Among these were many Sufis who migrated from Iraq to Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and the Maghrib lands.
Sufi poets such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī (d. 637 AH/1239 CE), Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī (d. 688 AH/1289 CE), and learned Sufis such as Najm al-Dīn Dāya, the author of Mirṣād al-ʿIbād (d. 654 AH/1256 CE), came to Anatolia in this period. Sufis who grew up in Anatolia as a result of this migration include Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673 AH/1274 CE), the stepson of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638 AH/1240 CE). These Sufis gained great influence in Anatolia.
Muʿīn al-Dīn, who later went to Damascus and died there and was buried next to Ibn ʿArabī, had a lodge built for ʿIrāqī in Tokat. Najm al-Dīn Dāya resided for a time in Kayseri. The futuwwa adherents, nourished by traditions from the Sāsānid period, were also widespread in Anatolia. The futuwwa people, who organized the artisans and opposed the Sufis’ separation from the people, and the malāmat saints who spread their ideology among the people, had lodges in almost every center in Anatolia, Syria, and even Egypt.
Every craft and profession had its own shaykh, every city had an ahi-baba, the head of all the ahis (futuwwa shaykhs), and all these had a chief to whom they were connected in that country. During the period of the decline of the Abbasids, the caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (d. 622 AH/1225 CE) sought to benefit from the futuwwa adherents, who were a great force, realized this, and presented himself as the imam and leader of the futuwwa people. Those who came after him followed the same policy.
During the time of Nāṣir, the Seljuk ruler Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs sent Shaykh Majd al-Dīn Isḥāq to Baghdad to request from the caliph the shalwar (trousers), the symbol of futuwwa; the caliph sent him the futuwwa shalwar and certificate of authorization along with the decree of sovereignty, and also the black turban, the symbol of the Abbasids. During the reign of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād, the caliph sent Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (d. 632 AH/1235 CE) to Konya, bringing a horse and a turban to the sultan.
ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, together with shaykhs, scholars, and Sufis, welcomed him in Aksaray, and when he departed, accompanied him as far as the village of Zincirli, an hour’s distance from Konya, and sent a considerable amount of money from the Christian poll-tax to the caliph. Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-Jawzī also came as an ambassador from the caliph, requested a thousand cavalry from ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, who sent five thousand, but after this force passed Mosul, it was reported that it was no longer needed, so they returned. In all these, the need for mutual solidarity, which nourished and perhaps even gave birth to the belief, should be kept in mind.
In the twelfth century, before and after, we also encounter tekkes (lodges) belonging mostly to itinerant Kalenderis in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt. The construction in Konya in 821 AH (1418 CE) of a zāwiya (lodge) in the name of Abū Isḥāq b. Shahrīyār al-Kāzarūnī, who died in Shiraz in 426 AH (1035 CE) and was devoted to Sunnism to the point of fanaticism, shows that there were also members of the Kāzarūniyya tariqa. From the earliest sources on the Mawlawiyya, we also learn that at that time there were also Rifāʿīs, then called Ahmedis.
After the execution of his khalīfa Baba Isḥāq in Amasya in 638 AH (1240 CE), the remnants of the Babais, who believed he had not died, defeated the Seljuk army, and, as they said “Lā ilāha illā Allāh, Baba Rasūl Allāh” and referred to Baba Isḥāq as Baba Rasūl, evidently adopted esoteric beliefs. Ultimately, the remnants of the Babais, who were defeated and massacred by the Seljuk devshirme army in the Malya plain near Kırşehir, gathered around Baba Bektaş of Nishapur, despite the fact that his brother Menten was killed around this time, and thus the nucleus of the Bektashi order began to take shape.
According to Aflākī’s clear statement, Baba Bektaş was one of the foremost khalīfas of Baba Rasūl. During the period of the beyliks, Geyikli Baba and Abdal Musa of Hoy, who were respected by the Ottomans and participated in the conquest of Bursa, were also among the saints and babas from Khorasan.
During the reign of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād I, the Turkmens under the leadership of Qamar al-Dīn Maḥmūd were settled in the province of Ermenak, and for this reason, the province was called Qamar al-Dīn’s province. His grandson Nureddin, or more commonly known as Nure Sufi, was also among the followers of Baba Ilyas. His son Karaman seized some nearby places and virtually gained independence; Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslan granted Karaman the beylik of Qamar al-Dīn’s province.
Soon after, Karaman’s brothers, who supported Izz al-Dīn, were killed and their rebellion suppressed. Mehmet Bey, who succeeded Karaman, was one of the Seljuk beys and joined the rebel Hatıroğlu, and soon after became vizier to Cimri, who claimed to be Siyavush, the son of Kaykāwūs, son of Izz al-Dīn. Cimri, with the Turkmens who followed him, seized Konya in 677 AH (1278 CE), had the Friday sermon read in his name, and declared Turkish as the official language instead of Persian.
However, this success did not last long; the Seljuks, strengthened by the Mongols, defeated Cimri, captured him, flayed him alive, and displayed his skin in the cities as a warning. In 699 AH (1299–1300 CE), from the Hāmūsh-Nāma, written in Erzincan by a poet named Yūsufī in Persian and in the mathnawī style, we learn that Cimri also drew strength from Sufism; it is understood that the Turkmens whom Ibn Bībī refers to as “red-capped, black-haired” were the Turkmens who followed Baba Ilyas.
Again, in these periods, we see in Anatolia groups such as the Rum Abdals, Hayderis, and Cāmīs, who held esoteric beliefs and often spread their beliefs by traveling with banners, drums, and strange attire; by the sixteenth century, these had entirely joined the Bektashi order.