Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
61. Akbar, the Great Moghul- Part 4 of 5
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
As a devotee of the Chishti order, Akbar was in tune with Sufi practices, which were animated by the philosophy of Wahdat al Wajud (unity of existence). Although this philosophy was in existence since the earliest days of Islam, it appears in the writings of Sadruddin Konawi, a student of Ibn al Arabi (d. 1240). Born in Spain during the waning years of Al Muhaddith rule, Ibn al Arabi traveled through North Africa to Syria and Arabia. He learned the tasawwuf of Divine Love from the Sufi (lady) masters of the era, Nurah Fatima binte Al Muthanna of Cordova, Shams Yasminah Um ul-Fakhr al Marhena az-Zaytun of Cordova, and Ain as Shams, of Mecca. His standing in Sufi circles is so great that he is referred to as al Shaykh al Akbar (the greatest of the Shaykhs). A powerful speaker and a prolific writer, he influenced the evolution of tasawwuf in lands as diverse as Morocco and Indonesia. His masterpiece works include Ruh al Quds, Tarjamanul Ishwaq and Futuhat al Makkiyah. He passed away in Damascus.
According to Wahdat al Wajud (unity of existence), all creation is illusion; the only Reality is God. The more He reveals Himself, the more he conceals Himself. Humankind is prevented from realizing Divine Unity because of the ego, which considers it self-sufficient and does not submit to the Divine. The doctrine of fana (annihilation) is a logical consequence of this philosophy. When the individual ego gets close to the Divine, there can be no two egos; the individual ego is annihilated and only the Divine exists. It is like a candle getting close to the sun. The candle no longer exists; only the light of the sun remains. Man can transcend his ego through belief and effort. The path to realizing unity of existence is through love (muhabbah) rather than through knowledge (maarifah). Thus love of God, and love of fellow man, becomes a key element in Sufi practice. Sufi masters know the path to Divine Knowledge, called a tareeqah, and a novice learns the secrets of the path by becoming a murid (one who desires knowledge, disciple) of the master. The presence of Sufi masters is animated by baraka (blessing), which has been transmitted to them by a silsilah (chain of transmission) going back to the Prophet. Through the centuries, this doctrine has been a centerpiece of Sufi belief. Besides Ibn al Arabi, the other leading exponents of this school were the Persian al Bistami (d. 874) and the Egyptian Ibn Ataullah (d.1309).
Emperor Akbar found an echo of the doctrine of fana in the Advaita Vedanta of the Hindus. Akbar’s son Jehangir is known to have studied the Advaita under a leading Hindu master. The Great Moghul saw in the correspondence between Sufi thought and the Vedantas the possibility of opening up the embrace of Islam to Hindus by accepting them as people of the Book. Their books were “lost” but the inner kernel of spirituality had remained. This was a masterstroke by a consummate statesman who hoped by this move to at once consolidate the empire and give it a solid foundation by establishing the legitimacy of his rule with all the peoples of his vast realm. He achieved this through his marriage to Rajput princesses, who became mothers and grandmothers of successive emperors. The Rajputs responded by showing their loyalty to the Moghuls until the waning years of the empire. Indeed, it may justifiably be argued that Akbar’s Empire was a Moghul-Rajput confederacy. His son Jehangir introduced Persian elements into it through his marriage to Noor Jehan, while his grandson, Emperor Shah Jehan, achieved a total synthesis of the art, architecture and culture of India with that of Persia and Central Asia.
Akbar was a product of Sufic Islam that dominated Asia until recent years. The Sufis, while accepting the Shariah to be the fundamental platform of religion, consider the obligations of Fiqh to be an outer kernel, which has to be penetrated to reach the inward spirituality of religion. Without the Shariah, there is no religion. But without its spiritual dimension, religion itself becomes a litany of do’s and don’ts. In India and Pakistan, the great Sufis of the Chishti order found a sympathetic chord among the Hindus by adopting a musical rendering for their sessions of dhikr (recitation of the Name of God) and presenting Sufi doctrines in a manner that the Hindu mind could at once identify with. It was this spiritual thrust of Islam that converted many millions of Hindus in the subcontinent. The conversion cut across all classes and castes, the Brahmans as well as the warriors, the peasants as well as the untouchables. Conversion was not, as some Western writers assume, confined to the lower castes among Hindus. Families often split, with one brother accepting Islam through the Baraka of a Sufi master, while the other remained a Hindu. In slow measures, over the centuries, Islam became a major religion of Hindustan, and it remains so today.
The historical process through which the people of Hindustan accepted Islam was different from the way the Persians and the Egyptians (for instance) became Muslim. The initial conversion of the Arabs was through exposure to the pristine religion of the Prophet and his Companions. The faith was diffused through Persia and Egypt early in the Umayyad period and had a heavy linguistic, legal and cultural content from Arabia. Islam entered the subcontinent five hundred years after it entered Persia and Egypt. Its content was primarily spiritual. The legal content entered later. In the interaction between Islam and Hinduism, the cultures of Central Asia and Persia fused with those of India. It gave birth to new languages, and shaped a composite culture, much as happened in the Sahel of East Africa where a rich Swahili culture emerged from a fusion of African, Arab and Persian elements.
The great Sufis were fully alert to the risks in the idea of Wahdat al Wajud. The doctrine of fana carries with it the possibility of shirk (association of partners with God), by proposing that the Creator and the created are on the same plane. This is totally unacceptable in Islam in which the Absolute Unity and Transcendence of the Creator is inviolate. To overcome these objections, clarifications of tasawwuf were developed in the classic age of Islamic history. As early as the 10th century, Al Junayad (d. 910) of Baghdad formulated the doctrine of Wahdat as Shahada (Unity of Witness). In the self-sustained eloquence of the Qur’an, Shahada is a powerful term. It means at once “to witness”, “to recognize”, “to see”, “to find”, “to be conscious”, “to acknowledge through speech”, and “to sacrifice”. When a person accepts Islam, he takes the Shahada. When a person becomes a martyr in the path of God, it is said that he has tasted the Shahada. It is only the beauty and power of Qur’anic language that makes possible the immediate synchronization of thought and deed. Shahada has two parts to it: “There is no deity but Allah, and Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah”. The first part at once frees human consciousness from bondage to any deity, and tethers it solidly to God. The second part makes the consciousness of God accessible through revelation brought by Prophet Muhammed (p).
The doctrine of Wahdat as Shahada states that humankind is conscious of the Unity of the Divine. The apparent diversity in creation is deceptive; there is the invisible power of the Creator in every creation. Humans can gain cognizance of this Unity through doctrine and through training. This apparent difference between cognition and union is crucial to maintaining the transcendence of God. The Creator and the created are not on the same plane. While the doctrine of Wahdat al Wajud can throw a person into the vast ocean of Divine Love, in which he/she may drown, the doctrine of Wahdat as Shahada throws a life raft so that even the uninitiated can swim. The doctrine of Wahdat as Shahada remained dormant for centuries. It was the doctrine of Wahdat al Wajud that was accepted and practiced by the Sufis. This was so at the time of Emperor Akbar.
Akbar’s religious initiatives produced whirlpools of intellectual activity in India. The orthodox were convinced that the purity of faith was in peril. Some of the practices that the ulema found objectionable included the emperor offering his darshan (Hindustani, to appear, to show oneself) to his subjects from a balcony at sunrise (a practice borrowed from the Persians), inscription of “Allah u Akbar” on medallions that were offered to his murids (those who sought spiritual guidance from him), and even his marriages to Hindu ladies. They considered these practices to be inconsistent with their view of Islam.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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