Introduction to “The Meaning of Man of Shaykh Ali al-Jamal ”
Until this edition only one copy of the book was in existence. For two hundred years (c.1776) the author’s copy was kept at the place where he taught and during that time, regularly, every Thursday night, a small group of the intellectual elite of the city of Fez in Morocco would make their way down to the dyer’s quarter to the small zawiyya of the great teacher, gather in a circle and read, examine and apply the method delineated in the hand-written manuscript before them. As of today, that circle still gathers. It is hoped that by publication of this extraordinary work, incomparable in its profundity and clarity, the circle of Fez scholars will be extended and that knowledge may be disseminated through it in this age of intellectual bankruptcy…… We are saying openly that these men of the Darqawi way of learning are men of freedom. They have mastered themselves, so everyone is free around them. The present society has leaders who are inwardly in chaos so everywhere around them is oppression. The great fear of modern society is not that of the police – it is merely an outward manifestation of the inner fear of the power group who lead society. The leaders of modern society are walking demonstrations of terror – their own fears, that so fix them in bodily and mental rigidity, crush the other, not only physically but in a restrictive mental atmosphere that has no outcome but violence and death.
Here is a method, the application of which brings liberation – not, as is clear from the book’s central theme, an a-political freedom but a total transformative restoration of man as a human animal who is benign to his own inwardness and to the outwardness of his brothers. He is no danger to society and society cannot endanger him. It is significant that despite the persecution the men of knowledge have been submitted to, the teaching survives, and the teachers survive – they fight, they take to the mountains, they hide in the cities. This is not a poetic statement, it is a historical one.
The author, the Master, Sidi ‘Ali al-Jamal, who taught in his small centre in Fez, although he had many people studying under him, in the end passed on the whole of his teaching to only one man. That man was Moulay al-Arabi ad-Darqawi. From him were to come forty great teachers who spread across North Africa and penetrated as far as Malaysia */ and the islands off East Africa. Now the descendants of that knowledge lineage are to be found in England and America. (Now in 2007, we can add this teaching flourish in Mexico, Argentina, USA, Indonesia, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Scotland, Turkey, Madinah and countless traveling fuqara of highest professional calibers among doctors, businessmen, professors, politicians and of course the lowly poor muridin and salihun ).
The Darqawi men were slaughtered and tortured by the colonial french occupation forces under the fanatical catholic leadership of the governor of Morocco, General Leauty. When the French departed, the modernist and statist elite who took over in the name of national freedom continued the persecution…..
The men of knowledge who have basically followed this way have been all but eliminated in the Communist world, both Russia and China, their works as well as their lives having been wiped out. On the Indian sub-continent these men are almost gone, thanks to the superbly sophisticated ruthlessness of the British and by their slaves, the ‘modernists’ who followed in their wake and now are the power elite in India and Pakistan. Persia went under at the same time that the Arab states were broken up, the Khalifate of Istanbul was smashed, and the squalid Western-authored rule of Ataturk saw these men hanged in every town and village across Turkey. North Africa and West Africa experienced the same brilliant strategy of military initiative backed by Jesuit research and business interest. In the end the whole Darqawi way and its equivalent lines of knowledge had been annihilated by assassination, denunciation, and a most far-reaching propaganda to devalue the practices and even the epistemology of the different lines of learning.
We live in an age where the meaning of man itself is in danger, therefore man is in danger, therefore his environment, this Earth is in danger. We live in a society that is determined to destroy man and make him the servant of the lowest aspects of himself, instead of the master of the highest aspects of himself. In the recognition that this nadir point of human worth is taking us to the time when man will be restored in his splendour as a locus of knowledge we have published this magisterial work. Of its nature it cannot be studied in a university or classroom. It can only be applied in the circle of men who follow this method of the transformation of the self that is the ancient knowledge way that the anthropologists had been employed to cover over.
In this time, if men want to know, they must set out in search of men who live to know, and who have freed themselves from the crushing a-culturisation process that makes the products of our universities such zombie-like historical products. Such men are not part of the problem nor are they part of the solution.
For it is the current dialectic that is the tyranny of modern society. It is the method itself of this culture that is its madness. Here is another way, and in it man is not endangered – he is liberated and that means life for all those around him. Just as knowledge is not to be found in either social upheaval or in stasis, just as it is not to be found either in esotericism and experimental groups or in power structures, so the seeker must break out of his cultural mould and recognise that knowledge is the property of the poor. If poverty were eliminated, knowledge would be eliminated. It is the only clue we can leave in writing. The way of poverty is the way of knowledge. We write it on the cave wall. We write it on your heart.
From the poor slave,
the helpless, the needy,
‘Abd al-Qadir as-Sufi. 1976 (Note: The Meaning of Man – 350 pages is reprinted in Malaysia by Madinah Press in 2005and is available at MPH and Kinokuniya bookstore. Price RM120.00. But whereare its living circles of fuqara that fiercely defended this Way ?)
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The Darqawi Way Letters of Mawlay ad-Darqawi – Translated by Aisha Bewley.
These are the letters of the Shaykh, the Imam, the Ghawth who benefits the elite and the common, the famous wali and great siddiq, the one who has arrived, who has drowned in the sea of oneness, utterly crushed in the immensity of the sublime essence. He is the Sharif, Sayyidi Muhammad al-Arabi al-Hasani ad-Darqawi, may Allah give us the benefit of his barakah. Mawlay ad-Darqawi sent the letters to those who had the benefit of his company and entered under his banner. (He received his sufic transmission and completion of the suluk or idhin of Shaykh from Shaykh Ali al-Jamal of Fez somewhere in 1700s. Then he returned to his Zarwali tribe in Atlas Mountains southern part of Morocco to spread the tariqa teaching).
He is loved by those from whom the veils have been lifted and from whom others are distant. With them, the night becomes the awakening of day. The cosmos is crushed and annihilated in their eyes since they see the One, the Conquerer. What a contemplation it is! How sweet it is! What a station it has!These are letters which tell about the stations of their sender and make his gnoses known in what they say. They join words and effects, warnings and signs for consideration. In them are the commands and words of the shariat of Muhammad, sallal lahu alyhi wa sallam, and the sunnah and actions of the tariqa, and the secrets and states of the reality.
All this is in the most concise phrase and exact expression and clearest indication. He wrote them according to events. The answer is according to the question. Each letter is enough for the one who has it with the greatest possible richness. It takes him to the end of hope and desire.All that there is in the letters is the shariat of the messenger, the path of the wayfarers, indications of the realised gnostics who have arrived, and the ecstasies of the beloved lovers.Many people were trained by his hand and a large number of Allah’s slaves profited by him.
(Note : A Malay translation of Rasail Darqawiyya by Ustaz Wan Muhammad Ali, Tar Tujuh was published in 1980 by Pustaka Aman Press based on the inferior and short treatise of Titus Burkhart- Letters of a Sufi Master which only contained 35 letters compared with Aishah Bewley complete translation of 200 letters and cover 300 pages . The living letters had arrived at your door step but many still prefer the pseudo ways and inherited texts or kitabs as their teachers )
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Selection from pages of The Meaning of Man :
Page 149: Shaykh Ataillah said in Hikam : ‘Whoever has a lofty beginnings, has a lofty end.’ That which is between the beginnings and the ends is the station of annihilation. It is the key of the slave’s journey from the world of himself to the world of his Lord.
The slaveness of beginnings is key of annihilation…also the slaveness of ends is the key to going-on. Among the beginners, whoever has the slaveness of beginnings come to him and supposes that he has acquired the slaveness of ends and stops with it, his foot slips and from that he acquires halting and satisfaction with the self.
And seeing exaltation of himself over the slaves of Allah and love of leadership, love of this world, love of rank, joy at creation turning to him and sorrow when they turn from him and so on to what has no end of ruinous qualities which are incompatible with slaveness.
When slaveness collapses, the two doors are shut in his face and he is driven from the door of the Master. May Allah protect us from that. This is the greatest affliction. It mostly strikes the people of beginnings who enter the Path without the friendship of the Shaykhs, the clever, those who recognise the devices of the selves and their branches and politics in that..
Page 150:
Slaveness is key of all openings, unseen and present. Whoever undertakes to teach the murids before he reaches the station of going-on, leads astray himself and whoever follows him. That is because the one with station of going-on is finished teaching himself ‘discipline’. Whoever is finished with teaching himself discipline, there is no harm in hi when he undertakes to guides others, as opposed to the one of annihilation.
Page 151 :
Speech is the tree of might and it only bears the fruit of abasement for the one who plants it. Silent is the tree of abasement. It only bears fruit of might for the one who plant it. Such is the Sunna of Allah in all existence, unseen and present, sensory and meaning.
Sometimes the wali speaks to his Lord from himself by himself in himself, and sometimes he speaks to him from his species in himself by himself from himself. The hour of conservation of Allah is intoxication, and the hour of conservation with creation is sobriety.
Page 154 :
If you want to have gatheredness, you must have words. If you wanto have separation, you must have actions. The word of the inward is reflection, and the word of the outward is dhikr…. When dhikr and reflection is joined in you , the suns of gatheredness shine on you.
Page 156 :
May Allah have mercy on Abu Mawahib when he said: ‘ Whenever the situation of the wali is high, seeing him is insignificant in the eyes of the common’.
Shaykh as-Shadhili r.a said: ‘ O Allah, You have sentence people to abasement until they become mighty’.
What error is like the one who wears the garment of those related to Allah, and by that he desires that creation will turn to him and he will have rank and leadership over them and gathering this world. And filling up reputation and rising rank with governors and leaders of the people of this world. He is content with that and pleased with it instead of might by Allah and by Him from what is other than Him.
