The Late Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire, founded in 1299, collapsed in November 1922, when the last sultan, Mehmed VI, was sent into exile. The First World War had been a disaster for the empire, with British and allied forces capturing Baghdad, Damascus and Jerusalem. A new government, the Turkish Grand National Assembly, was set up in 1920 in Ankara, which then became the Turkish capital. Constantinople, formerly the imperial capital, was renamed Istanbul in 1930.

A photo essay.

Goethe

Again.

Reverence

Revere the ultimate power in the universe: this is what makes use of all things and directs all things. But similarly revere the ultimate power in yourself: this is akin to that other power. In you too this is what makes use of all else, and your life is governed by it.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Bk. V: 21.

Izmir

The Holy City Of Tabriz

The Pondering Heart

"But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart."

~ Luke 2:19 (KJV)

ALMA REDEMPTORIS MATER

Reality Check

How can one tell if s/he is in the presence of the Real? According to Al-Kalabadhi (Kitab al-Ta'arruf, 10 century C.E.), in the presence of the Real one is perplexed [dahash] and bewildered [hayra] and yet, at the same time, fulfilled and spent [istifa'a].



The intensity of such moments test the limits of one's endurance.



For the true Seeker, however, no moment is more cherished or longed for.

Northern New Mexico

Follow Lawrence.

I Fled Him

I fled Him down the nights and down the days;



I fled Him down the arches of the years;



I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways



Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears



I hid from Him, and under running laughter...



~ Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven.

Highlights of "One Day with Hafez", 14th-century Persian poet, Leiden Un...

Hafezean Critical Piety

Hafez was not a metaphysician, thankfully. He was a poet and, as a poet, he was far better equipped than any metaphysician before or since to articulate a critical piety worthy of the name.

For Hafez, brooding upon a beloved provides us with an intimation of the god who holds our fate in his hands and yet plays hard to get. If one were to ask him, "What sort of god is that?" he probably would have replied, "The one we're stuck with."

It is in brooding upon such a beloved that we learn to practice patience, mercy, long-suffering in love. At the same time, in the course of such brooding we acquire a keen sense of irony and of history. As the Malamatiyya would say, this is how we acquire rujuliyya (virtus).

To find ourselves naught but fleeting moments in the life of God does not imply passivity but active struggle: to understand, to remain faithful, and yet, in Jobean fashion, to protest our treatment.

It is precisely because one is poor in spirit that criticism becomes necessary. The quarrel with god is a lover's quarrel. It is, likewise, a refusal of all pious cant.

The Hafezean Inheritance

Either the introverted piety extolled in Matthew 6: 1-18 continued to be extolled by--and practiced among--groups of Jewish and Gentile pietists for centuries or, in the alternative, it was revived in 9th century Nishapur. Either way, it became a mark of certain Muslim pietists (the Malamatiyya) at that time and place and it (or its ideals) were part of the Hafezean inheritance in 14th century Shiraz.

Hafez, for his part, returned to the polemical mode of the Jewish believers in Jesus, taking to task the Sufis whose piety was put on public display.

In the history of ideas, family resemblances (conceptual affinities or continuities) matter more than direct, institutionally facilitated, ideational transmission. As Plato understood, ideas are immortal. What Plato resisted was the notion that such immortality did not also entail immutability. And he was right to be troubled by this "paradox." For, ultimately, the historian of ideas has to face the Ship of Theseus problem.

Spiritual States

In his treatise on the Malamatiyya, Sulami (d. 1021) wrote: "Spiritual states are valuable assets deposited in the hearts of their trustees; whoever externalizes them forfeits the rank of a trustee."

~ The Heritage of Sufism, ed. L. Lewisohn, p. 608.

Live Dangerously

Precious Moments Of Unveiled Vision

Indeed by abandoning the frail defences of intellectual reason and yielding himself wholly to the overwhelming forces of the spirit that surround him, by giving up the stubborn, intervening 'I' in absolute surrender to the infinite 'thou', man will out of his abject weakness rise to strength unmeasured; in the precious moments of unveiled vision he will perceive the truth that resolves all vexing problems, and win a memory to sustain him when the inevitable shadows close about him once more.

~ from A. J. Arberry's Introduction to Fifty Poems of Hafiz.

And what is the "truth that resolves all vexing problems"?

We are naught but fleeting moments in the life of God.



How might this "truth" deliver on its promise? By converting truth to beauty and vindicating beauty as truth. The good, however, remains to be accounted for. Giving up the stubborn, intervening "I" is the first step in both directions.

The Doctrine Of Unreason

According to A. J. Arberry, Hafez's mature thought can be best described as a "doctrine of unreason," which was "the poet's final answer to the inscrutability of fate, the utter incapacity of man to master the riddle of the universe." This view served as "his justification for rejecting alike philosophy and theology, mosque and cloister, legalistic righteousness and organized mysticism; it enabled him to profess his solidarity with the 'intoxicated' Sufis like martyred Hallaj, and to revive the dangerous antinomianism of the Malamatis; but above all it provided him with a spiritual stronghold out of which he could view with serene equanimity, if not with indifference, the utterly confused and irrational world in which it was his destiny to live."

Arberry was careful to distinguish this "doctrine" from "the hearty hedonism with which it has sometimes been confounded; the world's tragedy is too profound to be forgotten in unthinking mirth; and man for all his littleness and incapacity need not be unequal to the burden of sorrow and perplexity he is called upon to shoulder. Indeed by abandoning the frail defences of intellectual reason and yielding himself wholly to the overwhelming forces of the spirit that surround him, by giving up the stubborn, intervening 'I' in absolute surrender to the infinite 'thou', man will out of his abject weakness rise to strength unmeasured; in the precious moments of unveiled vision he will perceive the truth that resolves all vexing problems, and win a memory to sustain him when the inevitable shadows close about him once more."

~ from Arberry's Introduction to Fifty Poems of Hafiz.



One must prepare for the Hafezean Doctrine of Unreason. That preparation is best accomplished through the systematic doubt espoused by Imam Ghazali (500 years before Descartes). As Ghazali taught, the limits of Reason must be explored, tested, and finally exhausted before Unreason can be intelligently embraced.

William Barrett