Martin Lings
Islamic scholar and master of Sufism
21 May 2005
Martin Lings, English and Islamic scholar: born
Burnage, Lancashire 24 January 1909; Lecturer in
Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, University of Kaunas
1935-39; Lecturer in English Literature, University of
Cairo 1940-51; Assistant Keeper, Department of
Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts, British Museum
(from 1973 British Library) 1955-70, Deputy Keeper
1970-71, Keeper 1971-73 (Emeritus); married 1944
Lesley Smalley; died Westerham, Kent 11 May 2005.
Martin Lings was one of the most eloquent and serene
Western voices in the Islamic world. Through his rich
and varied oeuvre, translated into more than a dozen
languages, Lings transmitted a certain vision of the
sacred as embodied in Sufism, the esoteric, spiritual
dimension of Islam.
He combined vast knowledge with meticulous
scholarship, a poetic sensibility and an elegant
expression, which made the most profound subjects
accessible, and enthralled the large audiences who
flocked to his lectures. His intellectual power was
tempered with the gentleness and the humility of the
Sufi, and in old age he had acquired the aura of one
who had striven all his life towards sanctity.
Lings was born in 1909 in Lancashire. After Clifton
College in Bristol, he went to Magdalen College,
Oxford, and read English under C.S. Lewis, who
recognised his gifted student's spiritual ardour.
Young Martin was intensely pious and spent the hours
he was not working in prayer, specifically to the
Virgin Mary, requesting her guidance in finding his
spiritual path. After Oxford he travelled in Europe,
lecturing at various universities including Kaunas in
Lithuania, and in 1940 went to Egypt to teach English
Literature at the University of Cairo. He stayed 11
years, mastered the Arabic language, and on his return
to London in the 1950s took a degree followed by a
doctorate in Arabic Studies at the School of Oriental
and African Studies.
It was in Cairo that Lings met the French philosopher
René Guénon, one of the guiding lights of what became
known as the Traditionalist School of philosophy, one
aspect of which is the critique of the modern world,
with its excessive materialism and loss of the sacred.
Lings became Guénon's assistant and devotee, and
through him discovered "Sophia Perennis", the eternal
wisdom whose principles are enshrined in the world's
great religions and spiritual traditions, from
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism to Christianity,
Judaism and Islam, and in the light of which he would
live his whole life.
But the decisive encounter of Martin Lings's life, one
which would define his path and work, was with the
Swiss-German philosopher and Sufi master Frithjof
Schuon, under whose guidance Lings converted to Islam.
His attraction was to Sufism, which is the esoteric
essence of the religion. He was initiated by Schuon
into the path of the Shadhiliyya Tariqa (the Sufi
fraternity) of which the Algerian Sheikh Ahmad
Al-Alawi was a great representative. Later Lings wrote
his PhD on Al-Alawi and also a superb biography, A
Moslem Saint of the Twentieth Century (1961, revised
as A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, 1971). Lings
rose to become a spiritual master himself, following
Schuon's death 10 years ago.
In 1944 Lings married his childhood friend Lesley
Smalley, who followed the same spiritual itinerary. On
their return from Cairo they settled in London, and
Martin became first Assistant and later the Keeper of
Oriental Books and Manuscripts of the British Museum,
where he stayed until his retirement in the early
1970s.
He spent the last 30 years of his life writing books,
and lecturing all over the world, to a growing
following. Among his numerous books are the
magisterial Muhammad: his life based on the earliest
sources (1983), Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art
(1966, reissued as The Secret of Shakespeare, 1984,
with an introduction by the Prince of Wales), in which
the roots of Shakespeare's oeuvre are traced to the
Platonic and Scholastic traditions, and the splendid
The Quranic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination (1976,
republished as Splendours of Qur'an Calligraphy and
Illumination, 2004). Lings's final work was Mecca, a
history of the sacred city from pre-Abrahamic times to
today, published last year.
At the time when so much nonsense is talked about "the
clashes of civilisations" and Islam is under siege,
the work of Martin Lings shines like a beacon. He
lived in a modest cottage in the middle of woods in
Kent. A keen and original gardener, he created a small
but ravishing garden with a view over the undulating
country all around. He was laid to rest among the
flowers and plants he had lovingly cultivated.
Shusha Guppy
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
A Tribute to Martin Lings: An Undying Light
By Tarek A Ghanem, Islam Online, May 30, 2005
Not long afterwards he lost consciousness, and A’ishah thought it was the onset of death, but after an hour he opened his eyes. She then remembered his having said to her, “No Prophet is taken by death until he hath been shown his place in Paradise and then offered the choice, to live or to die.” And she understood that this had been accomplished, and that he had returned from a vision of the Hereafter. “He will not now choose us!” she said to herself. Then she heard him murmur: “With the supreme communion of Paradise, with those upon whom God hath showered His favor, the prophets and the saints and martyrs and righteous, most excellent for communion are they.” Again she heard him murmur: “O God, with the supreme communion,” and these were the last words she heard him speak. Gradually, his head grew heavier upon her breast, until the other wives began to lament, and A’ishah laid his head on a pillow and joined them in lamentation.
— Martin Lings, Muhammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
Martin Lings, with his unrivaled gift of anecdote, recounts to us the moment the door of communion was closed and the tidings of Heaven were intercepted by the devastation and the spiritual meltdown of the death of the Prophet. To write, by far and away, the finest biography of the Prophet (and in my most modest opinion it is better than its counterparts, even in Arabic) takes more than a worldly and human perspective. To believe it is merely the yield of a masterly skill of authorship, melodious narration, or exquisite scholarship is to be shortsighted.
It takes more than all that to connect to and essentialize Allah’s most beloved and best of creation. After all, how can one sail the oceans of mysteries and realities, high philosophy and deep psychology, life currents and spiritual states and then reach such shores without divine success?
His translations of Islamic texts, poetry, art, and philosophy testify to how inseparable a scholar can be from his works. His intellectual labor in them shows such a trace and grace of ihsan (beauty and excellence), that reading them for masterly style—other than for the content and contention—suffices. He also worked on the aesthetics as an artifact of faith: Islamic poetry, calligraphy, and Qur’anic illumination.
A few days before he passed away (may Allah have mercy on his soul), he spoke about his participation in an event called United for the Prophet, saying that this was the first time for him to speak about the Prophet in 40 years. The wings of love and fate do not seem to embrace each other so closely on average. The circle is completed.
The scholarship of Martin Lings (whose Muslim name is Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din) is rare: rare not because of what it represents, but rare for its aptitude. Despite the quality of scholarly work, he never forgot the precedence of different realities, along with their corresponding codes and logos. That is why, for him, writing books and lecturing were not about scholastic manipulation of intellectual constructs capable of breaking the hierarchy of the complex and interconnected realities we live in. The spiritual reality is the crown and the rest follows. To achieve that, one’s life has to be the quintessence of one’s teachings.
Writer Gai Eaton described his first meeting with Lings gracefully:
Among my colleagues was an English Muslim, Martin Lings, who had made his home in Egypt … [H]e was unlike anyone I had ever met before. He was a living embodiment of what, until then, had been no more than theories in my mind, and I knew that I had finally met someone who was all of a piece, whole and consistent. He lived in a traditional home just outside the city, and to visit him and his wife, as I did almost every week, was to step out of the noisy bustle of modern Cairo and enter a timeless refuge, in which the inward and the outward were undivided, and in which the supposed realities of the world to which I was accustomed had but a shadowy existence.
Eaton continues in Islam and the Destiny of Man, showing how this embodiment helped him take the path of Islam. Also, a Muslim friend of mine whose father is a Buddhist, told me that when his father had read Muhammad he started to direct his meditation towards the Ka`bah in Makkah, as Muslims do in their prayer. The power of words coming from the heart is always indescribable.
The essence of what brought many people to admire his works is his ability to communicate realms of meaning and purposefulness with flowing smoothness. His work is the perfect proof that writing is a multilayered medium, in which all can find their plane. Those who go for the scripts of the text, by making up the words and sentences, are among the ranks of those who connect to the general inspiration, then with the author himself, and then with what is beyond him. As an author, Lings made it easy for the reader to “lose him”, Lings, in the text; by making his work an opening to all that’s beyond; by making it easy for the reader to travel there, using the momentum of the tuneful and inspiring flow.
Martin Lings was the type of Muslim scholar whose discourse one can pick up bit by bit, ascending stages of comprehension to then use his literary genius and rigor to fly higher and higher in the skies of meaning that exist between the lines, not in the darkness of ink. That knowledge is not about books; it is about the soul that epitomizes, that is the story. That is why he focused his intellectual power wholly to the study of a contemporary sheikh, Ahmad Al-Alawi, for his PhD. The embodiment of knowledge, of the beautiful, was his secret.
Our calamity in losing such a poet scholar, is of the saddest nature. One should read a prayer, Al-Fatihah, for his soul. A scholar’s worth is his or her ethos and example. The quintessence of Islam is knowledge: a knowledge that is not to be encapsulated in the shape of words; it is to be beautifully epitomized by mirroring divine light through one’s life. This is true life: illumination. Imam `Ali’s poetry, which is translated here, is a tribute to Sheikh Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din:
Excellence is but for the people of knowledge, for
In the seekers’ path they are the flare.
What a man is worth is what a man cultivates
And, to the knowledgeable, the ignorant are adversaries.
If you were to come from a nobility,
Ours is all exaltedness and hospitality.
Realize knowledge, an alternative pursue not.
People are dead; just the knowledgeable are animate.
Tarek A Ghanem is the editor of the Contemporary Issues page.
Remembering Martin Lings
Mazeni Alwi, Malaysiakini
Jun 1, 05
His most widely read book sits very conspicuously on the shelves of many a Muslim home - its bright blue jacket against which is the white lettering of the title ‘Muhammad: His life based on the earliest sources’.
When news of Ling’s passing circulated in cyberspace recently, I learnt that his biography of the Prophet of Islam has touched the lives of quite a number of friends, whose frank admissions rode on the eulogy by a Muslim from North America grateful that his life has been equally transformed.
The biography combines light scholarship and factual accuracy with what Muslims traditionally expect of a narration of the Prophet's life - a degree of respect and reverence for his person. He does away with extensive bibliography and footnotes despite what the title suggests (‘based on his earliest sources’) - not for want of scholarship, for Lings is more than capable of that, given his mastery of Arabic. For many years, he was keeper of Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum and later the British Library.
Instead he re-tells the familiar events of the Prophet's life in a narrative that is refreshingly simple but in such a beautiful language that his humanity shone through. Many readers must have had teary-eyed moments when reading some of the passages that recounted the hardship and tribulations of his early Mecca years.
Lings has filled a void for those Western-educated Muslims wishing to have a fresh start at understanding Muhammad, God's last messenger but who was also a loving husband and father, a loyal companion, a leader of his community, respected adversary and many more. Otherwise one would have to wade through Guillaume's translation of Ibn Ishaq's voluminous ‘Life of Muhammad’, with its convoluted text and style.
When his biography of the Prophet first appeared, I had not expected it to be a straightforward, traditional narration of his life, having read his earlier books ‘A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century - Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi’; his spiritual heritage and legacy (1961) and the two smaller books, ‘What is Sufism’ (1975) and ‘Ancient beliefs and Modern Superstitions’ (1965); and also his introduction to ‘Titus Burckhardt's Letters of a Sufi Master the Shaykh ad-Darqawi’ (1969).
Rather, given Lings' leaning towards Sufism, I thought it would be in a similar vein to ‘Anne Marie Shimmel's ‘And Muhammad is His Messenger - the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic piety’ (1985), weaving mystical symbolisms and interpretations into the biographical narration.
The story of Bahira the Christian Monk who thought that the young Muhammad bore the marks of the coming messenger, when as a 12-year-old, he (Muhammad) accompanying his uncle Abu Talib on a trade caravan to Syria, they stopped near the monk's cell, and the story of Isra' and Mi'raj, the Prophet's night journey to Jerusalem and his ascension to Heaven - both were narrated devoid of any references to mystical symbolisms.
Long, productive lives
Lings, Burckharft and Fritjof Schuon are notable figures who had gone beyond academic orientalism to steep themselves in the esoteric Islamic tradition of Sufism (Tasawwuf) - mastering the language, learning the texts and studying from the masters, to write eloquently as exponents of universal religious wisdom (‘religio perennis’, a term coined later by Schuon) to guide the modern man in finding back his balance in this secular milieu of spiritual poverty.
All of them lived long, productive lives, especially Schuon and Lings. The latter was 95 when he died recently. All three of them had association with the Darqawi branch of the Shadzili Tariqa of North Africa and reformulated the metaphysics of the Spanish mystic Ibn Arabi in the modern idiom in their writings for the western educated audience.
Lings and Schuon were deeply influenced by René Guénon, the French mathematician and gnostic who was disillusioned with the loss of the spiritual dimension in the West. He moved to Cairo in 1930 to steep himself in the Muslim tradition. Guénon took the name of Abdul Wahid Yahya and lived as an orthodox Muslim, was initiated into the Shadzili Tariqa and later wrote his influential books on the recovery of tradition as salvation for the modern man.
Lings first read Guénon's books in the early 30's and translated one of his earlier ones into English. He recommended his closest friend at Oxford, who was then lecturing at Cairo University to meet the very reclusive Guénon, and later became his assistant. As fate had it, taking a break from his lectureship in Lithuania, Lings went to visit his friend in Cairo in 1939 but unable to return because of the war. A year later his friend died in a riding accident and Lings had no option but to take his place as Guénon's assistant, and that was the start of his privileged relationship with him (meanwhile he also lectured on Shakespeare at Cairo University).
Guénon died in 1951 and Lings returned to England a year later where he took up a degree in Arabic at London University. Lings had been in special charge of Quran and other oriental manuscripts at the British Museum and British Library. Presumably it is from this background that he wrote ‘A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century - Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi’, his spiritual heritage and legacy, his other more readily available book.
‘A Sufi Saint’ is largely adapted from his PhD thesis for the University of London, and therefore unlike his biography of the Prophet, it is written in a distinctly academic style with extensive footnotes and references to classical Islamic texts, prophetic traditions (hadith) and the Quran. It provides readers with an interesting insight into one institution of traditional Muslim society - the practice and influence of Sufism, its formal structure and hierarchal order of masters and disciples, its teachings and methods of spiritual self-realisation.
Understanding Sufism
This is a useful book to gain a reasonable depth of understanding of Sufism and its various aspects through the examination of the life and works of a traditional master, who is perhaps among the last. I would like to dwell on this book in some detail as I feel it is more interesting than his other general work on Sufism and spirituality.
With the title ‘A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century’, perhaps Lings would like to convey that such a tradition, though documented in our time, is something of an anachronism of the modern age, that it would soon be weakened or diluted by the encroaching modernity. He gave an account of his subject, Shaikh Al-Alawi (Aliwah) who lived in Mostaganem, western Algeria in the early part of the 20th century when much of the Muslim world was on the threshold of a rapid change from its encounter with the West through colonialism.
This was also the period when the Muslim world was supposed to be its darkest depth of ignorance, degeneration and decay. The French colonial power had the policy of separating the settler communities from the native Agerians, minimising contacts between the two and thus largely preserving the traditional Muslim society and its institutions. He also provides a back drop of the social situation in the Muslim world during that era - the rise of modernist Muslims who uncritically wished to imitate the West, the puritanical Muslim reformers who attacked Sufism as a corruption of the faith, and the agitation of the young Turks against the Caliphate which the Shaikh witnessed during his visit to Istanbul.
The first half of the book consists of a biographical account of Shaikh Al-Alawi's life drawn from a number of sources - a French doctor who befriended the Shaikh, his own dictation to his scribe, testimonies of his disciple and the work of a French writer Berque - who wrote about ‘Shaikh Al-Alawi Un mystique Moderniste’ in the journal Revue Africaine in 1936. The title is a strange one, Lings notes. Berque's quotations show that the Shaikh was essentially very conservative.
His so-called 'modernism' appears to have been nothing other than the great breadth of his spiritual interests). Part 2 of the book deals with general aspects of Sufi metaphysics and mystical symbolisms with references from the Shaikh's works. It is interesting that Lings dedicated two chapters on the Shaikh's commentary on the ritual purification (wudhu) and the ritual prayer.
This was taken from his book ‘Al Minali Al Quddusiyyah’, a commentary on Ibn Ashir's guide to the essentials of religious knowledge, a book which all novices had to learn by heart to ensure that they have basic grounding in the outward, obligatory rituals before embarking on the spiritual path.
His commentary and explanation of the mystical symbolisms of these two basic every day rituals are astounding, given that the Shaikh did not have a formal education in a religious seminary and that he started life as a cobbler. Even more so are his mystical poems and aphorisms translated by Lings which make up Part 3 of the book.
If Parts 2 and 3 are informative about Sufism's intellectual dimension and methods, Part 1 is highly interesting to the curious modern reader for it provides an account of an extraordinary life which perhaps could only have been possible in a traditional Muslim environment. This is based first on the account of Dr Marcel Carett, a French doctor who had an intimate friendship with the Shaikh from 1920 until his death in 1934.
Christ-like face
Carrett, unlike his compatriots, was curious to understand and interact with the Arabs. He set up a clinic in the Arab quarter of Mostaganem and charged minimal fees. Within a few months of his arrival from France he was requested to examine the Shaikh who had a bout of influenza, and thereafter began his friendship with him. At least once a week he would visit the Shaikh and the two would engage a in conversation over a wide range of things usually in the garden of his Zawiya (religious centre where the Sufis gathered).
From Carrett's notes, Lings gives us an account of the Shaikh's personality, habits, his disciples and the people around him and their rituals of dhikr (exercises in the remembrance of God).
Of note is his first impression of Shaikh Al-Alawi's appearance whereby he was struck by his likeness to the usual representations of Christ, "including the fine lawn head-cloth which framed his face, his whole attitude - everything conspired to reinforce the likeness. It occurred to me that such must have been the appearance of Christ when he received his disciples ... that Christ-like face, that gentle voice, so full of peace, those courteous manners ... his taste for solitude and self-effacement ... . I was surprised by his broadmindedness and tolerance, I had always heard that every Moslem is a fanatic and could never have anything but the greatest contempt for non-Moslem foreigners".
Frequently they engaged in frank, probing conversations about faith and salvation as Carrett was an atheist steeped in the scientific rationalism of his day.
The other source materials that Lings drew to construct a biographical outline of Shaikh Al-Alawi is the account of his life that he had himself dictated to his scribe a few years before his death. This formed the second chapter of the book. His beginnings were humble and ordinary. He never went to school/seminary and his only early education was the evening Quran lessons from his father. As a young man he became a cobbler to support his poor family. His initiation into the Sufi path, his relationship with his teacher Shaikh Al Buzidi and his spiritual development makes for interesting reading for a twentieth century audience.
This is straight out of classic Sufi literature, which I feel merits to be reproduced here. He tells us of his inclination towards Sufism from an early age, first initiated into the Isawi Tariqa (Sufi order), from which he quickly distanced himself because of what he perceived as unIslamic practices.
The only thing he kept was the art of snake-charming which brought him into contact with his future teacher, Shaikh Al Buzidi, who had regularly come to visit his business partner in their shop.
'One day, when he was in our shop, the Shaikh said to me: "I have heard that you can charm snakes and that you are not afraid of being bitten". I admitted this. Then he said: "Can you bring me one now and charm it here in front of us?". I said that I could and going outside the town, I searched for half a day, but found only a small one... . This I brought back with me and putting it in front of him, I began to handle it according to my custom... . "Could you charm a bigger snake than this?" he asked. I replied that the size made no difference to me.
‘Then he said, "I will show you one that is bigger than this and for more venomous, and if you can take hold of it you are a real sage". I asked him to show me where it was, and he said : "I mean your soul which is between the two sides of your body. Its poison is more deadly than a snake's ... . Then he said : "Go and do with that little snake whatever you usually do with them, and never go back to such practices again", and I went out, wondering about the soul and how its poison could be more deadly than a snake's.’
Inspiration of the moment
Thus began his spiritual journey under the guidance of Shaikh Al Buzidi. He was a very gifted disciple who became the natural heir to his Syaikh when the latter died, and under his leadership the Darqawi Tariqah enjoyed phenomenal growth in Algeria and Morocco as well as other parts of the Islamic world where he travelled during his pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1926, he was invited to preach the first sermon and lead the first prayer of the Paris mosque.
Apart from his mystical poems and the more profound and abstruse works, he also wrote a couple of simple expositions of the elements of Islam, for it was his principle that the first thing to be done with a novice was to teach him his ordinary religious obligations according to his capacity.
Lings quoted a number of examples of how Shaikh Al-Alawi's reliance on inspiration of the moment, such as the decision to write his ideas down into books - which is one of the characteristics of mystics, but he also gave examples of his practicality and pragmatism, however much they might go against his natural inclinations.
He started a religious weekly newspaper, Al Balagh al Jazair in Algiers as a means of disseminating his teaching, seeking to safeguard Islam's dimension of breadth, and above all to restore what it had lost of its dimension of depth. He stressed the importance of knowledge of classical Arabic and pointed to the dangers of Westernisation. He also used the medium to defend Sufism as a wholly integral part of the Islamic tradition from attacks by puritanical reformers.
Shaikh Al-Alawi was also conscious of his role as he declares in one of his poems:
Then when the Giver vouchsafed that I might proclaim it,
He fitted me - and how I know it - to purify souls,
And girded upon me the sword of steadfastness,
And truth and piety, and a wine He gave me ...
... thus came I to pour it, nay, it is I that press it,
Doth any other pour it in this age?
Lings concluded the summary account of the Shaikh's life by a quotation by Schuon, taken from his eulogy ‘RahimahulLah’ published in Cahiers du Sud in 1935: "So much the greater good fortune is it to come into contact with a true spiritual representative of one of those forms (worlds which the modern west fails to understand) to come into contact with someone who represents in himself ... the idea which for hundreds of years has been the very life-blood of that civilisation ... To meet such a one is like coming face to face, in mid-20th century, with a medieval saint or a semitic patriarch, and this was the impression made on me by the Shaikh Al-Hajj Ahmad bin Aliwah, one of the greatest masters of Sufism, who died a few months ago at Mostaganem."
From his account of Shaikh Al-Alawi's life and his spiritual legacy, Lings has captured for the 20th century audience the vestige of that universe of traditional Islam where spirituality, of which Sufism is its formal expression, is the third pillar in that triumvirate of iman (faith), Islam (outward observance) and ihsan (goodness). Lings belonged to that select handful of scholars who had privileged access to that traditional universe and conveyed what he had absorbed of that to the reading public with great insight and eloquence.
It cannot be denied that some aspects of Sufi practices and teachings as exhibited by a number of its modern-day exponents are questionable, and later developments of Schuon's own Tariqah as available in the public domain are a sad testimony of this. But, it is also more evident today that western exponents of Sufism are bringing it fully into the fold of orthodox Islam, its natural home.
This owes in no small part to the likes of Lings, who undertook a serious study of Sufism - mastering its language, delving into its texts and chronicling its masters, rather than removing it from its Islamic moorings and distorting it into a form of exotic pseudospirituality as was the fashionable thing to do until recently in a secular world which has lost its capacity and awe for the Transcendent.
Alfatihah.
Post a Comment