The publisher's introduction

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

By Thee I praise Thee, and by Thee am I able to laud and thank Thee; for otherwise, whence should hollow phantoms have power, and will, and a tongue, that what we see and hear should issue from them? The limbs have not spoken save by the direction of Thy providence, nor known anything save by Thy sustaining aid. So sustain me with Thy knowledge, give me life by Thy life, shape my character by Thy character, and make me happy with the reality of what Thou willest for Thy sincere servants. And if I have been saying “not for Thee,” then make me say “for Thee,” since it is by Thee that I am; and do not give what is Thine to another. Make my humanity (nāsūtīyah) spent away in Thy divinity (lāhūtīyah); let error be held far from me and stumbling kept aside; and let me see Thee with the eye of my intellect (ʻaql). For there is no life for a frame set upon matter gathered out of the particles of the dust and then diversified in outward show, and no happiness (saʻādah) for one who prefers sights that change their colour from one hour to the next. Therefore I implore Thee to make my spirit (rūḥ) revived with a spiritual life the inmost truth of which Thou knowest; and do not put off my reviving, for Thou knowest its agitation within its frame and its yearning toward its happiness. And it is from Thee that I invoke blessing upon him whom Thou madest the chosen one and rendered perfect, in whom humanity came to its term so that it appeared in its clearest manifestations, and who took on the character until he became tender and merciful: our lord and master Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd Allāh, whose body appeared in Makkah and was hidden away in al-Madīnah, and whose noble name came to be present throughout the world; and upon his family and his companions, who held to his course and so were made happy in the first world and in the last.

To proceed. Since happiness is the lost thing the human species goes seeking, and man is worthy of pursuing it so that his life shall not be squandered away between care and grief, delusion and fancies, sicknesses and pains, expansion and constriction, hardship and ease, poverty and wealth, honour and abasement — all of which, the moment he enters his grave, becomes a tale of what once was — it is a duty upon whoever retains any grip of intellect and discrimination to strive toward that for which he was created, and toward that by which he becomes a vicegerent in the earth of the wise Maker, and that by which he came to be upon the form of the Merciful. And we have seen none who set it out and gave it its full due like the Book of Happiness (Kitāb al-Saʻādah) of the moral philosopher Abū ʻAlī ibn Miskawayh; for he wrote in such a way that the breast is expanded by it and one is carried through to the intended end, if a man is in earnest and strives.

It belongs to wretchedness in the present life that a man should strive with earnestness and exertion after a certificate (shahādah) that will bring him to an immediate post, or to a rank that raises his standing among his associates, joining night to day and spending himself utterly in it, and yet not strive after the testimony by which he passes the obstacles of the abiding abode and in virtue of which he attains entry into the gardens of bliss, the abode of permanence.

What is that testimony? It is a testimony to the goodness of his course and his conduct in this world of his — with his own soul (nafs), with his Creator, and with His creatures; for this world is nothing but a copy and a small extract of the world to come.

What a pity, then, for a nation that supposed happiness to be the hoarding of wealth and the cramming of bodily frames with the varieties of foods and drinks, that raced one another in the acquiring of sleek horses and towering palaces and took pride in servants and retinue and lineage, and left their souls to what they crave, and neglected their spirit and the law of their Lord, all the while reckoning that they were doing good work.

And how great a nation that knew the road of happiness and walked it and set its course toward it, and preferred the life of its spirit to the upkeep of its frame, so that what is hard for a nation which has spent itself in the service of the frame and in guarding what the soul commands came easy to it; that judged the best conveyance to happiness to be adornment with the attributes of lordship and divestment of the satanic attributes; that held it certain that the effacing of the marks of caprice upon it is a duty, and the establishing of what the marks of intellect and good sense require of it is binding; and that gave the lord of the body his due and did not invert the order, making the lord a thing lorded over, the master a slave, and the ruler the ruled.

Wouldst thou make the intellect the prince of caprice — when it is over caprice that the intellect is prince?

So it was revived by its spirit and looked upon it, and saw it glittering, gladdened by what it beholds of the secrets of the kingdom, sunk in the seas of majesty and omnipotence, made rich by the wealth of its own attributes above the inert matter of this lower world, apprehending delights (ladhdhah) which none apprehends save one who has cleared away the film upon the eye of his heart that bars its sight from the rays of the Real and of the realities.

Many a speaker may fall to doubting, and objection may carry him against me: How dost thou commend thine own opinions and press the nation to thy notions? — and out of the scent of thy speech one catches a distaste for good appearance, for the keeping of cleanliness, and for the enjoyment of the delights of this first life, when that has been made lawful to us. For He said, exalted be He who speaks: “Say: who has forbidden the adornment of God, which He has brought forth for His servants, and the good things of provision?” And His word: “Take your adornment at every place of prayer.” And the word of the Prophet, God bless him and grant him peace, urging cleanliness: “Cleanliness is part of faith.” And his word, upon him be peace, also: “God loves to see the trace of His favour upon His servant.” And his word also: “Honour thy hair” — and honouring it means attending to it with washing and combing and perfuming. And his word also: “Three things of your world have been made beloved to me: women, and perfume; and the delight of my eye has been set in prayer.” And his word, upon him be peace, also: “God loves the clean devotee, and God abhors filth and unkemptness” — and though this last is weak in transmission, it is still acted upon in what neither makes a forbidden thing lawful nor a lawful thing forbidden. And so with others among the traditions that point to the enjoyment of the outward things of this first constitution, together with a halt at the bounds of the Law and no trespass upon the divine preserve. Not at all! Rather, look closely, review your own soul, and press it to reflection and thought. For haste has often brought a people to ruin, until it carried them to impugning and belittling the speaker, wrongfully and in enmity; the current of ideas stood still, each was content with what he had, the truth was buried, and a man grew pleased with what he sees and what he has understood, mocking what you have, out of his own dullness. Rather, the duty of one who has not known and has not tasted is to submit.

And if in the faculties of apprehension you are a novice — and then behold an adept, do not dispute And if you do not see the new moon, then defer — to men who have seen it with their own eyes

Yes, noble reader — may God give you the enjoyment of your spirit and make it over your body a far-reaching sovereign.

What we aim at is that a man should not set his whole concern upon his belly and his clothing and leave the spirit and its service. And thus al-Shāfiʻī said to a man who found fault with him for not attending to his clothes as that man judged fitting for himself, for all his own neglect of his soul:

Though a copper coin be above the worth of my garment — yet within it I have a soul beneath whose worth all mankind falls Your garment is a sun with darkness beneath its rays — and my garment a night with the sun beneath its gloom

And your likeness, in your service of your body and its outside while you abandon the inside, is nothing but an egg whose outside is fair and whose inside is foul.

Let no laundered clothes deceive you — they are clean by soap and water They are like the egg when it has gone bad — its shell is white, and the inside carrion

And the words of another:

Let no man brought low be pleased with the fineness of his attire — and does the excellence of a shroud gratify one buried?

And the Prophet, God bless him and grant him peace, said: The most hateful of servants to God is he whose garment is better than his deed — that his clothes should be the clothes of the prophets and his deed the deed of tyrants.

Further, al-Mubarrad, the author of al-Kāmil, saw a man pleased with himself and with his dress, and said:

O you who put on clothes and swagger in them — with the swagger of kings over certain poor men The saddlecloth never altered the natures of donkeys, nor — the embroidery of packsaddles the natures of nags

Enjoyment, then, as I have said, is sought by the human species; otherwise the creation of these things would be idle play, and that does not befit the Wise. So the best of you is he who takes of this and of that and joins the two matters together, his service of the spirit prevailing, so that he becomes alive in his life, in his grave, in his raising and in his gathering, and is threaded into the file of the spiritual ones and merged into the company of those brought near before a Sovereign beautiful and all-powerful.

So beware, O man, of being a thicket within your own frame, holding a snake that strikes and a scorpion that stings, a leopard that tears and a camel that nurses rancour, a dog that dodges and a hare that turns coward before the truth, thorns and thistles that hurt, a lion that preys, and an ape with no portion but mimicry. Rather it is for you to be a garden, holding water unstagnant that takes thirst away, and roses that gladden the beholder, and sweet herbs that revive the smell, and a curlew upon your tongue that gives the hearing delight. And no wonder: you are the cream of the world, and the world is folded up within you. And thus we grieve for humanity, for it has been tormented by its own frame — and you are one of those who chewed it with the mouth and pricked it with the nib of the pen. And a wonder it is: out of our ignorance of the worth of humanity we have looked at man by his mere shape, and the fineness of his features, and the goodness of his figure, and the abundance of his display, and the sweetness of his tongue in hypocrisy and deceit, and palms soft to the touch — while in the breast are fires of rancour and envy and hatred.

Soft to the touch of hands are their bodies — but in the breasts, by my life, the burrs grow And this arises from ourselves, because we have not striven to purify them of the turbidities of corrupt character, nor has it ever crossed our minds; so our states went bad, our words fell into disorder, our resolves grew blunt, and we came to be pained in company and desolate in closeness, a man fleeing from his brother and his intimate — for the spirits were eclipsed by what veiled them from their clarity and their radiance. And each of us complains of life and its misery and what he endures; whereas had we been of those who serve the spirit with a true service, life would have been for us a paradise brought forward and a perfect bliss, for all the sicknesses and afflictions that befall us — since these all dissolve away at the spirit's sensing that there is a spirit which pities it and a heart sincere toward it, so that those pains are shared out among individuals and thereby made light. And this is what the guide of the nation to what holds its welfare meant for us: the believers, in their mutual love and mercy and sympathy, are like the body — when one member of it suffers, the rest of the body is summoned to it with fever and sleeplessness.

And given what has become plain to us from the testing of the nation and its manners, there is no blaming him who said:

The wolf howled, and I took comfort in the wolf when it howled — and a man's voice sounded, and I all but took flight

And the words of another:

Of the mass of these people there is nothing abiding left — for fancy to lay hold of, except these shapes

And the words of Diʻbil al-Khuzāʻī:

How many are the people — nay, how few they are; God knows that I have not spoken folly Truly I open my eye, when I open it — upon a multitude, and yet I see no one

And the words of another:

God has let go to waste all the letters I gathered — among the donkeys and the sheep and the cattle You would say, if they keep silent, “the eagle”; and if they speak — I say: frogs between the water and the trees

And the words of another:

If you discourse of knowledge and jurisprudence — then in their eyes you are a dolt and a bore But if you discourse of fish and greens — then in their eyes you are a man of nobility

Perhaps, on reading these words, you find in yourself a longing to see the man, and you would love the enjoyment of sitting with him, and you yearn for his friendship. But where is the man? He has journeyed on, and in the neighbourhood of his Lord he has taken up his lodging.

If you would love to see him and long to look upon him, then study the Muḥammadan biography (al-sīrah al-Muḥammadīyah) and call those attributes to mind in the person of our lord and master Muḥammad, God bless him and grant him peace: you will find that he is the perfect man (al-insān al-kāmil), by virtue of the lofty character and the great, exalted spirit that were his.

And no wonder: God, exalted be His remembrance, loved to see the image of His beauty in the world, since a thing's seeing of itself by itself is not like its seeing of itself in a form other than it. So He created Muḥammad, God bless him and grant him peace, and brought him into being, and purified him of the human turbidities, and he took on His character. And therefore he said, God bless him and grant him peace: “Take on the character of God”; and his word also: God created Adam upon the form of the Merciful.