The Unveiling Of The Mysteries And The Provision Of The Pious

theliterature. One of the most recent attempts to solve the riddle is by the well-known Iranian scholar,Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī Kadkanī, who thinks that Maybudī has confused Anṣārī with an earlierscholar from Herat to whom a Persian commentary on the Qur’an has been attributed, though notrace of it has yet been found.7 This is a plausible hypothesis, but, as Kadkanī acknowledges, itcannot be proven without a thorough analysis of the contents of Kashf al-asrār and the discoveryof at least some portions of the lost commentary.Whatever the actual situation of the book mentioned by Maybudī, there is no explicit referenceto it in the text, though there are many brief quotations from Anṣārī, mostly in Stage III. The textcalls him by two names, “Shaykh al-Islām ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī” and “the Pir of the Tariqah” (pīr-iṭarīqat, that is, “the elder of the path”), and on occasion by both names together. The majorityof the explicit citations take the form of whispered prayers, some of which are known from othersources. Many of the prayers are quoted more than once, often with significant textual variations,so it seems that Maybudī was citing them from memory. In many cases parts of these prayersand sayings are integrated into the text without any mention of Anṣārī. In addition, a numberof short passages are borrowed from Anṣārī’s Persian book about the stages on the path to God,Ṣad maydān (“One hundred fields”), some of them more than once, without any mention of theirsource. All unascribed borrowings from Anṣārī that I noticed are mentioned in the footnotes.When we look at the passages from Anṣārī, whether or not they are explicitly ascribed tohim, they amount to less than ten percent of Stage III, making Anṣārī a major source. Maybudīalmost never mentions any other authors by name. Keeler thinks that the second major Persiansource for Stage III “from the point of view of doctrine and mode of expression” is the famousclassic on love, Sawāniḥ (“Apparitions”) by Aḥmad Ghazālī (d. 520/1126), the younger brother ofMuḥammad al-Ghazālī, but she can offer no more than one example of an actual quote, along witha handful of quatrains also found in Aḥmad’s book.8 In fact, there is little evidence that Maybudīwas influenced by Aḥmad. The “doctrine and mode of expression” were in the air at this period ofIslamic history and were also prominent in the Persian works of Anṣārī, which Aḥmad may haveseen. These include the short Maḥabbat-nāma (“The book of love”) and the much longer Chihilu daw faṣl (“Forty-two chapters”).9 The same ideas were also present in the Arabic literature ofwhich Maybudī made a great deal of use.The most important Arabic source of Stage III, as Keeler mentions, seems to be Laṭāʾif al789Kadkanī names the scholar in question as Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Matt Ishtīkhanī, known as the Pir of Herat (a titleby which many later scholars call Anṣārī). See Kadkanī, “Pīr-i Harī.”Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics, p. 34, n. 137.For passages from both of these works, see my Divine Love (index, under Anṣārī).xiii

The Unveiling of the Mysteries and the Provision of the Piousishārāt (“Subtle allusions”), a seminal commentary on the Qur’an by Abu’l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d.465/1072), author of the famous Risāla (“The treatise”), a classic textbook about the Folk of Recognition and their teachings.10 Al-Qushayrī’s Qur’an commentary is made up of aphoristic sayingson the meaning of verses, sometimes a dozen or more for a given verse. Maybudī often quotes oneor more of these, sometimes translating them into Persian and expanding upon them in the process.Sometimes he does not quote the saying but simply translates it, and on other occasions he offersan expanded Persian version. I have noted most of these instances but may have missed a few.Altogether, less seems to be taken from al-Qushayrī than from Anṣārī.Maybudī often quotes sayings from great teachers and recognizers, like Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq,Abū Yazīd Basṭāmī, Junayd, or al-Ḥallāj, but these are taken from sources like the Qur’an commentary of al-Sulamī or Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ by Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī. The most importantsingle source for Stage III seems to be Rawḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ asmāʾ al-malik al-fattāḥ (“Therepose of the spirits: Explaining the names of the all-opening king”) by Maybudī’s contemporaryAḥmad ibn Manṣūr Samʿānī (d. 534/1140), a scholar from Marv (in today’s Uzbekistan). Thisis a Persian commentary on the ninety-nine names of God, written with great profundity andremarkable eloquence. Samʿānī died at the age of 46, so he would have been 32 when Maybudībegan his commentary in 520/1126. Thus it is likely that Samʿānī had not yet written Rawḥ alarwāḥ when Maybudī began writing. In any case, Maybudī apparently received a copy whenhe was busy composing the explanation of Surah 16. The first passage borrowed from it that Ihave found is under verse 16:66. From then on Maybudī quotes from Rawḥ al-arwāḥ repeatedly,so much so that the very tenor of the second half of Stage III alters in subtle ways that attentive readers will notice. Again, Maybudī never mentions Samʿānī’s name, nor does he suggestthat the borrowed passages are anything but his own words, with the exception of a handful ofinstances. Interestingly, in at least three cases (under 19:1, 21:89, and 45:5), he attributes passages taken from Rawḥ al-arwāḥ to the Pir of the Tariqah, the term by which he typically refersto Anṣārī. He may be using

Surah 5: al-Māʾida 156 Surah 6: al-Anʿām 171 Surah 7: al-Aʿrāf 191 Surah 8: al-Anfāl 218 Surah 9: al-Tawba 227 Surah 10: Yūnus 236 Surah 11: Hūd 247 Surah 12: Yūsuf 252 Surah 13: al-Raʿd 261 Surah 14: Ibrāhīm 267 Surah 15: al-Ḥijr 271 Surah 16: al-Naḥl 274 Surah 17: Banī Isrāʾīl 284 Surah 18: al-Kahf 2