Martin Lings in memory
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

His most widely read book sits very conspicuously on the shelves of many a muslim home – its bright blue jacket against which are the white lettering of its title Muhammad : His life based on the Earliest Sources. When news of his passing circulated in cyberspace recently, I learnt that Martin Lings’ 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 by Lings 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 Martin Lings is more than capable of that, given his mastery of Arabic and for many years he was keeper of Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum and later the British Library. Instead he retells the familiar events of the Prophet’s life in a narrative that is refreshingly simple but in such a beautiful language that the 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 convoluted text and style.

When his biography of 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 2 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.

Martin Lings, Titus 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 recently died. All 3 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.

Martin Lings and Firtjof Schuon were deeply influenced by René Guénon, the French mathematician and gnostic who was disillusioned with the west’s loss of the spiritual dimension. 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 at Cairo University on Shakespeare).

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 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-realization. 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. Martin Lings gave an account of his subject, Shaikh Al-Alawi (Aliwah) who lived in Mostaganem, Western Algeria in the early part of the twentieth 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 algerians, minimizing 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 2 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, which was 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 2 basic everyday 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 II and III are informative about Sufism’s intellectual dimension and methods, Part I 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. Dr. 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 was having a bout 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 Dr. 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 Dr. 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’.

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 westernization. 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 Fritjof 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 civilization … To meet such a one is like coming face to face, in mid twentieth 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, Martin Lings has captured for the twentieth 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). Martin 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 Martin 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.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi