Since the narrative which follows this introduction is written rather from the Persian and Shiah than from the Turkish and Sunni point of view, it is necessary for us to dwell briefly on two more important subjects in connection with Persian thought:—(a) on the love of metaphysical speculation which vindicates the claim of Aryan thought to be free, and which has given rise to the doctrines of Súfíism,—our immediate consideration; and (b) on the growth of Shiahism, the State religion, and more particularly in its relation to the Passion-Drama, which is the outcome of the Muharram celebrations in honour of Huseyn’s martyrdom.
Now the Súfís, who are split up into numerous sects, with slightly varying doctrines, speak of themselves as travellers, for they regard life as a journey from their earthly abode to the spiritual world. The stages between them and their destination are reckoned as seven. Some call them seven regions, and others seven towns. Unless the traveller get rid of his animal passions and pass safely through these seven stages he cannot hope to lose himself in the ocean of Union, nor slake his thirst for immortality in the unexampled wine of Love. The first region before the traveller, the region of Aspiration, can only be traversed on the charger of Patience. Though a thousand temptations beset him on the road he must not lose heart, but must seek to cleanse his mind from all selfish desires. Other-worldliness should alone absorb his thoughts, and to that end the gates of friendship and of enmity should be closed against the people of the world. Only thus can he find his way into the heart of the realm, wherein every traveller is a lover in search of the True Beloved.
One day Majnún, whose love for Laili has inspired many a Persian poet, was playing in a little sand heap when a friend came to him and said—“Why are you wasting your time in an occupation so childish?” “I am seeking Laili in these sands,” replied Majnún: whereat his friend, all lost in amazement, cried—“Why, Laili is an angel, so what is the use of seeking her in the common earth?” “I seek her everywhere,” said Majnún, bowing his head, “that I may find her somewhere.”
And so the traveller, on this stage of his pilgrimage, should regard no earthly abode as too humble a shrine for the spirit of the True Beloved. He should eat, but only to live; he should drink, but only to love; and, though all worldlings should be shunned, he should keep in touch with the hearts of his fellow-travellers lest, peradventure, he might lose a guide to his destination. Now, if he find in this region some sign from the Unsigned, and trace the lost Beloved, he will pass forthwith into the limitless bourne of Devotion, and see the setting of the sun of Inspiration, and watch in rapture the dawn of Love. At this time the crops of Wisdom are burnt in the fire of Affection, and the traveller loses all consciousness of self; he knows neither knowledge nor ignorance; he recognises neither certainty nor doubt; but, turning his back on the dusk of perplexity, he rides breast forward on the charger of Pain and Endurance, drawing ever nearer to the light of salvation. In this Kingdom of the Soul, he will know nothing but tribulation unless he strive strenuously to escape from himself on the wings of self-renunciation. “Oh, traveller, if thou wouldst gaze on the Joseph face of thy Beloved turn not away from the Egypt of Love! And wouldst thou attain to divine truth, oh learn the way of friendship from the grate, consuming thyself for the sake of the True Beloved! For the love that thou wouldst find demands the sacrifice of self to the end that the heart may be filled with the passion to stand within the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the True Beloved can be revealed unto thee. This is so.”
A PERSIAN SUFÍ OF THE ORDER OF THE LATE SEPHÍ ’ALÍ SHÁH.
And thenceforward the traveller, his heart aglow with the sacred fire of Love, tears aside the curtain of earthly passions, and wins his way into the Kingdom of Knowledge. He has passed by slow degrees from doubt into certainty and from darkness into light. Seeing with clearer eyes he is now quick to discern wisdom in ignorance and in oppression justice. Then, on ascending hopefully the ladder of Wisdom, he rises higher and higher above the ocean of being, and enters into closer communion with the spirit of the one he seeks. The arc of truth becomes an almost perfect round, and he is drawn irresistibly towards the centre, where dwells the object of his quest. After traversing the realm of knowledge, which is the last stage of fear, the traveller enters the first City of Union, and drinks deep from the bowl of its spirit: and the next thing he does is to enter the chamber of the True Beloved. As all the shine of the sea and its shade are reflected in the heart of a single pearl, so now the infinite splendour is manifested within the traveller’s soul. Looking round him with the eyes of Unity he recognises his true identity in that of his host, and reads the name of the Beloved in his own name. The circle of his aspirations will soon be complete, for the sun of divine grace is seen to rise equally on all creatures; and he is prepared in spirit to advance one step nearer the end. And soon, on the breeze of godly independence, which blows from the spirit’s flame and burns the curtain of poverty, the traveller is borne into the City of Freedom. There he will know no sorrow, but will pass through the gates of joy, and, though he be on the earth, will ride the heaven of power, and quench his thirst in the wine of love. The sixth stage on the road to immortality is that of Amazement. Sometimes he will notice perfect poverty in riches, and sometimes perfect wealth in poverty. His surprise will grow at every step. Each second will bring a fresh revelation. Now he will dive into the ocean of divine omniscience, and now be carried to the crest of omnipotence divine.
The traveller passes swiftly from this stage into the region of absolute poverty and nothingness, which is the true forgetfulness of self in the love of the Beloved. He is now as a pearl in the sea of the infinite splendour: poor in the things created, but rich beyond counting in the things that are spiritual and pure. And thus, casting aside the burden of consciousness for ever, he becomes one with the Beloved and enters the Kingdom of Immortality. The renunciation of self, therefore, is the Alpha and Omega of the Súfí doctrine: the lover, in other words, must turn the Beloved, otherwise he can never hope to gain admittance into the Chamber of Love. “One came to the Beloved’s door and knocked. And a voice from within whispered, ‘Who is there?’ And the lover answered, saying, ‘It is I.’ Then the voice said, ‘There is not room in this house for thee and me,’ and the door was not opened unto him. So the lover went back into the desert and fasted and prayed. And at the end of a year he returned once more to the Beloved’s door and knocked. And the voice from within said again, ‘Who is there?’ And this time the lover, having learned the lesson of self-renunciation, answered, ‘It is thyself,’ and the door was opened unto him.”
The Shiah faith is as old as ’Alí; for, on the feast of Ghadir, he is said to have been selected by Muhammad as his successor. In the ages immediately succeeding the Prophet, it spread itself East and West. The Muslim colonies, in various parts of the Empire, embraced its political teaching. It took root even in Mecca and Medina; but it was in Persia alone that it grew, in the Ninth Century, to be the State religion, waning and waxing in its hold on the people during the dynastic changes to which the country subsequently submitted itself; until, in the declining years of the Fifteenth Century, under the Safaví Kings, it re-established its grip, this time for good, on the national conscience. The mourning celebration of the month of Muharram, in which the whole country, with the exception of the Sunnis, takes part to this day, was founded in the Tenth Century by Ahmad Muizz-u’d-Dawlat. In order to appreciate the depth of feeling underlying this yearly commemoration, the reigns of the early Caliphs must be reviewed. For, in the story of the family of the Tent, lies the raison d’être of the Muharram celebration.
When Muhammad died he was succeeded by his father-in-law, Abú Bekr, a man of great prudence and sincere piety. His rule was accepted by all the Prophet’s companions, if we except the Hashemites, who, under the leadership of ’Alí, declined at first to take the oath of fidelity. But the death of Fatima, the wife of ’Alí, so subdued the spirit of her husband that he made his peace with the aged Caliph, who died after a reign of two years, bequeathing his sceptre to the iron hand of the incorruptible Omar. In the twelfth year of a reign of unexampled glory Omar was assassinated, and his successor was elected by six of his most trustworthy lieutenants. Othman, the man chosen by them, had been Muhammad’s secretary: he was not a successful ruler. His helpless character and resourcelessness of mind succumbed to the burden of his responsibilities; his subjects rose in arms throughout his Empire, and the treachery of one of his secretaries hastened his downfall. The brother of Ayeshah is believed to have led the assassins, and Othman, with the Kurán on his knees, was pierced with a multitude of wounds. He died in the year 655 A.D., in the eleventh year of his reign. The inauguration of ’Alí put an end to the anarchy that ensued; but, with all his bravery and all the brilliancy of his endowments, ’Alí was alike too forbearing and too magnanimous to cope successfully with the difficulties of his position. He was not so much a politician as a poet turned knight-errant, a religious enthusiast turned soldier. The first Caliph would have secured the allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most powerful of the Arabian chieftains, by gifts. Omar, the second Caliph, would have insured his authority and checked their lawlessness by casting them into prison. Whereas ’Alí, from purely chivalrous motives, left them to their own devices without, however, in his contempt for what he had condemned in another as self-seeking generosity, bribing them to keep the peace. And so Telha and Zobeir escaping from Medina, fled, and raised the standard of revolt in Assyria. The Prophet’s widow, Ayeshah, the implacable enemy of ’Alí, accompanied them, and was present at the battle in which the Caliph, at the head of twenty-nine thousand men, defeated the enemy, and in which the rebel leaders were slain. This battle was called the Day of the Camel: for, “in the heat of the action, seventy men, who held the bridle of Ayeshah’s camel, were successively killed or wounded; and the cage or litter in which she sat was struck with javelins and darts like the quills of a porcupine.” Ayeshah was reproached by the victorious ’Alí, and then sent under escort to Medina where she lived to the end of her days at her husband’s tomb.
Meanwhile, Moawiyah, the son of Abú Sophian, had assumed the title of Caliph and won the support of the Syrians and the interest of the house of Ommiyah, and against him ’Alí now marched. Mounted on a piebald horse, and wielding his two-edged sword with terrific effect, he literally ploughed his way through the ranks of the Syrians, crying out at every stroke of the blade, “God is victorious.” In the course of the night in which the battle raged he was heard to repeat “that tremendous exclamation” four hundred times. Nothing save flight would have saved his enemies, had not the crafty Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances the sacred books of the Kurán, thus turning the pious zeal of his opponents against themselves; and ’Alí, in the face of his followers’ awe, was constrained to submit to a humiliating truce. In his grief and anger he retreated to Kufa; his party was dejected; the distant provinces of Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt acclaimed his stealthy rival; and he himself, in the mosque of his city of refuge, fell a victim to a fanatic’s knife.
Moawiyah, after the death of ’Alí, brought about the abdication of the latter’s son Hasan, who, retiring without regret from the Palace of Kufá, went to live in a hermit’s cell near the tomb of the Prophet, his grandfather. There he was poisoned, and, as many believe, by his wife. But Huseyn, his younger brother, was not set aside so easily. In every way worthy to inherit the regal and sacerdotal office, he added to Hasan’s benevolence and piety, no insignificant measure of his father’s indomitable spirit, having served with honour against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople. So that, when Moawiyah proclaimed his son Yazid, who was as dissolute as he was weak-minded, to be the Commander of the Faithful and the successor of the Apostle of God, Huseyn, who was living in Medina at the time, scorned to acknowledge the title of the youth, whose vicious habits he despised. One hundred and forty thousand Muslims of Kufá and thereabouts professed their attachment to Huseyn’s cause, and a list of these adherents of his was transmitted to Medina. Against the advice of his wisest friends, he resolved to traverse the desert of Arabia, and to appear on the banks of the Euphrates—a river held sacred to this day by every Shiah. He set out with his family, crossed the barren expanse of desert, and approached the confines of Assyria, where he was alarmed by the hostile aspect of the country and “suspected either the ruin or the defection of his party.” His fears were well founded. Obeidullah, the Governor of Kufá, had quelled the rising insurrection; and Huseyn, in the plain of Kerbela, was surrounded by a body of five thousand horse, who cut off his communication with the city and the river. Rather than retreat to a fortress in the desert and confide in the fidelity of the tribe of Tai he proposed to the chief of the enemy the choice of three honourable courses of action—that he should be allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yazid. He was informed that he must surrender unconditionally or accept the consequences of his rebellion. “Do you think to terrify me with death?” he replied, and to his sister Zainab, who deplored the impending ruin of his house, he said: “Our trust is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and in earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother [Hasan], my father [’Alí], my mother [Fatima], were better than I am; and every Mussulman has an example in the Prophet.” His little band of followers consisted only of thirty-two horsemen and forty foot soldiers. He begged them to make good their own escape by a hasty flight; but they held firm to their allegiance, refusing to desert him in his straits. In return he prayed that God might accept his death as a propitiation for their sins; they vowed they would not survive him, and the family of the Tent, as Huseyn and his fellow-martyrs are lovingly called by the Shiahs, passed the night in holy devotions.
The last hours of their lives cannot be more tersely told, and therefore more suitably to our purpose, than in the words of Gibbon:
“On the morning of the fatal day, Huseyn mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Kurán in the other; his generous band of martyrs were secured in their flanks and rear, by the tent-ropes and by a deep trench which they had filled with lighted faggots, according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with reluctance, and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable death. In a very close onset, or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding multitude galled them from a distance with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain: a truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length expired by the death of the last of the companions of Huseyn. Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. As he tasted a drop of water he was pierced in the mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths, were killed in his arms. He lifted his hands to heaven; they were full of blood, and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport of despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians that he would not suffer Huseyn to be murdered before his eyes; a tear trickled down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying hero threw himself among them. The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the Faithful, reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three and thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of Kufá, and the inhuman Obeidullah struck him on the mouth with a cane. ‘Alas!’ exclaimed an aged Mussulman, ‘on these lips have I seen the lips of the Prophet of God!’ In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Huseyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader. On the annual festival of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of sorrow and indignation.”
The date of Huseyn’s death was the tenth of Muharram. The month is one of mourning throughout the Shiah world, every man and every woman wearing black, and Passion plays based on the tragedy of the Tent being performed in all the chief cities and even in the more important villages of Persia, while the day itself is made the occasion of a yearly outburst of grief, of rage, and of fanaticism, which is as unbridled as it is sincere. On this the Day of Cutting, processions bearing banners draped in black pass weeping through the streets; the Muslim Friars, or, to give them their true title, the Seyyid Rúsé Kháns, lead the way, rending their naked breasts with knives or with needles, and swelling the shouts of “Yá-Huseyn! Yá-Hasan!” with the refrains of their wildest hymns. The flow of blood drives the populace beside itself. In every thoroughfare men of the lower classes run to join the ranks of the mourners, laying bare their right shoulders and breasts to the weapons they carry. And soon every ward of every city in the country echoes and re-echoes, not less to the curses showered on the head of Omar, than to the cries in lamentation of ’Alí’s assassination, of Hasan’s murder, and of Huseyn’s martyrdom. The universal mourning animates the collective body of the nation as with one soul. If it is mixed with a mean hatred for a man of unrivalled integrity and force of character, it is still, as the expression of the nation’s love for its chosen hero, a sentiment of loyal devotion and enduring compassion. The noise of the grief over Huseyn’s remote death may ring discordant, unphilosophic, and almost barbaric, in these days of the lukewarm enthusiasms and uninspiring scepticism which sap the energies of the more cultured of mankind; but it rings all the more moving to those who can hear and understand. For “it is the noise of the mourning of a nation” mighty in its grief, as Lionel Tennyson has it.
So true and so deep is this outburst of sorrow that every Englishman who believes the Persian people to be corrupt should weigh well his evidence before he passes a sentence so sweeping and so unjust. The nobility of a nation is dependent, not so much on ends which consist in “immediate material possession” of European means and methods of transport, as “on its capability of being stirred by memories,” on its faculty to animate an alien creed with the breath of its own spirit, or on the courage of its conscience to remain incorruptible in the day of persecution and death. These tests, though they be of the spirit and as such unworthy of the consideration of a trading nation and a commercial age, would, if applied to Persia, raise that distressful country to the rank of the first eminence. The power of steam, though it rules the waves and devours distance, has its limits as a civilising influence, among mankind. It cannot fill the hungry heart, though it may be the means of overloading the belly; much less, if less may be, can it inspire in the soul by its achievements the passion whereof the religious drama of Persia is the embodiment. The incorruptibility of the Persian’s outlook on spiritual truth has been vindicated in the blood of countless martyrs, and out of his susceptibility to be inspired by the heroism of the mighty dead, or, to put the proposition more particularly, out of his unfeigned devotion to the memory of the family of the Tent, has sprung the Shiah Passion-drama, as from the depth of a whole Empire’s sorrow. Were it not so, the growth of the Miracle-play, that passionate outcry of the Aryan spirit in the Persian Muslim, would be a miracle indeed.
The truth is, the Shiah religious drama makes a most touching appeal to the best qualities of the heart and the mind. In its pathos, the episode of the Tent recalls the tragedy of Calvary, and the virtues of the members of the House of Hashem might have been modelled on those of the twelve Apostles of Christ. The sublime figure of Huseyn stands out among them as the redeemer of his people. As the Founder of Christianity was tempted of the devil in the wilderness to forego His lofty mission that He might gain a worldly kingdom, so Huseyn, in the scene on the plain of Kerbela, rejects the assistance offered to him by the King of the Jinns on purpose to atone for the sins of his people by death. On the Cross Christ’s heart forsook him—once, and only once. It was when He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” In like manner the heroic Huseyn, within sight of Kufá, having to baffle the attack of Yazíd and his hosts by turning aside from the direct road leading to his city of refuge, and seeing the exceeding anguish of his beloved sister Zainab, had felt the sting of his own destiny: “Ye crooked conducted spheres,” he had cried, “how long will ye tyrannise over us? How long will ye act thus cruelly to the family of God’s Prophet?” Then, nerving himself to the trial, he prophesied his death on the morrow, and said, with his customary fortitude, that the sacrifice of himself and his companions was not a cause for grief, since it would work for the salvation of his grandfather’s people; and thenceforward his resolution to meet the fate he had chosen for himself never swerved; not even when the very angels of heaven sought to save his life from sheer love of a soul so dauntless and so incorruptible.
The reward of his martyrdom is won in the last scene of all, which represents the resurrection. The Prophet, failing to save his followers from punishment, notwithstanding the united efforts of himself, of ’Alí, and of Hasan, throws away his rod, his cloak, and his turban, in his disappointment. Nor is he in the least pacified until Gabriel makes it clear to him that Huseyn, who “has suffered most,” must lend him the assistance he requires. The compassionate heart of the man is wrung, so that when Huseyn makes his appearance it is to receive from his magnanimous grandsire the key of intercession. The Prophet says to him: “Go thou, and deliver from the flames every one who hath in his lifetime shed a single tear for thee, every one who hath in any way helped thee, every one who hath performed a pilgrimage to thy shrine, or mourned for thee, and every one who hath written tragic verses to thee. Bear each and all with thee to Paradise.” And this being done, all the sinners redeemed by their mediator enter into heaven, crying: “God be praised! by Huseyn’s grace we are made happy, and by his favour we are delivered from destruction.”
One word more. Among the sinners whom Muhammad commanded Huseyn to rescue from hell-fire, as the reader will have read, perhaps with a smile, were those who had written tragic verses in praise of the martyr of the Tent. His smile may, possibly, ring out in a laugh when we inform him that the Seyyid Rúzé Kháns, the Shiah friars, are said to have been the originators of the Passion-drama. The foresight of the authors in thus securing for themselves an entrance into Paradise and for their fellow-writers the yearly prayers of the endless generations of mankind, was it not ingenuously artful?