Spiritual Purification in Islam: The Life and Works of al-Muhasibi

In 1935 the British scholar Margaret Smith published An Early Mystic of Baghdad, the first major study in a European language on the life and thought of al-Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857), considered by many to be the first major moral psychologist of Islam. The work was followed five years later by Abd-el-Halim Mahmoud's al-Mohasibi: Un Mystique Musulman Religieux Et Moraliste, originally completed as a doctoral dissertation under the able supervision of the well-known Catholic theologian and Islamicist Louis Massignon. The author would go on to become the rector of al-Azhar University from 1973 to 1978. Since the pioneering works of Smith and Abd-el-Halim, and later Joseph van Ess, Muhasibi has been the subject of a range of studies, each of which has focused on different facets of his thought. The present monograph by Gavin Picken builds on the research carried out to date with painstaking attention to the primary sources and with a particular focus on Muhasibi's concept of tazkiyat al-nafs or “purification of the self.”Picken's study is divided into five chapters. After briefly overviewing the relevant scholarship in the field over the course of the last century, he turns to a survey of the main ascetic and intellectual currents to which Muhasibi was heir in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire and the city in which he spent most of his life. Following a short discussion of the nature and origins of Baghdadi mysticism in Basran ascetic pietism, Picken then explores the place of the Mutazilites in Abbasid society and the well-known mihna or “inquisition” instituted by the caliph Ma'mun under their influence. In the second chapter he presents a brief synopsis of Muhasibi's life, followed by a third chapter where he summarizes the main contents of Muhasibi's extant works, published and unpublished, with a terse foray into the debate surrounding the chronology of his writings. Here Picken tends to incline, with some minor caveats, toward the argument put forward by Abd-el-Halim that Muhasibi's writing can be divided into three periods, each of which reflects a growing interest in and mastery of Sufism and the science of the soul and a corresponding gravitation away from more conventional theological subjects. The minor caveats in question are rooted in Picken's understandable reservations in using the subject matter of Muhasibi's books as a gauge by which to determine when they were written.Chapters 4 and 5, which form almost half of the entire monograph, focus on the theme of self-purification. Picken begins with an extensive Scriptural and semantic analysis of the concepts of the “self” (nafs) and “purification” (tazkiya) before turning to shed further light on the subject by exploring the views of some prominent classical and modern commentators. While his selection of authors may come across as somewhat arbitrary, and breaks the diachronic development of the study, the survey nevertheless sets the groundwork for an in-depth examination of Muhasibi's own views, a task that Picken accomplishes with considerable skill. Here he demonstrates, through a close reading of a wide range of the medieval moral psychologist's literary corpus, Muhasibi's overriding concern with mastering and taming the “lower soul” through a process of introspective examination and spiritual combat. Muhasibi, we are shown, continuously encourages the spiritual aspirant to remain conscious of the stratagems and machinations of the nafs, which, unless reformed, inclines toward ease and comfort and resists the sacrifices that are demanded by the spiritual life. “Be its [al-nafs] adversary opposing that which it invites you to,” Muhasibi writes, and “spend all your time mortifying its desires, burying its wishes and be cautious concerning its aspirations and procrastination” (185); “abase it,” he counsels elsewhere, “as God has abased it” (182). While the markedly self-lacerating nature of the regimen of moral and spiritual discipline offered by Muhasibi may be difficult for modern readers to appreciate, it was nevertheless a characteristic feature of early modes of Islamic ascetic piety, and our medieval moral psychologist was among the first in Muslim history to theoretically outline its defining features. For this reason alone Picken's well-researched monograph fills a major gap in scholarship to date.Some of the most significant contributions of Picken's work lie in his reconstruction of the notion of self-purification from Scriptural sources. The book also demonstrates, through a meticulous reading of Muhasibi's works, how it was that the idea of tazkiyat al-nafs came to be established very early on in Islamic history through a meditation on Islam's primary revelatory sources. Indeed, the themes explored by Muhasibi would become leitmotifs of later Sufism, particularly those aspects of the tradition concerned first and foremost with praxis or mu'amala. Scholars of Sufism would do well by acquainting themselves with the present work in order to retrace some of the concepts that would come to the forefront of inquiry by later thinkers—from Makki (d. 996) and Ghazali (d. 1111) to Ibn ‘Abbad (d. 1390) and Ahmad Zarruq (d. 1493)—to their origins in Muhasibi. Yet another feature that sets this study apart is the serious use that Picken has made of contemporary Arabic scholarship. One of the drawbacks of scholars who work in Western languages is that they sometimes fail to make sufficient use of the very useful research carried out in the Middle East by academics who, regardless of their confessional or theological orientation, have a remarkable grasp of the medieval texts themselves. In this respect, Picken has admirably brought together the best of what is offered by two different streams of scholarship. All things considered, the present monograph is a fine addition to our growing body of research on Sufism, the Quran, and early Islamic history.

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