A major type of Arabic oration is the sermon of pious counsel (khuṭbat al-waʿẓ). Rooted in the pre-Islamic desert-dweller’s deep consciousness of cosmic cycles and human mortality, it was channeled by Muḥammad’s monotheistic vision toward cultivating virtue and piety in preparation for the afterlife. All in all, the sermon of pious counsel showcases a uniquely Arabian and Islamic outlook on the purpose of human existence. In the following pages, various aspects are examined alongside copious textual examples: themes and imagery, universal relevance and historical grounding, formulae and patterns, as well as thematic penetration into other types of oration and prominence in non-oratorical genres. The final section of the chapter transcribes the text, translation, and analysis of an illustrative sermon attributed to the Khārijite commander Qaṭarī ibn al-Fujāʾah.1
1 Three Major Themes: Piety and Obedience, Imminence of Death, and Preparation for the Hereafter
The sermon of pious counsel contains three core themes: (1) piety, virtue, and obedience, (2) the imminence of death, and (3) this world and the hereafter. A handful of pieces are attributed to the pre-Islamic period, while hundreds are recorded for the first two centuries of Islam. The pre-Islamic pieces focus on the transience of human life. The Islamic sermons, while continuing that theme, build on it to exhort the audience to perform good deeds and prepare for the eternal life to come.
1.1 Piety, Virtue, and Obedience
The first major theme is piety in consciousness of God (taqwā), coupled with obedience to him (ṭāʿah). This umbrella topic subsumes a vast array of ethical and religious injunctions and references complex issues of theology.
1.1.1 Piety and Virtue
Expressing a fundamental concept in Islam, the verbal nouns and imperatives of taqwā (piety/virtue) are among the most frequent lexemes of the Qurʾan and hadith, and also of the Muslim sermon of pious counsel, whose lines are permeated by the formula “I counsel you to piety” (أوصيكم بتقوى الله). The Qurʾanic verse «Gather your provisions! The best of provisions is piety» ﴾وَتَزَوَّدُواْ فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ ٱلزَّادِ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ﴿2 is frequently quoted. Occurring either as an independent section, or among a list of other moral injunctions, it intersects with all other themes of counsel.
Taqwā entails possession of a comprehensive set of humanitarian virtues and religious merits. Often rendered imprecisely as “fear of God,” Muslims understand it to mean something more than simple fear. As with many signifiers that are culture-specific, no English word or phrase exactly conveys its full range of implications, but its scope comes close to the English (Christian) usage of “God-fearing,”3 or the biblical Mosaic command to “be holy” (Hebrew: qedoshim).4 In Islam, taqwā means desisting from evil deeds, fearing God’s retribution for any wrongs you may do, being aware that God sees and knows everything, and indeed, most importantly and paradoxically, being in awe of him while also taking comfort from his presence at all times.5 This attitude entails believing in God, being ever conscious of him, and thus always thinking and acting righteously. Depending on the particular grammatical and rhetorical presentation of the term, I translate taqwā in this book as “consciousness of God” or “piety.”
Among leaders in early Islam, some are singled out as prolific and effective orators of pious counsel. Muḥammad is for Muslims the first and foremost guide, and, in addition to the Qurʾan, which he is believed to have brought from God, his own words, that is, the hadith (of which his orations form a subset), are revered as the wisest of counsel and the product of divine inspiration. Many hadith exhort taqwā. In one oration, Muḥammad urges God’s worship, good words and deeds, and empathy and piety, saying:6
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Worship God and do not assign partners to him. «Practice piety as it should be practiced.»7 Follow your good deeds with good words. Love each other with the spirit of God moving among you. |
اعبدوا الله ولا تشركوا به شيئًا. ﴿اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهٖ﴾ وصدّقوا صالح ما تعملون بأفواهكم. وتحابّوا بروح الله بينكم. |
Among Muḥammad’s Companions, it is the sermons of ʿAlī that are held up as the gold standard for brilliant eloquence and sage advice.8 In a long sermon describing the pious, he lays out in minute detail the virtuous characteristics, hereafter-focused aspirations, and entirely godly way of life of those who truly deserve the epithet. Drawing on the Qurʾan and hadith, he presents virtue and piety as two indivisible sides of the same coin.9 The sermon begins with a general statement: “The pious (muttaqūn) in this world are people of good character.” It goes on to give a list of ethical and religious traits: They “speak sensibly,” “dress simply,” and “walk humbly.” They are “deeply conscious of God’s greatness and bounties,” and “do not care for the world.” It is as though they “see paradise and hell in front of their eyes.” Their “bodies are emaciated, their needs few, their souls chaste.” They pray all night, standing before God, and reciting the Qurʾan. They possess amazing virtues, including “strength in religion, maturity with gentleness, belief with conviction, passion for knowledge, and moderation in wealth.” They are kind to their fellow humans, for they “forgive those who have oppressed them, give to those who have refused them, and are compassionate to those who have shunned them.” They are “dignified in times of calamity, patient in times of misfortune, and grateful to God in times of ease.” Seen in this sermon and elsewhere, the invitation to piety frames the entire oration. When placed at the beginning, it controls the rest of the pious counsel, serving as a hook on which to hang the more specific pieces of advice.
Orators often expound a rationale for piety—directives whose reasoning is understood are much more likely to be followed. Not only do they instruct their audience to practice piety, they tell their listeners why it is imperative, even natural, that they do so. Some formulations present piety as gratitude for God’s bounties, others as protection from the vices and vicissitudes of this world, and yet others as the means for salvation. ʿAlī often follows his commands to practice piety with an explication of the impetus compelling the command, of which the following are some examples: You should practice piety, “because God created you.”10 You should practice piety because it will take you to “the vast homeland, the protecting refuge, the mighty stations, on a day in which … the trumpet will sound.”11 You should practice piety because it is “the key to righteousness, a treasure stored for the return, freedom from subjugation, and salvation from destruction.” You should practice piety because “through it the prisoner of the world, the one who would escape it, attains salvation in the hereafter, and through it the seeker succeeds, and wishes are fulfilled.”12 You should practice piety because it is “a mighty house of protection, while immorality is a house that gives little protection … It is through piety that the scorpion-sting of sin is healed.”13 You should practice piety because it “is the best counsel you as God’s servants can give one another, it brings you closest to God’s pleasure, it fetches the best results”—and indicating inexorable finality of purpose—“you have been commanded to practice piety, and created to do good and obey God.”14 The Umayyad caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who is also credited with a large number of pious sermons, depicts piety as the spiritual provision for the journey into the hereafter: “All travelers must carry provisions, so gather supplies of piety from your worldly abode for your journey to the afterlife.”15 The Umayyad governor Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar portrays piety as the natural behavior of beings whose mortality is assured, saying, “Servants of God, remain conscious of him, for there is many a person who harbors hopes he will not attain, gathers wealth he will not consume, and protects that which he will soon leave behind.”16
In addition to counseling audience members, orators often counsel themselves to piety. ʿAlī opens a sermon saying “Servants of God, I counsel you and I counsel myself to remain conscious of God and obey him, prioritize good deeds and abjure worldly hopes.”17 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz often says to his addressees that he did not exempt himself from his own advice. He exclaims in one sermon, “I seek refuge in God—God forbid that I command you to do something that I do not do myself, breaking thereby my covenant and exhibiting my shame! If so, my deficiency would become manifest on the day in which rich and poor are [resurrected], scales set up, and limbs speak out [about their owner’s sins].”18
Except for this ʿUmar, the historical narrative presents Umayyad rulers as generally impious—and if the characterization is correct, it would indicate that the pious counsel offered in their Friday sermons was dictated by convention. The early Shiʿi poet Kumayt (d. 128/744) criticized the Umayyads for preaching piety from the pulpit, while in their own lives they “partook of forbidden food and drink.”19 Among Umayyad governors, the stern governor of Iraq, Ḥajjāj, who is credited with several sermons of pious counsel (perhaps all Friday sermons), is derided by Ibn Abī Burdah for making pious speeches while acting in a “pharaonically” tyrannical vein.20 The famous preacher Ḥasan al-Baṣrī—who advocated predestinarian asceticism—also criticizes Ḥajjāj for hypocrisy, saying, “Do you not wonder at this debauched man! He climbs the steps of the pulpit and speaks the words of prophets, then comes down and assaults people with the assault of tyrants.”21 Ḥasan was in turn censured for impious behavior by Marwān ibn al-Muhallab, who calls him “the errant, show-off shaykh.”22 According to our sources, some of these orators were pious and others were not. Regardless, most of their public addresses promoted themes of piety. It would appear that early Islamic society expected orators to underpin oration with religious themes.
1.1.2 Obedience
In early Islamic discourse, the essential companion to consciousness of God is obedience to him and his Prophet. This theme sometimes occurs singly—obedience to God, says ʿAlī in one sermon, is the best service one can render one’s self23—but the Qurʾan frequently associates directives to obedience with injunctions to piety,24 and the early Islamic orator also often links the two. Abū Ḥamzah declares, “I counsel you to piety and obedience to him.”25 ʿAlī similarly combines them, “I counsel you, servants of God, to be conscious of him and obey him,” followed by a rationale, “for the two together constitute redemption on the morrow and salvation forever.”26
Injunctions to obey God—especially using the plural form, ṭāʿāt—are used by orators to mean acts of obedience, and usually denote worship rites prescribed by the Shariʿah. Conversely, disobedience to God (maʿṣiyah, plural maʿāṣī) is often used in the sense of sinning, or going against Shariʿah regulations. Denoting specific deeds by the general terms “obedience” or “disobedience” emphasizes the connection between one’s actions and one’s relationship with God. Ḥajjāj in one of his sermons says:27
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May God have mercy on the man who fashions a halter and rein for his soul, leading it by the reins toward obedience to God, and turning it away with the halter from disobedience to him. I find forbearance in avoiding the things God has forbidden easier than forbearance in the face of his punishment. |
فرحم الله ٱمرأً جعل لنفسه خطامًا وزمامًا فقادها بخطامها إلى طاعة الله وعطفها بزمامها عن معصية الله. فإنّي رأيت الصبر عن محارم الله أيسر من الصبر على عذاب الله. |
Other injunctions against sinning make use of graphic similes to underscore its dire consequences. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz likens sins to “irons around men’s necks,” adding that “annihilation—total annihilation—is the result if one persists.”28 ʿAlī compares sins to “a recalcitrant mount on which sinners mount, reins loosened, galloping with their riders into the fire.” In contrast and in parallel form, he presents piety (here encompassing obedience) as “a docile mount on which the pious mount and whose reins they hold in their hands, riding them to paradise.”29 Warning against contravening the Shariʿah, orators caution their audience not to be led astray by Satan. In an extended and graphic simile, ʿAlī criticizes those who “made Satan master of their affairs,” for then Satan “made them his partners”:30
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They made Satan master of their affairs and he made them his partners. He laid eggs and hatched chicks in their breasts. He crawled and climbed through their bosoms. [He became as one with them] to the extent that he saw with their eyes and spoke with their tongues. Then he made them embark on slippery paths, and tempted them to treachery—the action of one whose authority Satan has infiltrated, and upon whose tongue [Satan] has spoken falsehood. |
اتّخذوا الشيطان لأمرهم ملاكًا وٱتّخذهم له أشراكًا فباض وفرّخ في صدورهم ودبّ ودرج في حجورهم فنظر بأعينهم ونطق بألسنتهم فركب بهم الزّلل وزيّن لهم الخطل فعل من قد شركه الشيطان في سلطانه ونطق بالباطل على لسانه. |
1.1.3 Shariʿah, Qurʾan, the Prophet’s Example, Theology, Good Deeds, and Humane Virtues
Expounding specifics of piety and obedience, orators enjoin many of the Shariʿah’s fundamental injunctions: ritual prayer, the alms levy, fasting, pilgrimage to Mecca, and jihad. They add instructions to foster family ties and give generously to the poor. The Umayyad governor Qutaybah al-Bāhilī exhorts his audience to charity in a long speech, assuring them of God’s reward: “Know that people’s petitions to you are a favor from God … and know that the best wealth is that which earns a celestial reward and leaves a legacy of remembrance.”31 ʿAlī in one sermon utters the following string of Shariʿah-related urgings, explaining why it was in one’s own interest to implement each of them:32
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The deeds which bring you closest to God are belief in him and his messenger; jihad in his path, for it is Islam’s highest peak; the testament of sincerity, for it is the natural state; undertaking the ritual prayer, for it is the way of truth; offering the alms levy, for it is a mandated obligation; fasting in the month of Ramadan, for it is a shield from God’s punishment; performing the greater and lesser pilgrimage to Mecca, for they dispel poverty and wash away sins; fostering close ties with kin, for it increases wealth and prolongs life; giving alms in secret, for it expiates transgressions; giving alms in public, for it repulses horrible forms of death; acts of charity, for they protect you from dishonor and humiliation. |
إنّ أفضل ما توسّل به المتوسّلون إلى الله سبحانه الإيمان به وبرسوله والجهاد في سبيله فإنّه ذروة الإسلام وكلمة الإخلاص فإنّها الفطرة وإقام الصلاة فإنّها الملّة وإيتاء الزكاة فإنّها فريضة واجبة وصوم شهر رمضان فإنّه جنّة من العقاب وحجّ البيت وٱعتماره فإنّهما ينفيان الفقر ويرحضان الذنب وصلة الرحم فإنّها مثراة في المال ومنسأة في الأجل وصدقة السرّ فإنّها تكفّر الخطيئة وصدقة العلانية فإنّها تدفع ميتة السوء وصنائع المعروف فإنّها تقي مصارع الهوان. |
Additionally, orators urge their audiences to praise God for his bounties, and give thanks for his favors. They exhort their listeners to remember God. They forbid vices such as falsehood, malicious gossip, envy, enmity, worldly hopes, and hypocrisy. They advocate virtues such as truthfulness, trustworthiness, integrity, modesty, forbearance, and restraint. Shariʿah rules on civic and criminal legislation are presented in orations—especially in those by Muḥammad—as part of the pious counsel, and these are discussed in Chapter Nine.
Under the umbrella categories of piety and obedience, orators also enjoin their audience to follow the Qurʾan and the example of the Prophet. ʿAlī encourages people to ask God for guidance and take God’s words to heart.33 ʿUmar exhorts his listeners to “study the Qurʾan and act according to its guidance.”34 Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik censures the world then says, “Take God’s book as your leader. Accept its judgment. Make it your guide. It abrogates what came before it, and will not be abrogated by another book that comes after. The Qurʾan crushes Satan’s trickery just as the light of the morning disperses the gloom of the darkest night.”35 Urging audiences to follow the model of the Prophet, orators often discourse on Muḥammad’s role as a guide, as an example to be followed in leading a godly life. They also reference other prophets, including Moses, Jesus, and David, as paradigms for good.36
To set up their pious counsel, orators occasionally touch upon points of theology. Advising listeners to focus on the hereafter, they assure them that God did not create them without a purpose—“to no avail”—and they should not waste their time in this world. After being created, they were not “left loose,” and “should not squander their lives.”37 They had been “created for eternal life” and not “for annihilation.”38 Humans should be conscious of God, and perform good deeds, in order to become deserving of his reward in the hereafter.39 Orators also expound on major points of theology, particularly ʿAlī and the Muʿtazilites on the oneness of God, and Khārijites on the grave sinner; these are discussed further in Chapter Nine.
Although omitting the Qurʾanic term taqwā, themes of piety are also attributed in the pre-Islamic period to Muḥammad’s forebears: Kaʿb ibn Luwayy (7th-generation forebear), Hāshim (great-grandfather), ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (grandfather, d. ca. 579 AD), and Abū Ṭālib (uncle, d. 620 AD). Keepers of the Kaʿbah in Mecca, they exhort their Quraysh tribe to be truthful, fulfill pledges, and revere the sacred house. They urge them to be generous in providing provisions for Hajj pilgrims.40
1.2 Imminence of Death
The second of the sermon of pious counsel’s thematic building blocks is human mortality (al-tadhkīr bi-l-mawt). Almost all texts of this sermon type contain reminders of the inexorable approach of death. Mirroring the classic formula “I counsel you to piety,” orators sometimes also say, “I counsel you to think about death” (أوصيكم بذكر الموت).41
The pre-Islamic sermon set up the theme of death with snapshot images of the cosmos as a magnificent yet ominous backdrop to the insignificance of human endeavor. This approach reflects the nomadic lifestyle of those Arabians, who, in their wanderings in search of pasture, were acutely aware of the change of seasons, the movement of the stars, and lifecycles on earth. Nature imagery was discussed at length in Chapter Three and Maʾmūn al-Ḥārithī’s sermon was cited there. Similar to the pronouncements of the soothsayers, Maʾmūn and other pre-Islamic pious-counsel orators most often evoked nature to connect their audience with the cosmos. But the archetypal example of the pre-Islamic sermon of pious counsel is the piece attributed to Quss ibn Sāʿidah al-Iyādī, described by scholars as either an Abrahamic monotheist or a Christian bishop of Najrān.42 Hailed by Jāḥiẓ as “orator of the Arabs,”43 and by Masʿūdī as “wise man of the Arabs,”44 medieval scholars hold up Quss as a model of eloquence and wisdom.45 The sermon was reportedly delivered from the back of a red camel at Mecca’s annual ʿUkāẓ market, and was personally witnessed by the young man who was to become the Prophet of Islam, whose presence at some point apparently made an impression on the orator: the 7th/13th-century Ṭayyibī dāʿī ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad states that Quss professed belief in Muḥammad’s messengership before its formal proclamation.46 The sermon contains two distinct sections: an opening unit with framing cosmic imagery, and a main part reminding the audience of the imminence of death. Following is the text in its earliest version, as given by Jāḥiẓ (the two lines and the five verses in parentheses are added from the version of Jāḥiẓ’s contemporary, Sijistānī; Jāḥiẓ himself cites the verses as a separate text):47
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People! Gather around, listen and retain! |
أيّها الناس ٱجتمعوا وٱسمعوا وعوا. |
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Whoever lives dies. Whoever dies is lost. Everything that could happen will. |
من عاش مات ومن مات فات وكلّ ما هو آت آت. |
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[Truly, there are messages in the earth. There are lessons in the sky.] Firm signs. Rain and plants. Fathers and mothers. One who goes and one who comes. Light and darkness. Piety and sin. A garment and a mount. Food and drink. Stars that rise and set. Seas that do not dry out. A firma- |
]إنّ في السماء لخبرًا وإنّ في الأرض لعبرًا.] آيات محكمات مطر ونبات وآباء وأمّهات وذاهب وآت. ضوء وظلام وبرّ وآثام ولباس ومركب ومطعم ومشرب ونجوم |
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ment elevated. An earth laid out. A dark night. A sky with zodiacal signs. |
تمور وبحور لا تغور وسقف مرفوع ومهاد موضوع وليل داج وسماء ذات أبراج. |
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Where do people go and why do they never return? Have they been given satisfaction and chosen to reside? Or have they been confined and compelled to sleep? |
ما لي أرى الناس يموتون ولا يرجعون أرضوا فأقاموا أم حبسوا فناموا. |
]فِي الذَّاهِـبِـيْـنَ الأوَّلِـيـْــ DTD#2لَـمّـا رَأَيْـتُ مَـوَارِدًا DTD#2وَرَأَيْـتُ قَـوْمِيْ نَـحْوَهَا DTD#2لَا يَـرْجِـعُ الْمَـاضِيْ وَلَا DTD#2أيْـقَـنْـتُ أَنِّيْ لَا مَـحـَـــا DTD#2
[Departed folks of eons past provide us with a lesson.Death’s watering holes permit no return.My people go there young and old,Never come back, never return.I too—without a doubt—will go where they have gone.]
The Islamic sermon shifts gear, moving to an emphasis on the hereafter. Its focus remains on death, but as an inevitable lead into the afterlife. It shares with the pre-Islamic world a sharp awareness of nature, but now, this theme is presented in an Islamic ethos of piety, obedience to God, good deeds and accountability, and the reality of the next world. The message hammered in urgently, time and again, is that it is important to be fully conscious of the imminence of death, for then you will prepare for its coming.48 Muḥammad speaks of death in one sermon, followed with pious counsel:49
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We behave as though death were decreed for everyone other than ourselves, as though duties were incumbent upon everyone other than ourselves, as though people who die in front of our eyes are travelers who will soon return. We consign their bodies to the grave and then go on to consume their wealth—forgetting every counselor and shrugging off every tragedy. |
يا أيّها الناس كأنّ الموت على غيرنا كتب وكأنّ الحقّ على غيرنا وجب وكأنّ الّذين يشيّعون من الأموات سفر عمّا قليل إلينا راجعون نبوّئهم أجداثهم ونأكل تراثهم كأنّا مخلّدون بعدهم قد نسينا كلّ واعظة وأمنّا كلّ جائحة. |
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Blessed are those whose faults distract them from the faults of others, who spend their wealth without disobeying God and are compassionate, who spend time with the humble and the poor, and who associate with the sensible and the wise. |
طوبى لمن شغله عيبه عن عيوب الناس وأنفق مالًا ٱكتسبه من غير معصية ورحم وصاحب أهل الذلّ والمسكنة وخالط أهل الفقه والحكمة. |
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Blessed are those who possess humble hearts and beautiful character, who have pure intentions, and from whom no one need fear evil, and who find our established practice gives them enough latitude and do not transgress into heresy. |
طوبى لمن أذلّ نفسه وحسنت خليقته وصلحت سريرته وعزل عن الناس شرّه ووسعته السنّة ولم يبعدها إلى البدعة. |
In keeping with the lifeworld orientation of an oral society, death is described in graphic images. Sharing the imagery of poetry, the orator personifies death as a predator closing in for the kill. ʿAlī’s warning is conveyed using the following metaphor: “Know that death’s gaze is homing in on you. It is as though its claws have already sunk into you … sever your ties to this world, and prepare provisions of piety!”50 Elsewhere, death is embodied as a “destroyer of pleasures.” ʿAlī again says to his audience “Truly, death will destroy your pleasures, muddy your desires, and put your goals out of reach.”51 Another image of death is a hunter for whose unerring arrows humans are targets.52 Using a no less striking inanimate image, Ḥajjāj tells his audience that “death [like sins described similarly earlier] is a chain around your neck”53—attached to each one, impossible to break away from—for it is our inevitable destiny as living beings to die.
As mentioned in an earlier chapter, orators frequently frame their discourse of death with ubi sunt (Latin: “Where are they?”), a technique also seen in the Qurʾan and, to a lesser extent, in pre-Islamic poetry.54 Employing disturbing images and a string of rhetorical questions, more than a few orators—Abū Bakr, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ḥajjāj, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and famously and lengthily Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ (cited in full earlier)—exhort the audience to think about generations gone before who live no longer, the proud tribes of ʿĀd and Thamūd, of whom no trace remains, powerful kings and rulers who have exchanged their jeweled thrones for hard earth, and the audience’s own fathers and mothers whose bodies now “rot in the earth.”55 The Prophet’s companion Abū l-Dardāʾ voices a typical ubi sunt sermon:56
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People of Damascus, listen to your brother, your well-wisher! What is it with you? You gather what you shall not eat, build what you shall not inhabit, and hope for what you shall not gain. Others came before you, who gathered in abundance, who built massive edifices, and hoped for many things. They all died. Their fields turned fallow, their homes became graves, and their hopes were all overturned. Listen and pay heed! ʿĀd and Thamūd had abundant wealth, children, and cattle. They thronged the land between Busra and Aden. Who will give me two silver coins for what they left behind? |
أمّا بعد يا أهل دمشق ٱسمعوا مقالة أخ لكم ناصح. فما بالكم تجمعون ما لا تأكلون وتبنون ما لا تسكنون وتأملون ما لا تدركون. وقد كان من كان قبلكم جمعوا كثيرًا وبنوا شديدًا وأمّلوا بعيدًا وماتوا قريبًا فأصبحت أعمالهم بورًا ومساكنهم قبورًا وأملهم غرورًا. ألا وإنّ عادًا وثمودًا كانوا قد ملأوا ما بين بصرى وعدن أموالًا وأولادًا ونعمًا فمن يشتري منّي ما تركوا بدرهمين. |
Less common than ubi sunt but extensively described nonetheless are descriptions of the process of dying and its aftermath. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz describes these conditions thus:57
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Soon enough all of you will be dead. You have seen the conditions of the dying person when his soul is ripped out, and immediately after it has left the body, when the man has tasted death. You have seen his family all around him saying, “He’s dead, God have mercy on him.” You have seen how they rush to remove him and distribute his property. His visage is lost, his name forgotten, his door no longer sought. It is as though he never had any loyal friends, nor lived amongst them in their abode. So beware the terror of that day in which not even a mote’s worth of weighed deeds (the tiniest of sins), will be deemed paltry! |
وكلّ أموات عن قريب. وقد رأيتم حالات الميّت وهو يسوق وبعد فراغه وقد ذاق الموت والقوم حوله يقولون قد فرغ رحمه الله وعاينتم تعجيل إخراجه وقسمة تراثه. ووجهه مفقود وذكره منسيّ وبابه مهجور كأن لم يخالط إخوان الحفاظ ولم يعمر الديار فٱتّقوا هول يوم لا يحقر فيه مثقال ذرّة في الموازين. |
ʿAlī, in even more chilling detail, discourses on the various, terrifying stages of death:58
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[The complacent man] pays no heed to God’s warnings, takes no counsel from his lessons. All the while, he sees the heedless abruptly taken to a place from which there is no return. He sees the terror they had denied descend upon them. He sees them leaving the world in which they had taken comfort. He sees them moved to the afterlife, just as they had been warned. |
لا ينزجر من الله بزاجر ولايتّعظ منه بواعظ وهو يرى المأخوذين على الغرّة حيث لا إقالة ولا رجعة كيف نزل بهم ما كانوا يجهلون وجاءهم من فراق الدنيا ما كانوا يأمنون وقدموا من الآخرة على ما كانوا يوعدون. |
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The horror that descends upon the dying person is beyond words. The anguished convulsions of death and the remorseful pangs of loss together bear down upon him. His extremities begin to |
فغير موصوف ما نزل بهم. ٱجتمعت عليهم سكرة الموت وحسرة الفوت ففترت لها أطرافهم وتغيّرت لها ألوانهم. ثمّ ٱزداد |
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lose feeling, and his color changes. Then death enters further, and blocks him from speech. |
الموت فيهم ولوجًا فحيل بين أحدهم وبين منطقه. |
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He lies among his family, seeing them with his eyes, hearing them with his ears, still able to discern, still able to understand. He can think only about his wasted life and squandered time. He remembers the wealth he has amassed, licit and illicit, from honest sources and shady ones. The sins he has accrued now weigh him down, when he is about to leave everything behind. The people who live after him will enjoy his wealth. Its gratification will be for another, while the burden will be on his back. His debt has come due for payment. He gnaws on his knuckles, regretting the misdeeds that are now crystal clear to him. He cares little now for the things he craved all the days of his life. He wishes that the person who envied him his wealth and coveted his property had gotten it all! |
وإنّه لبين أهله ينظر ببصره ويسمع بأذنه على صحّة من عقله وبقاء من لبّه يفكّر فيم أفنى عمره وفيم أذهب دهره. ويتذكّر أموالًا جمعها أغمض في مطالبها وأخذها من مصرّحاتها ومشتبهاتها قد لزمته تبعات جمعها وأشرف على فراقها تبقى لمن وراءه ينعمون فيها ويتمتّعون بها فيكون المهنأ لغيره والعبء على ظهره والمرء قد غلقت رهونه بها. فهو يعضّ يده ندامة على ما أصحر له عند الموت من أمره ويزهد فيما كان يرغب فيه أيّام عمره ويتمنّى أنّ الّذي كان يغبطه بها ويحسده عليها قد حازها دونه. |
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Death continues to penetrate his body until it pierces his hearing. Now he lies among his family, his tongue unable to speak, his ears unable to hear. His eyes go from one face to another. He sees their tongues moving, but cannot hear their words. |
فلم يزل الموت يبالغ في جسده حتّى خالط سمعه فصار بين أهله لا ينطق بلسانه ولا يسمع بسمعه يردّد طرفه بالنظر في وجوههم يرى حركات ألسنتهم ولا يسمع رجع كلامهم. |
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Then death increases its grip on him. His sight is taken, just like his hearing. His soul leaves his body. He turns into a carcass lying among his family. They recoil from him in fear, and back away. He cannot console those who weep, or answer those who call out. |
ثمّ ٱزداد الموت ٱلتياطًا به فقبض بصره كما قبض سمعه وخرجت الروح من جسده فصار جيفة بين أهله قد أوحشوا من جانبه وتباعدوا من قربه لا يسعد باكيًا ولا يجيب داعيًا. |
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Then they carry him to a grave marked with lines in the earth. They give him over to his deeds, and cease to visit. |
ثمّ حملوه إلى مخطّ في الأرض فأسلموه فيه إلى عمله وٱنقطعوا عن زورته. |
Although warnings of the impending end are a staple in all sermons of pious counsel, some situations generate particularly apposite contexts for musings on death. Among these are speeches delivered during battle. In order to motivate fighters to put their lives on the line, orators declare that humans are destined to die one and all, whether in bed or on the battlefield.59 Burial orations produced by male and female orators in the context of someone’s death are another set of speeches that—in addition to praising the deceased and praying for him60—focus on death. The plague during the Muslim conquest of Syria generated a cluster of speeches, including one by Muʿādh ibn Jabal mourning the demise of the commander Abū ʿUbaydah; this oration speaks of the inevitability of death, and exhorts the audience to repent of their sins.61 Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik in mourning his father, expounds on the inescapability of God’s will and the reality of death, as does Ḥajjāj for ʿAbd al-Malik, and ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubayr for his brother, Muṣʿab.62
1.3 This World and the Hereafter
The last of the three major themes of the sermon of pious counsel is censure of this world, combined with praise for the heavenly abode (al-dunyā wa-l-ākhirah). Like injunctions to piety and warnings of death, this is an umbrella topic that permeates and frames pious counsel orations.63 Usually condemnation of this world is employed as a thematic foil for highlighting the value of the hereafter. The purpose behind the trenchant criticisms of materialism—whether stated or implied—is to energize the audience to think long term, really long term, beyond the end of this life and into the next, to prepare for the inevitable and eternal hereafter.
Sometimes, an orator directly urges mindfulness of the hereafter, as does Muḥammad in the following sermon:64
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People, signposts have been given to you, so follow them. A destination has been mapped out for you, so walk toward it. Truly, God’s servant is in constant terror thinking about an age that has passed, knowing not what God will rule about it, and an age that remains, knowing not what God has destined for it. Let each of you gather supplies through your own efforts for your own soul, from your world for your afterlife, from your youth before the onset of old age, and from your life before the arrival of death. I swear by the God who holds my life in his hand that no repentance will be accepted after death, and no abode will be offered after this world except paradise and hellfire. |
أيّها الناس إنّ لكم معالم فٱنتهوا إلى معالمكم وإنّ لكم نهاية فٱنتهوا إلى نهايتكم. فإنّ العبد بين مخافتين أجل قد مضى لا يدري ما الله فاعل فيه وأجل باق لا يدري ما الله قاض فيه. فليأخذ العبد من نفسه لنفسه ومن دنياه لآخرته ومن الشبيبة قبل الكبر ومن الحياة قبل الممات. فوالّذي نفس محمّد بيده ما بعد الموت من مستعتب ولا بعد الدنيا من دار إلّا الجنّة أو النار. |
Mostly, however, orators use the bulk of their words to censure the world. Three intersecting approaches are employed by the early orators: criticism of the world (dhamm), warnings against its deficiencies and dangers (taḥdhīr), and exhortations to abjure materialism (tazhīd).65 Three sets of descriptive motifs are also prominent: this world is an abode that will perish, a substanceless shadow; its conditions are always in a state of change, inherently unstable; and it is tainted—never fully clean and wholesome, but rather, some bad is always mixed in with any good. A sermon by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz provides a typical characterization of this world that focuses on the first motif listed here, the world’s eventual end:66
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The world is not the abode of permanence—God has decreed its annihilation, and its peoples’ departure. How quickly does the animated dwelling become a ruin! How quickly is the cheerful resident forced to vacate! May God have mercy on you! Make preparations for a comfortable departure. «Gather your supplies—and the best of provisions is piety.» The world is a swiftly receding shade that will soon disappear. |
إنّ الدنيا ليست بدار قرار. دار كتب الله عليها الفناء وكتب على أهلها منها الظعن. فكم عامر موثق عمّا قليل يخرب وكم مقيم مغتبط عمّا قليل يظعن. فأحسنوا رحمكم الله منها الرحلة بأحسن ما يحضركم من النقلة. ﴿وَتَزَوَّدُواْ فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ ٱلزَّادِ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ ﴾. إنّما الدنيا كفيء ظلال قلص فذهب. |
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The son of Adam continues to compete for worldly goods. He is in high spirits here! God will abruptly summon him to answer fate’s call. He will hurl them down with inexorable finality on the day that is written for his death. God will plunder his traces, his home, his world, and give over to others his workshop and his residence. The world does not please as much as it harms. It pleases for a short while, and bequeaths a long time of grief. |
بينا ٱبن آدم في الدنيا منافس وبها قرير عين إذ دعاه الله بقدره ورماه بيوم حتفه فسلبه آثاره ودياره ودنياه وصيّر لقوم آخرين مصانعه ومغناه. إنّ الدنيا لا تسرّ بقدر ما تضرّ إنّها تسرّ قليلًا وتجرّ حزنًا طويلًا. |
Common images of the world are a lush garden, appealing to the senses yet in reality abhorrent; a seductress, deceptive and disloyal; a place of trials and tribulations, where humans are forever beset by physical and emotional troubles—caustic descriptions using these images are found in sermons by Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and Qaṭarī.67 Censure of the world is a particularly prominent motif in the many sermons of pious counsel given by ʿAlī:68 Characterizing this life as totally insignificant, he says “Let the world be smaller in your eyes than the pods of a spiny acacia shrub and woolfluff floating off a pair of shears as they clip”; he calls it a “decaying carcass,” and “deceiver of its people”; elsewhere he describes it as “a ghoulish devourer.”69 He details its trials and changing conditions thus: “It is a place encircled with trials, known for its deception. Its conditions are never stable, its residents never safe. Its conditions change, its times shift. Life in it is vile, safety absent. Its people are targets; it shoots them with its arrows, and annihilates them with death.”70 Moreover, whatever people obtain from it of worldly goods must be left behind and accounted for in the hereafter. Sustenance, he says, is apportioned by one’s destiny, so one should be content with one’s lot; why envy those who have more? With a rhetorical throwing up of his hands, he says “What can I say to you of an abode that begins in weariness and ends in death. You are accountable for using what is lawful in it and punishable for using what is unlawful. The wealthy are seduced and the poor grieve. It escapes those who try to catch it and comes willingly to those who ignore it. It instructs those who view it with perception and blinds those who look at it with longing.”71
Orators advocate the repudiation of gross materialism by practicing zuhd (or zahādah; the term for its advocacy, tazhīd, was mentioned earlier). Those who practice zuhd are called zuhhād (sing. zāhid), and orators praise them lavishly.72 They explain that zuhd is comprised of “short hopes” in worldly things, gratitude for God’s bounties, and restraint when tempted by sinful acts. Even if the audience cannot achieve all of this entirely, they are enjoined to stay away at the very least from forbidden acts, such as murder, stealing, drinking, and adultery.73 The opposite of zuhd inheres in possessing “long hopes”: In a typical sermon, ʿAlī cautions, “Truly, I fear your pursuit of whimsical desires and long hopes. Pursuit of whimsical desires stops you from seeing the truth. Long hopes make you forget the hereafter.”74
Translated often as “asceticism,” zuhd is a rejection of worldliness rather than of the world itself. Although ʿAlī advises his audience to “reject this world, which itself is going to reject you soon,”75 he actually is rebuking those who are immersed in worldly hopes to the exclusion of the hereafter.76 This contention is borne out by ʿAlī’s 180-degree shift in tone when the context is altered. In startling contrast to his censorious characterization of the world in most of his sermons, in just a few pieces attributed to him we see a vigorous defense of this world, even praise for it. The following is an excerpt from a widely cited example recorded in several early sources, framed as a strongly worded retort to a man whom ʿAlī overheard criticizing this world:77
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O you who reproach this world while being so willingly deceived by her deceptions and tricked by her falsehoods! Do you choose to be deceived by her yet censure her? Should you be accusing her, or should she be accusing you?! When did she lure you or deceive? Was it by her destruction of your father and grandfather and great grandfather through decay? Or by her consigning your mother and grandmother and great grandmother to the earth? How carefully did your palms tend them! How tenderly did your hands nurse them! Hoping against hope for a cure, begging physician after physician for a medicament. On that fateful morning, your medicines did not suffice them, your weeping did not help, and your apprehension was of no benefit. Your appeal remained unanswered, and you could not push death away from them, although you applied all your strength. By this, the world warned you of your own approaching end. She illustrated by their death your own. |
أيّها الذامّ للدنيا المغترّ بغرورها المخدوع بأباطيلها أتغترّ بالدنيا ثمّ تذمّها. أنت المتجرّم عليها أم هي المتجرّمة عليك. متى ٱستهوتك أم متى غرّتك. أبمصارع آبائك من البلى أم بمضاجع أمّهاتك تحت الثرى. كم علّلت بكفّيك وكم مرضت بيديك تبغي لهم الشفاء و تستوصف لهم الأطبّاء غداة لا يغني عنهم دواؤك ولا يجدي عليهم بكاؤك. لم ينفع أحدهم إشفاقك ولم تسعف فيه بطلبتك ولم تدفع عنهم بقوّتك. قد مثّلت لك به الدنيا نفسك وبمصرعه مصرعك. |
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Indeed, this world is a house of truth for those who stay true to her, a house of wellbeing for those who understand her, a house of riches for those who gather her provisions, a house of counsel for those who take her advice. She is a mosque for God’s loved ones, a place where God’s angels pray, where God’s revelation alights, where God’s saints transact, earning his mercy and profiting paradise. |
إنّ الدنيا دار صدق لمن صدقها ودار عافية لمن فهم عنها ودار غنى لمن تزوّد منها ودار موعظة لمن ٱتّعظ بها. مسجد أحبّاء الله ومصلّى ملائكة الله ومهبط وحي الله ومتجر أولياء الله ٱكتسبوا فيها الرحمة وربحوا فيها الجنّة. |
When ʿAlī is censuring the world, he is criticizing certain aspects of human nature that are base. He is addressing an audience that is immersed in worldliness at the expense of the hereafter. His response to gross materialism is to point out the insignificance of the world and its ultimate destruction. When he is defending this world, he is addressing an audience whose members are implicitly disclaiming responsibility for their immorality by blaming the world. His response to their disclaimer is to point out to them that the world is merely an arena for performing one’s actions, and the choice as to how we use the world, for good or for bad ends, is entirely ours. This notion is clarified further in a written epistle of counsel that he wrote to his stepson Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr when he dispatched him to be governor of Egypt. Moving away from his usual strong criticisms of worldly pleasures, he empties this piece of the slightest whiff of asceticism. Similar to the Qurʾanic verse “Through the blessings that God has granted you, seek the abode of the hereafter, but do not forget to enjoy your share of this world,”78 ʿAlī’s letter explicitly praises good living as long, as it is accompanied by godliness:79
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The pious partake of the joys of this world and those of the next. They share the world with the worldly, but the worldly do not get to share the hereafter with them. In this world, they reside in the most splendid of residences and consume the finest of delicacies. They possess the sumptuous comforts of the wealthy and partake of the lavish luxuries of the mighty. Yet, when they depart, they leave with full provisions and a large profit. |
وٱعلموا عباد الله أنّ المتّقين ذهبوا بعاجل الدنيا وآجل الآخرة فشارکوا أهل الدنيا في دنياهم ولم يشارکهم أهل الدنيا فی آخرتهم سکنوا الدنيا بأفضل ما سکنت وأکلوها بأفضل ما أکلت فحظوا من الدنيا بما حظي به المترفون وأخذوا منها ما أخذه الجبابرة المتکبّرون ثم ٱنقلبوا عنها بالزاد المبلّغ والمتجر الرابح. |
This world and the hereafter are almost always staged as diametrical opposites, and an antithetical and parallel listing of their contrasting characteristics in a sermon by ʿAlī highlights the dichotomy.80 Another sermon attributed to ʿAlī by Jāḥiẓ and Raḍī (and to Saḥbān Wāʾil by Mubarrad, and an unnamed Bedouin by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih), characterizes the world as the place where you are tested and the hereafter as the place for which you are created, as the place of transience versus the place of stability.81 This last antithetical pair is particularly common, as in ʿAlī’s lines, “In a short while, it will be as though this world never was, and as though the hereafter has already occurred. All that will come is at hand.”82
Comparing this world and the hereafter in a different combination, the Companion Shaddād ibn Aws simultaneously compares paradise and hellfire:83
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Listen and pay heed! Truly the world offers a ready feast from which both the upright and the profligate consume. Listen and pay heed! Truly the hereafter is a true promise, its distribution by decree of the omnipotent king. Listen and pay heed! Truly all good, and everything connected to it, is in paradise. Listen and pay heed! Truly all evil, and everything connected to it, is in the fire. Know that the register of your deeds will be shown to God. «Whoever performs a mote’s worth of good shall see it. Whoever performs a mote’s worth of evil shall see it.»84 May God forgive our sins. |
ألا إنّ الدنيا عرض حاضر يأكل منها البرّ والفاجر. ألا إنّ الآخرة وعد صادق يحكم فيها ملك قادر. ألا إنّ الخير كلّه بحذافيره في الجنّة. ألا إنّ الشرّ كلّه بحذافيره في النار. فٱعملوا ما عملتم وأنتم في يقين من اللّه. وٱعلموا أنّكم معروضة أعمالكم على الله. ﴿فَمَن يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْراً يَرَهُ وَمَن يَعْـمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرّاً يَرَهُ ﴾. وغفر اللّه لنا ولكم. |
A familiar metaphor advocating preparation for the hereafter is gathering provisions for a journey. As mentioned in passing earlier, the journey image is prominent in the Qurʾan, for example in the verse “Guide us to the straight path” ﴾ ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَاطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ ﴿.85 Expanding this idea, orators declare that life in this world is a temporary halting place from which the intelligent gather supplies for the final voyage. ʿAlī says, “Take provisions in this world, from this world, with which you can protect your souls tomorrow.”86 Elsewhere, he says “Gather provisions in the days that are coming to an end, for the days that are going to remain. Indeed, you have been guided to provisions, commanded to depart, and encouraged to journey. You are a caravan of people who have been halted, who do not know when they will be directed to begin the journey.”87 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz states, “Indeed, each journey calls for provisions, so gather provisions for your journey from this world to the hereafter.”88
In contrast to the world, which is described as a transitory domicile, the Muslim sages say the hereafter is your home. ʿAlī, who insists on this point, says, “What does one who is created for the hereafter want with this world! What does one whose property will soon be plundered want with gold and silver!”89 Elsewhere he says “Listen and pay heed! This world you crave and adore, which by turn pleases and angers you, is not your home. It is not the abode for which you have been created, or to which you have been called.”90 Yet elsewhere he says “It is in this world that you are tested. It is for another that you have been created.”91 If you have squandered your life so far, he says, take full advantage of what remains, “Make up for the past in your remaining days.”92 He counsels his audience to garner reward while they still have life and limb:93
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Perform good deeds—May God have mercy on you!—for the signposts are clear, the road is wide, and it leads to the abode of safety. You live in an abode of one who has been warned. You have been given a brief respite and some time. Registers are open, pens are writing, bodies are healthy, tongues are unfettered, repentance is being received, and deeds are being accepted. |
اعملوا رحمكم الله على أعلام بيّنة فالطريق نهج يدعو إلى دار السلام. وأنتم في دار مستعتب على مهل وفراغ والصحف منشورة والأقلام جارية والأبدان صحيحة والألسن مطلقة والتوبة مسموعة والأعمال مقبولة. |
2 Thematic Interconnections, Universal Relevance, Cultural Specificities
Germane to a nuanced understanding of how these themes work are the following annotations: (1) all three themes interlock; (2) each arises from a particular historical context yet is universally relevant; and (3) each contains a myriad of culturally specific subthemes.
2.1 Interconnection of Themes
All three major themes—piety and obedience, imminence of death, and this world and the hereafter—are interconnected, forming a symbiotic thematic field. Themes are additively presented and their subthemes are joined with conjunctives rather than subordinating prepositions, the juxtaposition providing the causal glue. Here is a typical formulation from an oration by Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, addressing his companions on the morning of the day he was killed. After a brief line exhorting piety, he expounds the following:94
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Servants of God! Remain conscious of God and beware of the world. If it could have remained as an abode for any, or if any could have remained in it, the prophets would have been the most deserving of permanent life, the most worthy to be pleased, and the most accepting of the providence ordained by God. But God has created this world for annihilation. Its newness will decay, its comforts will degrade, its happiness will turn to dark sorrow, its descent is perilous, and its abode is set up for dismantling. «Gather your supplies! And the best of provisions is piety.»95 «Remain conscious of God, and you will learn the truth.»96 |
يا عباد الله ٱتّقوا الله وكونوا من الدنيا على حذر. فإنّ الدنيا لو بقيت على أحد أو بقي عليها أحد لكانت الأنبياء أحقّ بالبقاء وأولى بالرضاء وأرضى بالقضاء. غير أنّ الله تعالى خلق الدنيا للفناء فجديدها بال ونعيمها مضمحلّ وسرورها مكفهرّ والمنزل تلعة والدار قلعة. ﴿وَتَزَوَّدُواْ فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ ٱلزَّادِ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ﴾ ﴿وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ ﴾. |
Ḥusayn’s oration presents the major themes of the sermon of pious counsel in the following sequence: Death is inevitable for all, and your life on this earth will end soon, so → focus your energies on the eternal realm and prepare for the hereafter, knowing that → the best preparation for the hereafter is piety. Other sermons begin with piety and go on to assertions about the inevitability of death, followed by censure of this world and praise of the hereafter. Yet others chart a third progression. Several combinations are found. Although most sermons of pious counsel are essentially similar in their themes, they present these themes in a myriad of sequences and groupings.
2.2 Historical Context and Universal Relevance
Rooted in specific events and addressing a particular group of people, sermons of pious counsel arise from particular historical contexts.97 They articulate themes that are general, but these are related to certain people and events in real time, and are placed in individual circumstances of political and military import. The context of a sermon of pious counsel by ʿAlī is provided by a historical source: Ibn Muzāḥim al-Minqarī reports that immediately following the Battle of the Camel, ʿAlī delivered an oration to the people of Kufa, expounding themes of life and death, right and wrong. The context helps explain nuances in the oration, within the universal themes that are typical of the sermon of pious counsel.98 With this advice to think about all people’s imminent death, ʿAlī is chastising those Kufans who had refused to support him in the fight, who sat out the battle for fear of losing their lives and property.99
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People! Truly, I fear your pursuit of whimsical desires and lengthy yearnings. As for the pursuit of whimsical desires, it stops you from seeing the truth. And as for lengthy yearnings, they make you forget the hereafter. Listen! This world has turned away in speed, and nothing remains of it except for a residue like the residue remaining in a vessel which a pourer has emptied out. Listen! The hereafter has come forward. Each of the two has children: Be those who are children of the hereafter; do not be those who are children of this world; for children will be returned to their mothers on the Day of Resurrection. Today is the day for deeds, not reckoning, and tomorrow is the day of reckoning, not deeds. |
أيّها الناس إنّ أخوف ما أخاف عليكم ٱثنان ٱتّباع الهوى وطول الأمل فأمّا ٱتّباع الهوى فيصدّ عن الحقّ وأمّا طول الأمل فينسي الآخرة. ألا وإنّ الدنيا قد ولّت حذّاء فلم يبق منها إلّا صبابة كصبابة الإناء ٱصطبّها صابّها. ألا وإنّ الآخرة قد أقبلت ولكلّ منهما بنون فكونوا من أبناء الآخرة ولا تكونوا من أبناء الدنيا فإنّ كلّ ولد سيلحق بأمّه يوم القيامة. وإنّ اليوم عمل ولا حساب وغدًا حساب ولا عمل. |
Despite their grounding in a particular historical context, most themes of pious counsel in our orations are nevertheless of universal relevance, their injunctions typically applicable to humans across divides of time and space. More than any other type of oration in the classical Arabic milieu, they address humans qua humans. In fact, as we have seen earlier, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī often addressed his audience as “O son of Adam!” (يٱبن آدم),100 and ʿAlī used the salutation “O human!” (أيّها الإنسان).101 The universal content is perhaps the reason why many anthologists find the pious counsel sections of orations the most quotable, often presenting them stripped of political context, as with the two orations by ʿAlī and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Sometimes the historical context is manifest within the text of the oration, even if it is not spelled out in the framing report. This is the case in Abū Ḥamzah’s oration condemning the Medinans for not supporting the Khārijite cause. But here too, the politically grounded pious counsel can be distilled into universal themes of doing good, shunning evil, and practicing sincere faith—themes that apply not only to the Muslims of Medina at that moment, but to all people at all times.102 The major themes of the pious-counsel sermon that constitute primary blocks of Islamic preaching are ones at the center of human experience.
2.3 Culturally Specific Subthemes
As a general rule, form is more abstract than theme, and themes are more abstract than subthemes or motifs. Conversely, subthemes or motifs are always more complex (as Theodor Wolpers has explained) and derive from particular conditions and cultures.103 In our sermons of pious counsel, many subthemes derive from the specific cultural and literary context of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia. Subthemes showcased earlier include injunctions to perform good deeds, desist from sinning, follow the model of the Prophet, and abide by the guidance of the Qurʾan and Shariʿah. They also include fearsome descriptions of death, bitter censure of the world, and a variety of ethical and moral recommendations. The following excerpt from a sermon by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz highlights additional subthemes common to the sermon of pious counsel, including warnings against complacent expectations of a lengthy life, the inevitability of reward and punishment in the hereafter, not knowing whether one will wake up the next day or see the next night, wounds made by this world which do not heal, and making a trade with God:104
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All travelers must carry provisions, so gather supplies of piety from your worldly abode for your journey to the afterlife. Be like one who sees with his eyes the punishment and reward God has prepared for him. Fear the one, and hope for the other. Let not the complacent expectation of a lengthy life harden your hearts and hand you over to your enemy [Satan]. By God, how can people be complacent when they do not know whether they will wake up in the morning after going to sleep at night, or whether they will see the night after waking up in the morning! Any time in between, death could strike. Truly, only those who can be assured of immunity from the ominous end of the world take comfort in it. But whoever tries to heal one wound here ends up being gashed from another direction. So how can he take comfort in it? I seek protection from God: May I not command you to do something I do not do. If so, I would be a loser in my trade with God. I would be penurious, destitute, on that day when only truth and right benefit. |
إنّ لكلّ سفر زادًا لا محالة فتزوّدوا من دنياكم لآخرتكم التقوى وكونوا كمن عاين ما أعدّ اللّه له من ثوابه وعقابه فترهبوا وترغبوا. ولا يطولنّ عليكم الأمد فتقسو قلوبكم وتنقادوا لعدوّكم. فإنّه واللّه ما بسط أمل من لا يدري لعلّه لا يصبح بعد إمسائه أو يمسي بعد إصباحه وربّما كانت بين ذلك خطرات المنايا. وإنّما يطمئنّ إلى الدنيا من أمن عواقبها. فإنّ من يداوي من الدنيا كلمًا أصابته جراحة من ناحية أخرى فكيف يطمئنّ إليها. أعوذ باللّه أن آمركم بما أنهى عنه نفسي فتخسر صفقتي وتظهر عيلتي وتبدو مسكنتي في يوم لا ينفع فيه إلّا الحقّ والصدق. |
The following excerpt from a sermon by ʿAlī is another typical example of Islamic pious counsel, where each of the major themes is presented in smaller subthemes:105
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God has sent you a book as a guide, and explained in it the difference between good and evil. Follow the path of good and you shall be rightly guided. Abjure the path of evil and you shall remain on the high road. |
إنّ الله سبحانه أنزل كتابًا هاديًا بيّن فيه الخير والشرّ فخذوا نهج الخير تهتدوا وٱصدفوا عن سمت الشرّ تقصدوا. |
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The mandated rites must be performed. Offer them to God and they will take you to paradise. |
الفرائض الفرائض أدّوها إلى الله تؤدّكم إلى الجنّة. |
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God has made certain things illicit and these are known. He has made other things licit and these are unsullied. “He has placed the sanctity of Muslims above all sanctities. Through their devotion and declaration of his oneness, he has bound them and their rights together. A Muslim is someone from whose tongue and hand all other Muslims are safe; he employs them only righteously. It is unlawful to injure a Muslim, except as required by law.”106 |
إنّ الله تعالى حرّم حرامًا غير مجهول وأحلّ حلالًا غير مدخول وفضّل حرمة المسلم على الحرم كلّها وشدّ بالإخلاص والتوحيد حقوق المسلمين في معاقدها. فالمسلم من سلم المسلمون من لسانه ويده إلّا بالحقّ ولا يحلّ أذى المسلم إلّا بما يجب. |
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Hasten to accept death. It is common to all, yet singular to each individual. Generations have gone before you, and the hour now drives you forward. Lighten your burden of sin, so that you may be quick to catch up with them. Truly, those who have gone ahead await the arrival of those who remain behind. |
بادروا أمر العامّة وخاصّة أحدكم وهو الموت فإنّ الناس أمامكم وإنّ الساعة تحدوكم من خلفكم. تخفّفوا تلحقوا فإنّما ينتظر بأوّلكم آخركم. |
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Be conscious of God, and do not cause harm to his servants or his lands. You shall be answerable for your interactions even with the earth and with animals. Obey God. Do not disobey him. If you find an opportunity to do good, take it. If you are given a chance to do evil, shun it. |
اتّقوا الله في عباده وبلاده فإنّكم مسؤولون حتّى عن البقاع والبهائم. أطيعوا الله ولا تعصوه وإذا رأيتم الخير فخذوا به وإذا رأيتم الشرّ فأعرضوا عنه. |
The special subthemes of piety and the hereafter in this sermon are numerous: exhortations to follow the guidance of the Qurʾan, and the beaten path of good; urgings to perform the mandated rites of Islam, which will carry you to paradise; appeals to cleave to the licit and abjure the illicit; upholding the sanctity of each individual in the Muslim community; and upholding even the rights of animals and of the earth itself. Subthemes of death include its universality yet totally personal nature, the image of the last hour as a camel driver urging you forward to the final end; and—connecting with the theme of the hereafter—the importance of lightening your burden of sin so you can move fast and catch up with pious forebears.
3 Common Vocabulary, Structural Patterns and Formulaic Phrases
Parsed from the sermon texts, the theme of pious counsel is presented by our orators using certain recurrent concepts, formulaic phrases, Qurʾanic citations, and grammatical patterns.
3.1 Vocabulary
Repeated terms reflect the major themes of the sermon of pious counsel. Positive acts and goals the audience is consistently encouraged to perform and seek are the following:
piety and consciousness of God (taqwā)obedience (ṭāʿah)provisions [for the journey to the hereafter] (zād)rejection of worldliness (zuhd)good deeds (ʿamal)hereafter (ākhirah)repentance (tawbah)paradise (jannah)fear (khawf, rahbah)
Negative behaviors and ends the audience is consistently warned against are the following:
false hope (amal)the world (dunyā)death (mawt, manāyā, ajal)hellfire (nār)desire or caprice (hawā, raghbah)
3.2 Formulae
Some phrases attained standard currency, and as discussed earlier, a profusion of formulae is in keeping with the oral mode of these orations. The most common formulae—used either verbatim or with small lexical and grammatical modifications—are the following:
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“I counsel you to piety” (أوصيكم بتقوى الله).107 This formula appears in almost all sermons of pious counsel and Friday and Eid sermons, and in many military and political orations. Sometimes it occurs with an interposed form of address, as in “I counsel you, servants of God, to piety.” A modified form connects it with advice to obey God: “I counsel you to piety and obedience to him” (أوصيكم بتقوى الله وطاعته).
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“Truly, the world is green and sweet!” (إنّ الدنيا حلوة خضرة).108 This formula refers to the world’s temptations, often followed by the line: “It is encircled by everything you desire most” (حفّت بالشهوات).
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“This world has turned back and proclaimed its departure! The hereafter has come forward, and has almost arrived!” (فإنّ الدنيا قد أدبرت وآذنت بوداع وإنّ الآخرة قد أقبلت وأشرفت بٱطّلاع).109 This formula warns of the imminent perishing of this world and the arrival of the next. Often used in conjunction with it is the line, “Nothing remains of your lifespan save the last drops of water remaining in a vessel that the one who pours out, empties.” (وإنّما بقي منها صبابة كصبابة الإناء يصطبّها صابّها). Also used often in conjunction is a formula censuring worldliness and encouraging preparation for the hereafter: “Both [this world and the hereafter] have children. You should be among the children of the hereafter. Do not be among the children of this world. For children will be resurrected with their mother on judgment day.” (فكونوا من أبناء الآخرة ولا تكونوا من أبناء الدنيا فإنّ كل أمّ يتبعها بنوها يوم القيامة).
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“Beware the inexorable movement of the two new ones,” that is, day and night (وٱحذروا الجديدين).110 This formula highlights the rapid passage of one’s days on earth.
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“Lighten your burden of sin, so that you may be quick to catch up. Truly, those who have gone first await the coming of those who come later” (تخفّفوا تلحقوا فإنّما ينتظر بأوّلكم قدوم آخركم).111 This formula exhorts the audience to refrain from sins and repent.
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“Death is the demolisher of pleasures” (إنّ الموت هادم اللّذات).112 This formula warns that pleasures of this world will not last.
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“It is for the hereafter that you have been created.” (إنّما للآخرة خلقتم).113 This formula emphasizes the insignificance of worldly life and the importance of preparing for the hereafter. It is sometimes modified to “You have been created for an abode other than [this world],” or “We have been created for everlasting life.”
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“I warn you of this world” (أحذّركم الدنيا).114 This formula warns the audience not to immerse themselves in this world.
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“O human!” (أيّها الإنسان) or “O son of Adam” (يٱ بن آدم).115 This formula addresses the audience as humans, evoking all that goes with being human: mortality, ethics, and the ability to think.
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“God! Show me error to be error so that I may avoid it. Show me right guidance to be right guidance so that I may follow it.” (اللّهمّ أرني الغيّ غيًّا فأجتنبه وأرني الهدى هدى فأتبعه).116 This formula is used to supplicate God for guidance.
3.3 Qurʾanic Citations
Saturated with Qurʾanic vocabulary, pious-counsel sermons also frequently include verbatim or modified citations from the Qurʾan. The most commonly cited Qurʾanic verses are:
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«Gather provisions! The best of provisions is piety» ﴾ وَتَزَوَّدُواْ فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ ٱلزَّادِ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ ﴿.117
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«Expound to them the parable of this worldly life: it is like water, which we send down from the skies and which is absorbed by the plants of the earth: but in time they turn to dry stubble, which the winds blow hither and thither. God alone determines all things.» ﴾ وَٱضْرِبْ لَهُم مَّثَلَ ٱلْحَيَاةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا كَمَآءٍ أَنْزَلْنَاهُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَاءِ فَٱخْتَلَطَ بِهِ نَبَاتُ ٱلأَرْضِ فَأَصْبَحَ هَشِيماً تَذْرُوهُ ٱلرِّياحُ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ مُّقْتَدِرًا ﴿.118
Commonly cited verses in modified form are the following:
3.4 Aphoristic and Ad Hoc Patterns
Sermons of pious counsel are constructed largely of a series of staccato statements and commands that follow set patterns. Some—although the distinction is admittedly subjective—are pithily expressed aphoristic precepts presented as axiomatic truths, others are more ad hoc; yet they too are set in a particular grammatical structure and/or use particular lexemes.
The following seven are common aphoristic patterns presented here with examples from the orations:
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X (noun) is Y
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“Restraint is honor. Forbearance is victory. Deeds are a treasure.”121
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X (active participle) is truly Y
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“The happy man is one who is counseled by the example of others. The miserable man is one who is led by caprice and arrogance.”122
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X does Y
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“Envy consumes belief just as fire consumes logs.”123
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There is no X greater than Y
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“There is no pain sharper than ignorance. There is no disease viler than sinning. There is no fear more fearful than death.”124
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Those who do X will be subject to Y
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“He who makes false claims will perish. He who perjures will fail.”125
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The most X is Y
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“The most sincere counselor of his soul is one who is most obedient to his Lord. The most deceiving of his own soul is the one who is most disobedient to his Lord.”126
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Suffice it as proof of a man’s X that he does/does not do Y
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“Suffice it as sin when a man neglects to feed his family.”127
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The following eight are more ad hoc patterns that do not have the punch of maxims yet are common and forceful structures in the orations, presented here with examples:
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Do X!
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“Perform acts of charity and you will harvest praise. Leave off useless pursuits and the foolish will leave you alone.”128
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Don’t do X!
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“Don’t be scared of dying fighting in God’s path.”129
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Do X—May God have mercy on you!
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“Get ready with your provisions—May God have mercy on you!—for departure has been announced!”130
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May God have mercy on the person who does X.
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“May God have mercy on the servant [of God] who listens to wisdom and learns from it, who is called to direction and draws nigh, who grasps the hem of a guide and is saved.”131
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Know that X
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“Know that security tomorrow will be guaranteed for him who fears [God] today.”132
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Many X result in Y
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“Many short-lived pleasures bequeath long-lasting grief.”133
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XX (doubling of a noun as direct object of an implied verb, meaning “Be assiduous in doing it”)
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“Prayers, prayers! Alms-tax, alms-tax! Neighbors, neighbors! Brothers, brothers! The poor, the poor!”134
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I counsel you to X
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“I counsel you to piety, disinterest in this world, interest in the hereafter, much thinking of death, separation from sinners, and love of believers.”135
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Several features emerge from the above lists. For the maxims, we see that although verbal sentences are sometimes used, nominal sentences, affirmed or negated, are more often employed. For the ad hoc patterns, the reverse is true. Frequently for both categories, the phrase is followed by an explanation or further counsel. For example, after pronouncing an aphorism, “Indeed, the tongue of the believer is behind his heart, and the heart of the hypocrite is behind is tongue,” ʿAlī goes on to explain why, “for the believer, when he intends to speak, mulls the speech in his heart. If it is good, he reveals it. If it is evil, he conceals it. The hypocrite speaks whatever comes to his tongue, not knowing what is for him and what against.”136 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz declares, “Sustenance is preordained.” Then, on the basis of this maxim, he goes on to counsel his audience “Therefore that which has been ordained for the believer will not bypass him. Go gently in your search, for in contentment is to be found latitude, sufficiency, and adequacy.”137
As seen in the examples in these lists, we often find two or more maxims in juxtaposition. Curiously, however, a sermon attributed to the Prophet’s Companion Ibn Masʿūd contains a string of thirty maxims, which together touch on the major themes of Islamic pious counsel. The piece contains no exhortations, no instructions, and no prayer. It is composed largely of pithy nominal sentences, most following the pattern X is Y. (It is noteworthy that most of the thirty are reported in hadith books, such as Quḍāʿī’s Shihāb, as hadith of the Prophet Muḥammad.) The sermon follows:138
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The truest words are written in the book of God. The strongest support is the creed of piety. The noblest religion is the religion of Abraham. The best practice is the practice of Muḥammad. The wickedest things are heresies. The best things are those in the middle. Scarce but adequate is better than plentiful but distracting. Bringing a soul to life is better than ruling a vast kingdom. The best |
أصدق الحديث كتاب اللّه وأوثق العرى كلمة التقوى. أكرم الملل ملّة إبراهيم. خير السنن سنّة محمّد. شرّ الأمور محدثاتها وخير الأمور أوساطها. ما قلّ وكفى خير مما كثر وألهى. لنفس تحييها خير من إمارة لا تحصيها. خير الغنى غنى النفس. خير ما |
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wealth is the wealth of the soul. The best thing a heart can have is conviction. All sins converge in wine. Women are Satan’s snares. Youth is a time of madness. Evading [worship] is the key to incapacity. The wickedest people are those who pray with the congregation reluctantly, and forsake the remembrance of God. Slandering a believer is immoral, killing him is apostasy, and badmouthing him is a sin.139 God proves wrong those who swear they know his judgments. God forgives those who forgive others. The following is written in the register of the munificent: God pardons those who pardon others. The wretched have been wretched since the womb. The fortunate are those who have learned from others. Deeds are judged by outcomes. The outcome is the essence of a deed. The noblest death is martyrdom. Those who are habituated to trials endure them with forbearance. Those who do not, panic. |
ألقي في القلب اليقين. الخمر جماع الآثام. النساء حبائل الشيطان. الشباب شعبة من الجنون. حبّ الكفاية مفتاح المعجزة. شرّ الناس من لا يأتي الجماعة إلا دبرًا ولا يذكر اللهّ إلا هجرًا. سباب المؤمن فسق وقتاله كفر وأكل لحمه معصية. من يتألّ على اللّه يكذبه ومن يغفر يغفر له. مكتوب في ديوان المحسنين من عفا عفي عنه. الشقيّ شقيّ في بطن أمّه السعيد من وعظ بغيره. الأمور بعواقبها. ملاك الأمر خواتيمه. أشرف الموت الشهادة. من يعرف البلاء يصبر عليه ومن لا يعرف البلاء ينكره. |
4 Categorizing Pious Counsel: Diffusion of Themes and Non-oratorical Pious Discourse
Pious counsel is difficult to pin down as a distinct genre. Not only do its themes and formulae infuse other types of oration, but they also permeate further genres of discourse.
4.1 Pious Counsel in Other Types of Oration
Themes, subthemes, formulae, and patterns of pious counsel are a mainstay in all categories of oration. Friday sermons are an obvious repository of devotional material, but battle speeches and political orations are also frequently framed pietistically. Indeed, their contexts co-exist and intermingle—political and military contexts elicit a moral exposition, while pious counsel is prompted by a political or military cue. But that is precisely why it is problematic to earmark any oration text from our corpus as a stand-alone sermon of pious counsel. While political, military, and some Friday orations in early Islamic times are contextualized as such in our sources, sermons of pious counsel are mostly presented without historical context. To complicate matters, the same texts presented in literary works as detached pious counsel pieces, are often found in the chronicles to be excerpts from Friday and Eid sermons, or from political and battle speeches. Even though their content focuses on pious counsel, they were produced in a specific human situation. Moreover, when read between the lines, we see that pious themes frequently underpin a certain political viewpoint or military agenda. The vast majority of pieces that we are calling sermons of pious counsel blend other-worldly advice with this-worldly content.
Perhaps pious counsel was not a specific oratorical genre at all? One of the only Islamic pieces we can definitely categorize as a stand-alone sermon of pious counsel is a sermon by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. In it, he explicitly negates a political and military context and expressly states his purpose of purely pious counsel. Instructing people to gather, he stood up to orate, saying, “I have not called you to convey a report I have received. I have called you because I have looked into the affair of your return, and the path that you are following, and I have found that those who believe in it are deserving of God’s reward, and those who deny it will perish.”140 This exception would seem to prove the rule—that pious counsel was not a stand-alone genre of sermon, at least in the case of Umayyad rulers.
On the other hand, some pre-Islamic orators—such as Quss and Maʾmūn—are known only for their sermons of pious counsel, and certain Companions of the Prophet—ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, Shaddād ibn Aws, Abū l-Dardāʾ, and Aḥnaf ibn Qays—are also lauded for it particularly, as are the Khārijite leaders Abū Ḥamzah and Qaṭarī.141 A relatively apolitical preacher is Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ, who reportedly left Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s circle of students to become the founder of the rationalist, free-will-espousing Muʿtazilah. A few sermons attributed to other theologians and ascetics of Umayyad times skirt overt politics, but even so the case may be made for a political grounding. The preponderance of leaders, including the Prophet, caliphs, governors, and commanders, delivered orations in various political, military, and liturgical contexts.
4.2 Non-oratorical Genres of Pious Counsel
A handful of pious counsel genres are found outside the oration, and they overlap with it in their themes, vocabulary, and formulae. Some also include further oratorical features, such as the speaker standing during the discourse, addressing a public audience, and an oration-like structure. However, they are less official in tone and setting, and appear to have taken place without the oration’s formal accoutrements. There are other differences too: they are usually not delivered by religio-political leaders, but by scholars and erudite lay individuals; they are never delivered from the pulpit; and furthermore, some are written, not oral genres.
Non-oratorical genres of pious counsel include the following:
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Testament (waṣiyyah).
Testaments were sometimes addressed to individuals, but often also to a group.142 Some are from parents to children (usually a father to his sons or more generally to his children, less often a mother to her daughter), others from rulers to their successors or governors, and yet others from chiefs to their extended family, comprising several members of the tribe. In addition to worldly disbursements, they often express a dying man’s counsel to family and loved ones. These were either written or oral.
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Condolence (taʿziyah)
Condolence messages to individuals were delivered in the form of speeches or letters; as the context indicates, they typically dwell on death. Some of the pious counsel pieces attributed to the early orators Aktham and Saḥbān are condolence speeches.
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Admonishment (maqām)
An Arabian formula distinct to the early period of Islam, ascetic censure of the world was addressed orally by pious individuals, ascetics, and theologians in admonishment to the caliph. Although they had a single overt addressee in the person of the caliph, they usually also had a larger, passively addressed audience comprised of court officials. Some oral addresses by ascetics are characterized by the critics as “pronouncements, or words of the ascetics” or “words of wisdom.” They are usually presented in the reports without a historical or political context. Jāḥiẓ puts these texts in his Bayān in a chapter titled “Asceticism,” (zuhd), as does Ibn Qutaybah in ʿUyūn al-akhbār, alongside similarly pious addresses to the common folk.143 Maqāms are attributed particularly to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and also to Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ, and Khālid ibn Ṣafwān.
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Homiletic discourse (waʿẓ /mawʿiẓah)
Homiletic discourses mentioned in the sources are sometimes admonitory, sometimes offering guidance and advice. They usually refer to sit-down oral addresses, and are called more fully majlis al-waʿẓ. But waʿẓ is sometimes also used synonymously with qaṣaṣ (see next item).144
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Homiletic lecture (qaṣaṣ)
Homiletic lectures delivered to public audiences are cited in the sources, often beginning with the words “I counsel you to …” In the early period, they frequently refer to stand-up quasi-orations on the battlefield, counselling piety and asceticism, reminding listeners of the imminence of death and the certainty of the hereafter—a longer section on the qaṣaṣ with illustrative samples follows in Chapter Seven. The qaṣaṣ genre appears to have morphed over time into a sit-down homiletic discourse similar to the waʿẓ, focused on exegesis of the Qurʾan’s prophetic tales.145 Tamīm al-Dārī, who was a convert from Christianity and who preached during the reign of the second Sunni caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, is said to be the first “storyteller” (qāṣṣ, pl. quṣṣāṣ) in Islam. Later quṣṣāṣ were criticized by scholars as charlatans.
Medieval anthologies include many forms and genres of pious counsel mixed together in thematic chapters. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih in his ʿIqd has an “Emerald Chapter on Pious Counsel and Renunciation,” which includes Qurʾan, hadith, testaments, epistles, public admonishments by renunciants addressed to caliphs, conversations, responses, rejoinders, and poetry. The Emerald Chapter also includes texts that are designated elsewhere in the sources as orations, although it characterizes none of the pieces specifically as khuṭbah.146 In any case, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s focus is not on the form but the pious content, and within this rubric, he arranges the texts in his chapter by the precedence of the counsel-giver, beginning with verses from the Qurʾan, followed by counsels of the prophets, and so on. He includes individuals whom we do not encounter in the annals of Arabic oration (but are cited in the Qurʾan), such as the sage Luqmān and biblical prophets. He also cites orations or other genres of pious counsel by Muḥammad, ʿAlī, Ziyād, ʿAbd al-Malik, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and Abū Bakr. He then produces a number of thematic sections, which include many of our pious-counsel oration themes, such as “descriptions of the world, repentance, good deeds, death, and prayer,” and others, which are not emphasized in our pious-counsel oration themes, such as “injunctions against serving rulers, and against too much laughter.”
Other compilers follow suit. Zamakhsharī, in Rabīʿ al-abrār, has a chapter with similar themes titled “Seasons and Times, and the World and the Hereafter,” and two more on “Death” and “Good.”147 In his section on ʿAlī’s orations in the Nahj al-balāghah, Raḍī includes non-oratorical material that he considers similar, indicated in the (long) chapter title: “Chapter One, containing selections from the orations of the commander of the faithful and his commands; included in this are selections from his words that are like orations [uttered] in specific situations (maqāmāt), particular circumstances (mawāqif), and momentous affairs (khuṭūb).”148 Ṣafwat includes in his modern anthology of orations non-oratorical artistic oral prose that is mostly consonant-rhymed, such as dialogues, debates, disputations spoken in the courts of kings, caliphs, and chieftains. He claims that they “enter into the field of orations, and are threaded in their necklace.” He also has a chapter on “Pious Counsel Orations and Testaments.”149 As is clear from the compilers’ mix-and-match approach, terminology indicating genre in this early period was fluid. More work remains to be done to untangle the overlapping strands.
5 Illustration of Pious-Counsel Oration: Oration by Qaṭarī ibn al-Fujāʾah
A sermon of pious counsel attributed to the Khārijite commander and famed orator Qaṭarī ibn al-Fujāʾah (d. ca. 79/698) illustrates the themes and patterns of the sermon of pious counsel. Praising the Khārijites “for the purity of their words and the eloquence of their speech,” Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih singles out this sermon, saying “… like the sermon by Qaṭarī ibn al-Fujāʾah censuring this world—its peer is nonexistent and its equal is not to be found.”150 Commenting on Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt and the Khārijite commander mentioned therein, Sharīshī remarks, “[Qaṭarī] has an oration in censure of the world in which he reached the ultimate in eloquence.”151 This is the text of Qaṭarī’s sermon in the earliest attested version of Jāḥiẓ (large parts of this same sermon are also attributed to ʿAlī):152
5.1 Text and Translation
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Qaṭarī ibn al-Fujāʾah—of the Māzin ibn ʿAmr ibn Tamīm tribe—ascended the pulpit of the Azraqī Khārijites and praised God, extolled him, and offered benedictions for his Prophet. Then he said: |
صعد قطريّ بن الفجاءة منبر الأزارقة. وهو أحد بني مازن بن عمرو بن تميم. فحمد اللّه وأثنى عليه وصلّى على نبيّه ثمّ قال |
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[A] |
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As for what comes after: |
أمّا بعد |
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I warn you against this world. It is sweet and green, surrounded by temptations. It excites wonder with its trifles and breeds love for the here and now. It is adorned with false hopes and decorated with deceptions. Its joy does not last, and its trauma cannot be avoided. Deceiving, harming, betraying, lying, changing, lapsing, ceasing, perishing, consuming. A ghoulish devourer, fickle and capricious, giver of death. At the very moment it fulfills your dearest hopes, it becomes—as God has said—«Like water that we sent down from the sky—the vegetation of the earth drew from it, then became dry straw, scattered by the winds. God is able to do all things.»153 |
فإنّي أحذّركم الدنيا فإنّها حلوة خضرة حفّت بالشهوات وراقت بالقليل وتحبّبت بالعاجلة وحلّيت بالآمال وتزيّنت بالغرور. لا تدوم حبرتها ولا تؤمن فجعتها. غرّارة ضرّارة خوّانة غدّارة حائلة زائلة نافدة بائدة أكّالة غوّالة بدّالة نقّالة. لا تعدو إذا هي تناهت إلى أمنيّة أهل الرغبة فيها والرضا عنها أن تكون كما قال اللّه ﴿كَمَاءٍ أنْزَلْنَاه مِنَ السّماءِ فَاخْتَلَطَ به نَبَاتُ الأَرْضِ فَأصْبَحَ هَشِيماً تَذْرُوه الرّياحُ وَكَانَ اللَّه عَلَى كُلِّ شَيءٍ مُقْتَدِراً﴾. |
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[B] And there is yet more—for the world never gives a man joy except that joy is trailed by tears. It never bestows happiness on him except that it follows up with harm. No sprinkling of its ease softly alights upon him, except that a cloudburst of calamity pours down. If it aids him in the forenoon, it will humble and reject him in the night. If one of its sides is sweet and sugary, the other will be bitter and pestilent. If it bestows upon a man bounties fresh and luxurious, it will oppress him later with catastrophical blows. A man does not spend the evening under its wing of protection except that he wakes up under its pinions of fear. The world will perish. All upon it will perish. There is no good in any of its provisions save piety. Those who take little from the world garner stores of protection. And those who take a lot from its wares gather stocks of something that will destroy them, lengthening their sorrow and dampening their eyes. |
مع أنّ امرأً لم يكن منها في حبرة إلاّ أعقبته بعدها عبرة. ولم يلق من سرّائها بطنًا إلّا منحته من ضرّائها ظهرًا. ولم تَطُلَّه غبية رخاء إلّا هطلت عليه مزنة بلاء. وحرى إذا أضحت له منتصرة أن تمسي له خاذلة متنكّرة. وإن جانب منها ٱعذوذب وٱحلولى أمرّ عليه منها جانب وأوبى. وإن أتت ٱمرأً من غضارتها ورفاهتها نعمًا أرهقته من نوائبها نقمًا. ولم يمس ٱمرؤ منها في جناح أمن إلّا أصبح منه على قوادم خوف. غرّارة غرور ما فيها. فانية فان من عليها. لا خير في شيء من زادها إلّا التقوى. من أقلّ منها ٱستكثر ممّا يؤمنه ومن ٱستكثر منها ٱستكثر ممّا يوبقه ويطيل حزنه ويبكي عينه. |
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The world stuns those who trust it, fells those who place faith in it, and deceives those who take pride in it. How many grandees has it constrained and humbled! How many arrogant men has it debased! How many crowned heads has it thrown face down to the ground! Its power goes around in turns. Its life is turbid. Its water is brackish. Its confectionary is filled with bitter juice. Its nourishment is poison. Its ropes are decayed. Its fruits are bitter aloes. Its living are targets for death. Its healthy are targets for illness. Its sheltered are targets for oppression. Its kings will be pillaged. Its mighty will be vanquished. Its sound will be afflicted. Its hoarders will be plundered. |
كم واثق بها قد فجعته وذي طمأنينة إليها قد صرعته وذي ٱختيال فيها قد خدعته وكم من ذي أبّهة فيها قد صرّته حقيرًا وذي نخوة قد ردّته ذليلًا وكم من ذي تاج قد كبّته لليدين والفم. سلطانها دول وعيشها رنق وعذبها أجاج وحلوها صبِر وغذاؤها سمام وأسبابها رمام وقطافها سلع. حيّها بعرض موت وصحيحها بعرض سقم ومنيعها بعرض ٱهتضام. مليكها مسلوب وعزيزها مغلوب وسليمها منكوب وجامعها محروم. |
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[C] And there is yet more—for then come the anguished pangs of death, the horrific viewing of the resurrection, and the standing before the just judge: «He will recompense those who did evil with what they did, and recompense those who did good with good.»154 |
مع أنّ وراء ذلك سكرات الموت وهول المطّلع والوقوف بين يدي الحكم العدل ﴿ليَجْزِيَ الّذين أَساؤُوا بما عَمِلُوا وَيَجْزِيَ الّذينَ أَحْسَنُوا بالحُسْنَى﴾. |
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[D] Do you not live in the homes of those who enjoyed longer lifespans than you? Left behind more distinct monuments? Were more profuse in number? Led vaster armies? Were more obstinate in resisting? They worshipped the world, abjectly so. They gave it preference, fully and truly. But they departed from it unwilling and humiliated. Has word reached you that the world let a single soul escape in lieu of ransom? Or that the world took it upon itself to save them from the calamities that destroyed them? No. It crushed them with catastrophes, pulled down their edifices with misfortunes, and hocked them with disasters. You have seen its rejection of those who bowed before it, gave it preference, stuck faithfully to it. They departed from it—in an eternal separation till the end of time. Did the world supply them with anything other than wretchedness, house them in anything other than narrow graves, illumine them with anything other than dark gloom, or requite them with anything other than regret? Is it this same world that you too give priority to? That you covet? That you put your faith in? God says: «Whosoever desires the life of this world and its ornament, we will give them full recompense for their deeds, and they will not get a deficient measure. They are the people who will have naught in the hereafter but hellfire. All their undertakings will be wasted, and all their doings squandered.»155 What a wretched abode for those who would take it as residence! |
ألستم في مساكن من كان أطول منكم أعمارًا وأوضح آثارًا وأعدّ عديدًا وأكثف جنودًا وأعند عنودًا. تعبّدوا الدنيا أيّ تعبّد وآثروها أيّ إيثار وظعنوا عنها بالكره والصّغار. فهل بلغكم أنّ الدنيا سمحت لهم نفسًا بفدية أو أغنت عنهم فيما. قد أهلكتهم بخطب بل قد أرهقتهم بالفوادح وضعضعتهم بالنّوائب وعقرتهم بالمصائب. وقد رأيتم تنكّرها لمن دان لها وآثرها وأخلد إليها حين ظعنوا عنها لفراق الأبد إلى آخر المسند. هل زوّدتهم إلّا الشقاء وأحلّتهم إلّا الضنك أو نوّرت لهم إلّا الظلمة أو أعقبتهم إلّا الندامة. فهذه تؤثرون أم عليها تحرصون أم إليها تطمئنّون. يقول اللّه ﴿مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ ٱلْحَيَاةَ ٱلدُّنْيَا وَزِينَتَهَا نُوَفِّ إِلَيْهِمْ أَعْمَالَهُمْ فِيهَا وَهُمْ فِيهَا لاَ يُبْخَسُونَ أُوْلَـٰئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ لَيْسَ لَهُمْ فِي ٱلآخِرَةِ إِلاَّ ٱلنَّارُ وَحَبِطَ مَا صَنَعُواْ فِيهَا وَبَاطِلٌ مَّا كَانُواْ يَعْمَلُونَ ﴾ فبئست الدار لمن أقام فيها. |
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[E] Know this—and you do know it—that you will, without doubt, leave the world. It is truly as God has described it, a place of transient dalliance and play. He said: «Do you build a monument on every height for your amusement?»156 |
فٱعلموا وأنتم تعلمون أنكّم تاركوها لا بدّ. فإنّما هي كما وصفها اللّه بالّلعب والّلهو وقد قال ﷲ ﴿أَتَبْنُونَ بِكُلِّ رِيع آيَةً تَعْبَثُون وَتَتَّخِذُونَ مَصَانِع لَعَلَّكُمْ تَخْلُدون ﴾. |
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[F] And he described those «who said: is anyone mightier than us?»157 and said: They have been carried to their graves, but cannot be called travelers. They have been laid there to rest, but cannot be called guests. They have been covered in tombs and shrouded by earth. They have been given decaying bones as neighbors—neighbors who cannot answer those who call out to them, or offer protection from attackers. If residents of the grave have rain they do not rejoice. If they have drought they do not despair. They are together, yet each one alone. Neighbors, yet far distant from the other. No one visits them and they visit no one. Mature leaders whose hostilities are things of the past. Rash youths whose hate and rancor has blown away. Their blows are no longer feared. Their protection is no longer sought. As Almighty God has said: «Those are their abodes, uninhabited after them except for a short time. We are the true inheritors.»158 The dead gave up the back of the earth in exchange for its belly, a vast space in exchange for narrow straits, family in exchange for exile, and light in exchange for darkness. They came to [their graves] in the condition in which they left the world—barefoot, naked and alone. The differ- |
وذكر الّذين ﴿قَالُواْ مَنْ أَشَدُّ مِنَّا قُوَّةً﴾ ثمّ قال حملوا إلى قبورهم فلا يدعون ركبانًا وأنزلوا فيها فلا يدعون ضيفانًا. وجعل لهم من الضريح أجنان ومن التراب أكفان ومن الرفات جيران. فهم جيرة لا يجيبون داعيًا ولا يمنعون ضيمًا. إن أخصبوا لم يفرحوا وإن أقحطوا لم يقنطوا. جميع وهم آحاد وجيرة وهم أبعاد. متناؤون لا يزارون ولا يزورون. حلماء قد ذهبت أضغانهم وجهلاء قد ماتت أحقادهم لا يخشى فجعهم ولا يرجى دفعهم. وكما قال جلّ وعزّ ﴿فَتِلْكَ مَساكنُهمْ لم تُسْكَنْ مِنْ بَعْدِهم إلاّ قليلاً وكُنّا نحنُ الوارثين﴾ ٱستبدلوا بظهور الأرض بطنًا وبالسعة ضيقًا وبالأهل غربة وبالنور ظلمة. فجاؤوها كما فارقوها حفاة عراة فرادى. غير أنّهم ظعنوا بأعمالهم إلى الحياة الدائمة وإلى خلود الأبد. |
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ence is that they departed with their deeds to eternal life and everlasting existence. God says: «Just as I brought into being the first creation, I shall bring it forth anew. This is my pledge—I shall truly bring it to pass.»159 |
يقول اللّه﴿كَمَا بَدَأْنا أَوَّلَ خَلْقٍ نُعيدُه وَعْداً عَلَيْنَا إنَّا كُنّا فاعِلِين﴾. |
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[G] [This is all true]—so beware that which God has warned against, take benefit from his counsel, and hold tight to his rope. May he keep us in the protecting shade of his obedience, and grant us the strength to render his due. |
فٱحذروا ما حذّركم اللّه وٱنتفعوا بمواعظه وٱعتصموا بحبله. عصمنا ﷲ وإيّاكم بطاعته ورزقنا وإيّاكم أداء حقّه. |
5.2 Analysis
Qaṭarī’s oration builds on two of the three main themes of the early Islamic sermon of pious counsel described earlier—the base nature of this world and the inevitability of death—to warn the audience against worldliness, and, by implication, to encourage listeners to prepare for the hereafter. The sermon is characterized by the medieval scholars as “Qaṭarī’s sermon in censure of the world,” for this is its main thrust—the entire oration is an extended censure. Several subthemes stand out: the world’s deception, instability, impurity, and imminent annihilation. The death theme in the sermon is predicated upon the censure of the world. The third main theme of the sermon of pious counsel—the injunction to piety and obedience of God, to moral rectitude and undertaking of Shariʿah commands—is not spelled out here. It is possible that formulaic exhortations to piety and obedience were part of a lost opening section. But in the text as we have it, there is just one short line on piety, where Qaṭarī says that “there is no good in any of the world’s provisions save piety.”
I divide the sermon into seven thematic sections:
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Introductory section, warning of the world, characterizing it as deceitful and unstable.
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On its mixed nature—there is no pure good in the world, all good is packaged with bad.
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Three lines on death and the coming judgment.
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An extended ubi sunt segment, filled with rhetorical questions about powerful men who had lived in bygone times—where are they? The world crushed them.
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Two lines connecting the audience with the ubi sunt segment—you will leave the world too.
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Ubi sunt continued—describing in vivid terms the terrors of the grave; its dwellers have no life, no power, and no control.
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Two-line ending, wrapping up the warning, and praying to God to save the orator and the audience, presumably from the terrors he has just outlined.
Qurʾanic verses are used extensively to frame and strengthen the argument. After warning of this world in general terms in his opening line, Qaṭarī follows with detailed reasoning—a long list of the world’s vices and extensive discoursing on the inevitability of death. Five of the seven sections end with a verse from the Qurʾan, putting the final, divine, stamp of authority on everything said in the section. Section A ends with the verse: «Like water that we sent down from the sky—the vegetation of the earth drew from it, then became dry straw, scattered by the winds. God is able to do all things»—a robust endorsement of the statements he had just made about the transience of the world’s pleasures. This, and the other four verses that Qaṭarī used in the sermon, at the end of sections C, D, E, and F, provide Qurʾanic support for the various parts of his counsel. Just prior to the final injunction and prayer, the discourse of the oration also ends with a Qurʾanic verse «Just as I brought into being the first creation, I shall bring it forth anew. This is my pledge—I shall truly bring it to pass.» This closure with God’s words highlights its Qurʾanic grounding, and it puts a retroactive seal of authenticity on Qaṭarī’s oration.
In addition to the Qurʾanic verse coming at the end of a thematic section, the transition from section to section is indicated in several more ways. Following the Qurʾanic verse at the end of the previous section, two sections [B and C] begin with the phrase “And there is yet more!”—an indicator that the preacher will provide now yet another set of evidentiary materials to bolster his argument. The move to a new section at the beginning of section E is indicated by the sudden interjection (after a string of rhetorical questions) of an imperative command “Know this—and you do know it—that you will, without doubt, leave the world.”
The characterization of the world as deceptive, unstable, and transient is articulated through the well-known formulae and commonly used adjectives of the pious-counsel sermon. Using a customary characterization of the world as dangerously attractive, Qaṭarī warns of it saying: “it is sweet and green, surrounded by temptations.” He goes on to attach to the world a string of bitingly castigating labels: “Deceiving, harming, betraying, lying, changing, lapsing, ceasing, perishing, consuming. A ghoulish devourer, fickle and capricious, giver of death.” He notes that “its joys does not last.” He characterizes humans as “targets for death.” The ubi sunt section is chock full of rhetorical questions that are meant to force the audience to acknowledge the reality of death. The injunction “Know this—and you do know it …” [section E] employs a standard pattern to set up his assertions. These and other points in his long list of the world’s vices are familiar themes, structures, and phrases of the sermon of pious counsel.
Personalizing the text, Qaṭarī injects into his sermon potent reminders of the relevance of his warnings to the audience. The opening is a special admonition to each and every member: “I warn you against this world;” the following scathing censure of the world is made of consequence to every individual by the use of the second person pronoun “you.” Then, in section E, Qaṭarī tells his addressees that “you will, without doubt, leave the world,” again using the direct address to hammer in its relevance to the individual listeners. The ending is personalized too, with Qaṭarī using direct commands to charge his audience to “beware that which God has warned against, take benefit from his counsel, and hold tight to his rope!” The direct address throughout adds to the personalization of the counsel.
6 Concluding Remarks
While universal in their counsel to be good humans, the themes and subthemes of the early Islamic sermon of pious counsel are firmly rooted in a Qurʾanic world view, and permeated with its vocabulary and concepts. They draw on pre-Islamic concepts of death—also foregrounded in the Qurʾan—to present a distinctly Islamic and Arabian ethos of the hereafter. Framed in injunctions to piety, they expound the urgency of recognizing the transience of worldly life, preparing for the afterlife, performing good deeds, obeying God, and—over and above everything else—remaining ever conscious of God.
The sermon is also attributed to ʿAlī. Another full sermon of pious counsel by ʿAlī was previously analyzed in Ch. 3, with commentary on how its style facilitated its message of preparing for the hereafter.
Q Baqarah 2:197.
The OED gives the meaning of “God-fearing” as “characterized by deep respect for God; deeply or earnestly religious” (Oxford University Press; accessed May 1, 2018,
In “Two Moments in the Biography of Holiness (Qedushah),” (paper presented at Virtues, Happiness and Meaning of Life workshop, University of Chicago, 2017), Joseph Stern discussed the perspectives of Maimonides and Nahmanides on the biblical prescription in Lev. 19, 2: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
Exegetes explain the word taqwā in the Qurʾan (Baqarah 2:197) as: “fearing the performing of evil deeds” (Zamakhsharī); “fearing God’s punishment, which is meted out to those who disobey Him” (Ibn Kathīr); and “good deeds” (Qurṭubī).
App. § 90.5; other sermons by Muḥammad urging piety and virtue include three excerpts in Yaʿqūbī, 2:89.
Q Āl ʿImrān 3:102.
Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, 1:353; Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (citing Ibn ʿAbbās), 3:101; Raḍī, Nahj, 28–29; Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, 1:24, ʿAbduh, comm., Nahj, 23; Sayf al-Dīn, Tadhkirat al-labīb, 80–81; see eulogies collected by ʿAbd al-Zahrāʾ, 1:43–47, 87–99, and by modern editors of medieval compilations of ʿAlī’s words.
App. § 31.41, titled “the sermon addressed to Hammām.” For a full translation and analysis, see T. Qutbuddin, “Piety and Virtue in Early Islam: Two Sermons by Imam Ali.” See also ʿAlī’s further descriptions of the pious in § 31.49.
App. § 31.51, § 31.49.
App. § 31.52.
(فإنّ تقوى الله مفتاح كلّ سداد وذخيرة معاد وعتق من كلّ ملكة ونجاة من كلّ هلكة بها ينجح الطالب و ينجو الهارب وتنال الرغائب): App. § 31.53.
(اعلموا عباد الله أنّ التقوى دار حصن عزيز والفجور دار حصن ذليل … ألا وبالتقوى تقطع حمة الخطايا): App. § 31.43.
(أوصيكم بتقوى الله فإنّ تقوى الله خير ما تواصى به عباد الله وأقربه لرضوان الله وخيره في عواقب الأمور عند الله وبتقوى الله أمرتم وللإحسان والطاعة خلقتم): Minqarī, 10.
(إنّ لكل سفر زاد لا محالة فتزوّدوا من دنياكم لآخرتكم بالتقوى): App. § 139.10.
(اتّقوا الله عباد الله فكم من مؤمّل أملًا لا يبلغه وجامع مالًا لا يأكله ومانع عمّا سوف يتركه). App. § 159.2.
(أوصيكم عباد الله ونفسي بتقوى الله ولزوم طاعته وتقديم العمل وترك الأمل). Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, 4:63.
(أعوذ بالله أن آمركم بما أنهي عنه نفسي فتخسر صفقتي وتظهر عورتي وتبدو مسكنتي في يوم يبدو فيه الغنيّ والفقير والموازين منصوبة والجوارح ناطقة). App. § 139.10.
Ibn Qutaybah, ʿUyūn, 2:282.
Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, 1:397; (Ṣafwat, 2:416–417).
App. § 51.14.
App. § 81.1.
(عباد الله إنّ أنصح الناس لنفسه أطوعهم لربّه وإنّ أغشّهم لنفسه أعصاهم لربّه): App. § 31.54.
Q Anfāl 8:1, Zukhruf 43:63, Shuʿārāʾ 26:126 and passim.
(أوصيكم بتقوى الله وطاعته): App. § 18.4.
(أوصيكم عبادﷲ بتقوى الله وطاعته فإنّها النجاة غدًا والمنجاة أبدًا): App. § 31.55.
App. § 51.16.
App. § 139.3. Many orators also liken death, or alternatively a man’s lifespan, to neck irons.
(ألا وإنّ الخطايا خيل شمس حمل عليها أهلها وخلعت لجمها فتقحّمت بهم في النار ألا وإنّ التقوى مطايا ذلل حمّل عليها أهلها وأعطوا أزمّتها فأوردتهم الجنّة): App. § 31.3.
App. § 31.56. See similar metaphor in Ḥajjāj: App. § 51.6.
(وٱعلموا أنّ حوائج الناس إليكم نعمة … وٱعلموا أنّ أفضل المال ما أكسب أجرًا وأورث ذكرًا): App. § 72.2.
App. § 31.39. See also § 31.4, § 31.51, § 31.31.
App. § 31.57.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, 4:58. See also App. § 140.2 (ʿUmar), § 31.2 (ʿAlī).
App. § 128.1.
App. § 31.47, § 31.50, § 31.51, § 31.58, and passim (ʿAlī).
App. § 31.5. This was ʿAlī’s typical counsel according to Zamakhsharī, Rabīʿ, 1:39.
App. § 31.43, § 31.38 (ʿAlī). See T. Qutbuddin, “Sermons of ʿAlī,” § 4.1, 4.5. Ḥajjāj: App. § 51.15.
App. § 31.59 (ʿAlī), § 139.15 (ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz).
App. § 70.1, § 57.1, § 57.2 § 9.1, § 25.1, § 25.2.
App. § 31.42 (ʿAlī).
See works on Quss by Rabīʿī, Dziekan, and Chraibi. See also Cheikho, Naṣrāniyyah, 75, 121 and passim.
(خطيب العرب): Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, 1:52; Ibn Manẓūr, s.v. “KhṬB”. For praise of Quss’s oratory, see Jāḥiẓ, Bayān, 1:42, 43, 45 and passim, and entry on Quss in Ibn Ḥajar, Iṣābah, 7:253–256.
(حكيم العرب): Masʿūdī, 1:79.
“More eloquent than Quss” (أبلغ من قسّ), “more articulate than Quss” (أقوَل من قسّ), and “wiser than Quss” (أحكم من قسّ) grew to be standard maxims (Maydānī, 1:302; Sijistānī, 124, citing the poets Ḥuṭayʾah and Aʿshā Banī Qays).
ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad, 2:94, 109.
App. § 105.1.
App. § 31.60.
App. § 90.12; single lines of this sermon are cited in Quḍāʿī, Shihāb, § 3.35 and § 3.36. The sermon is attributed to ʿAlī in Raḍī, Nahj, saying § 123, 653; cited and discussed in T. Qutbuddin, “Contemplations” 341–342, and “Sermons of ʿAlī,” 217–218. Another excerpt of a sermon by Muḥammad warning of imminent death is cited in Yaʿqūbī, 2:90.
(اعلموا أنّ ملاحظ المنيّة نحوكم دانية وكأنّكم بمخالبها وقد نشبت فيكم … فقطّعوا علائق الدنيا وٱستظهروا بزاد التقوى): App. § 31.61.
(فإنّ الموت هادم لذّاتكم ومكدّر شهواتكم ومباعد طيّاتكم): App. § 31.53.
App. § 31.62; App. § 31.63 (ʿAlī).
(الموت في أعناقكم): App. § 51.14.
E.g., Qurʾan: Q Ḥāqqah 69:4–8; Ibrāhīm 14:9–17, Ḥajj 22:42–45. Pre-Islamic poetry: Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, § 44, 215–220; see Ghassan el Masri, “The Qurʾan and the Character of Pre-Islamic Poetry,” 107–113, in which he discusses the Ode in D of the pre-Islamic poet al-Aswad ibn Yaʿfur al-Nahshalī and its ubi sunt verses.
App. § 31.58 (ʿAlī); more in Raḍī, 101, 169, 219–220, 280, 470, and passim. On ʿAlī’s ubi sunt and the pre-Islamic context, see T. Qutbuddin, “Sermons of ʿAlī”. App. § 15.3, § 15.4, § 15.8 (Abū Bakr). § 146.2 (ʿUthmān). § 51.12 (Ḥajjāj). ʿ§ 139.10 (ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz). § 151.1 (Wāṣil).
App. § 16.1. Part ascribed to Muḥammad in Quḍāʿī, Shihāb, § 3.17.
App. § 139.11.
App. § 31.63.
ʿAlī (… إنّ الموت لا يفوته مقيم ولا يعجزه الهارب): App. § 31.8.
E.g., App. § 89.1 (eulogy by Ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah for his half-brother Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī); § 139.13 (prayer by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz for his son); App. § 49.1 § 21.1, § 98.1 (eulogies by the first three Sunni caliphs’ daughters for their fathers, and for ʿUthmān also by his wife Nāʾilah); § 116.1 (eulogy by Ṣafiyyah bint Hishām for her cousin Aḥnaf ibn Qays).
App. § 82.3.
App. § 149.1, § 51.11, § 7.4.
§ 31.4, § 31.35, § 31.52 (ʿAlī).
App. § 90.5.
App. § 31.79, § 31.81.
App. § 139.5.
App. § 128.1, § 56.2, § 102.1.
See T. Qutbuddin, “Contemplations,” passim.
(فلتكن الدنيا أصغر في أعينكم من حثالة القرظ وقراضة الجلم): App. § 31.65; (جيفة مريحة): App. § 31.63, § 31.64; (غرّارة بأهلها): Minqarī, 10; (حلوة خضرة أكّالة غوّالة): App. § 31.66.
(دار بالبلاء محفوفة وبالغدر معروفة لا تدوم أحوالها ولا يسلم نزّالها أحوال مختلفة وتارات متصرفة العيش فيها مذموم والأمان فيها معدوم وإنّما أهلها فيها لأغراض مستهدفة ترميهم بسهامها وتفنيهم بحمامها): App. § 31.53.
App. § 31.67, § 31.4, (ما أصف من دار أوّلها عناء وآخرها فناء في حلالها حساب وفي حرامها عقاب من ٱستغنى فيها فتن ومن ٱفتقر فيها حزن ومن ساعاها فاتته ومن قعد عنها واتته ومن أبصر بها بصّرته ومن أبصر ليها أعمته): App. § 31.82.
App. § 31.68 (ʿAlī), § 56.1 (Ḥasan al-Baṣrī).
App. § 31.70 (ʿAlī).
(أيّها الناس إنّ أخوف ما أخاف عليكم ٱثنان ٱتّباع الهوى وطول الأمل فأمّا ٱتّباع الهوى فيصدّ عن الحقّ وأمّا طول الأمل فينسي الآخرة): App. § 31.11.
(أوصيكم عباد الله بالرفض لهذه الدنيا التاركة لكم): App. § 31.69.
See T. Qutbuddin, “Contemplations,” passim.
App. § 31.9.
﴿ وٱبْتَغِ فِيمَا آتَاكَ اللَّهُ الدَّارَ الْآخِرَةَ وَلَا تَنْسَ نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا﴾: Q Qaṣaṣ 28:77.
App. § 31.83.
App. § 31.3.
App. § 31.74, § 117.1, § 43.1.
(وكأنّ ما هو كائن من الدنيا عن قليل لم يكن وكأنّ ما هو كائن من الآخرة عمّا قليل لم يزل وكلّ ما هو آت قريب): App. § 31.71.
App. § 126.3.
Q Zalzalah 99:7–8.
Q Fātiḥah 1:5.
(تزوّدوا في الدنيا من الدنيا ما تحوزون به أنفسكم غدًا): App. § 31.59.
(تزوّدوا في أيّام الفناء لأيّام البقاء قد دللتم على الزاد وأمرتم بالظعن وحثثتم على المسير فإنّما أنتم كركب وقوف لا يدرون متى يؤمرون بالسير): App. § 31.43.
(إنّ لكلّ سفر زادًا لا محالة فتزوّدوا لسفركم من الدنيا إلى الآخرة): App. § 139.10.
(ألا فما يصنع بالدنيا من خلق للآخرة وما يصنع بالمال من عمّا قليل يسلبه): App. § 31.43.
(ألا وإنّ هذه الدنيا الّتي أصبحتم تتمنّونها وترغبون فيها وأصبحت تغضبكم وترضيكم ليست بداركم ولا منزلكم الّذي خلقتم له ولا الّذي دعيتم إليه): App. § 31.24.
(ففيها ٱختبرتم ولغيرها خلقتم): App. § 31.38.
(استدركوا بقيّة أيّامكم وٱصبروا لها أنفسكم فإنّها قليل في كثير): App. § 31.54.
App. § 31.72.
App. § 62.6.
Q Baqarah 2:197.
Q Āl ʿImrān 3:200.
Morony (467–506) devotes a chapter in his book to “Doctrines of Authority and Rebellion,” which includes a part on the “Politics of Piety,” and follow-up sections on the Khārijites, Shiʿa, etc.
T. Qutbuddin, “Contemplations,” passim.
App. § 31.11.
App. § 56.1.
App. § 31.73, referencing Q Infiṭār 82:6.
App. § 18.5.
Wolpers, 83 and passim.
App. § 139.10.
App. § 31.4.
Hadiths attributed to Muḥammad in Quḍāʿī, Shihāb, § 1.134–136.
App. § 31.42, § 31.52, § 31.55, § 31.79, § 15.8, § 102.2, § 155.1, § 159.2.
App. § 90.11 (Muḥammad); § 31.66, § 31.80 (ʿAlī); App. § 102.1 (Qaṭarī).
App. § 31.11, Raḍī, 125 (ʿAlī); Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, 4:120 (ʿUtbah ibn Ghazwān); App. § 137.1 (Ubādah ibn al-Ṣāmit).
App. § 31.4 (ʿAlī), § 155.2 (Yazīd), § 8.4 (ʿAbd al-Malik).
App. § 31.3 (ʿAlī).
App. § 31.53 (ʿAlī).
App. § 31.74 (ʿAlī), § 43.1 (Bedouin), § 51.15 (Ḥajjāj).
App. § 31.79, § 31.81 (ʿAlī), § 155.1 (Yazīd).
App. § 31.73 (ʿAlī), § 56.1 (Ḥasan al-Baṣrī).
App. § 51.17 (Ḥajjāj).
Q Baqarah 2:197; App. § 8.4 (ʿAbd al-Malik).
Q Kahf 18:45. App. § 102.1 (Qaṭarī), § 146.2 (ʿUthmān), § 155.1 (Yazīd).
Q Muʾminūn 23:115; App. § 31.4 (ʿAlī).
Q Qiyāmah 75:36; App. § 31.4 (ʿAlī).
(الحلم شرف والصبر ظفر والمعروف كنز): App. § 57.2 (Hāshim).
(والسعيد من وعظ بغيره والشقيّ من ٱنخدع لهواه وغروره): App. § 31.54 (ʿAlī).
(فإنّ الحسد يأكل الإيمان كما تأكل النار الحطب): App. § 31.54 (ʿAlī).
(لا وجع أشدّ من الجهل ولا داء أخبث من الذنوب ولا خوف أخوف من الموت): App. § 139.8 (ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz).
(هلك من ٱدّعى وخاب من ٱفترى): App. § 31.2 (ʿAlī).
(إنّ أنصح الناس لنفسه أطوعهم لربّه وإنّ أغشّهم لنفسه أعصاهم لربّه): ʿAlī: App. § 31.54 (ʿAlī).
(كفى بالمرأ إثمًا أن يضيّع من يقوت): Muḥammad: Quḍāʿī, Shihāb, § 13.5; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 11:36 § 6495; Ibn Manẓūr, s.v. “QWT”; Suyūṭī, Jāmiʿ, § 8627.
(دعوا الفضول تجانبكم السفهاء. اصطنعوا المعروف تكسبوا الحمد): App. § 57.2 (Hāshim).
(لا تجزعوا من القتل في الله): App. § 122.1 (Ṣāliḥ).
(تجهّزوا رحمكم الله فقد نودي فيكم بالرحيل): App. § 31.61 (ʿAlī).
(رحم الله عبدًا سمع حكمًا فوعى ودعي إلى رشاد فدنا وأخذ بحجزة هاد فنجا): App. § 31.71 (ʿAlī). See also Raḍī, 153 § 75, and App. § 139.14.
(وٱعلموا أنّ الأمان غدًا لمن يخاف اليوم): App. § 139.15 (ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz).
(ربّ شهوة ساعة أورثت حزنًا طويلًا): Quḍāʿī, Shihāb, § 14.6 (Muḥammad).
(صلاتكم صلاتكم زكاتكم زكاتكم جيرانكم جيرانكم إخوانكم إخوانكم مساكينكم مساكينكم): App. § 56.1 (Ḥasan al-Baṣrī). Lit., “your prayers,” etc.
(أوصيكم بتقوى الله والزهد في الدنيا والرغبة في الآخرة وكثرة ذكر الموت وفراق الفاسقين وحبّ المؤمنين): App. § 122.1 (Ṣāliḥ).
(إنّ لسان المؤمن من وراء قلبه وإنّ قلب المنافق من وراء لسانه لأنّ المؤمن إذا أراد أن يتكلّم بكلام تدبّره في نفسه فإن كان خيرًا أبداه وإن كان شرًّا واراه وإنّ المنافق يتكلّم بما أتى على لسانه لا يدري ماذا له وماذا عليه): App. § 31.48.
(الرزق مقسوم فلن يعدو المؤمن ما قسّم له فأجملوا في الطلب فإنّ في القنوع سعة وبلغة وكفافًا): App. § 139.11. See also App. § 139.4.
App. § 64.1.
Lit. “eating his flesh is a sin.” Reference to Q Ḥujurāt 49:12 «Do not speak ill of one another behind your backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, you would loathe it!» ﴾ وَلاَ يَغْتَب بَّعْضُكُم بَعْضاً أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن يَأْكُلَ لَحْمَ أَخِيهِ مَيْتاً فَكَرِهْتُمُوه ﴿.
App. § 139.9.
On Aḥnaf, see Nuṣṣ, al-Khaṭābah al-ʿarabiyyah, 367–400.
See discussion of testaments by Mannāʿ, 105–149.
Jāḥiẓ, Bayān 3:125–192; Ibn Qutaybah, ʿUyūn, 2:359–371. Ibn Qutaybah records maqāms of several ascetics admonishing the caliph, usually in his court, sometimes even during the caliph’s oration. See also Nuṣṣ, al-Khaṭābah al-ʿarabiyyah, “The Religious Sermon,” 203–221.
Azdī describes an address by ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ to the troops at Yarmūk as both qaṣaṣ and waʿẓ: App. § 35.1.
L. Armstrong in The Quṣṣāṣ of Early Islam divides the early qaṣaṣ into three categories: religious, martial, and religio-political. He traces the quṣṣāṣ’s associations with Qurʾan reciters, jurists, judges, orators, admonishers, mudhakkirūn, and ascetics, assesses their skills and conduct, and discusses individuals who produced qaṣaṣ in the early Islamic and Umayyad period.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, 3:99–189.
Zamakhsharī, Rabīʿ, “Seasons”: 1:7–41; “Good”: 2:13–37; “Death”: 4:179–211.
Raḍī, 33.
Ṣafwat, 1:4, 20–25, 41–49, 66–72; 2:482–512.
Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, 4:51.
Sharīshī, 1:232, § 6. He cites excerpts from Qaṭarī’s sermon, poetry, and anecdotes (1:232–236).
App. § 102.1 (Qaṭarī), § 31.66 (ʿAlī).
Q Kahf 18:45.
Q Najm 53:13.
Q Hūd 11:51.
Q Shuʿarāʾ 26:128.
Q Fuṣṣilat 41:15.
Q Qaṣaṣ 28:58.
Q Anbiyāʾ 21:104.