Chapter 3 Literarischer Prozess zwischen Fiktion und Wirklichkeit
Ein Beispiel aus der klassisch-arabischen Erzählliteratur
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Zusammenfassung
This article on Literary Process between Fiction and Reality contains the translation and analysis of an Arabic tale, a report ascribed to the mystic Sarī as-Saqaṭī, a student of Ǧunayd (d. between 295/908 and 297/910). This tale is available in two versions, a long one preserved by Ḥurayfiš (d. 800/1398) and quoted by Zakariyāʾ al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), and a short rendition preserved by Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisī (d. 620/1223), Ibšīhī (791/1388–ca. 850/1446), and in an Arabic manuscript from the 10th/16th century (Daiber Collection I, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, MS 94, fol. 3 v–4 v).
Saqaṭī narrates his meeting with a female slave in a lunatic asylum. This slave called Tuḥfa was taken by her owner to the lunatic asylum because her behaviour became like that of a lunatic. Saqaṭī, however, recognized that Tuḥfa’s seemingly crazy behaviour in reality was her mystical love for God. He gives a vivid picture of her mystical love and informs us about his decision to free her by paying the owner 20 000 Dirham. As a Sufi, Saqaṭī had no money to pay for her, but in search for a solution he prayed the whole night. During the early morning, a man called Aḥmad Ibn al-Muṯannā brought him the money. God had asked Aḥmad Ibn al-Muṯannā in a dream to bring Saqaṭī the money. Tuḥfa was freed and left the lunatic asylum. Some time later, Saqaṭī and Aḥmad Ibn al-Muṯannā met Tuḥfa again on the pilgrimage to Mecca, during their circumambulation of the Kaʿba. They found Tuḥfa in a state of mystical ecstasy. She was weeping, yearning for God and for renunciation of the world. She fell down in front of them and died. At the same moment, Aḥmad Ibn al-Muṯannā fell down, too, and died.
Literary cliches, the terminology and the analysis of the contents show that the story in its present form is a literary fiction which ultimately has its roots in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries. The [28] story does not propagate Ǧunayd’s ecstatic unification with God which is followed by the so-called “second sobriety”, by a new alertness of the mind (ṣaḥw): It propagates Bisṭāmī’s abandonment of man’s self, his death in the mystical unification with God. Contrary to Ǧunayd, who prefered to talk about his mystical love through “indications” (išārāt), and similar to Ḥallāǧ’s public propagation of his unification with God in the well-known utterance anā l-ḥaqq, the main figure of the Saqaṭī narrative, Tuḥfa, does not hide her mystical love of God. Who seems to be lunatic is indeed near to God and “knows” Him, as it is exemplified in tales told by Sarrāǧ and ʿAṭṭār from the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries about mad people in the lunatic asylum, who are visited by the public because of their nearness to God.
The mystic Saqaṭī and the object of his tale, the mystic woman Tuḥfa, inform the reader and listener on the essence of mystical love. The mystical death of the lover of God is in the eyes of Saqaṭī not a miracle, but something marvellous. Herewith, the narrative appears to be classified as something similar to the “marvellous” things, the ʿaǧāʾib of Arabic “tales” (ḥikāyāt) which since the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries became the literary background of The Thousand and One Nights. One of the preserved collections of “marvellous tales” contains the story of a woman called Tuḥfa who was sold by her husband because of their poverty. After a long odyssey they were united again. This story is taken up in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights, in a modification of a theme in the Greek novel, of the rebellion of a couple against fate. In Islam it became a record of human instability and fatalistic consequences. This theme of an odyssey is changed in our mystical tale into a didactic narrative on the ecstatic unification with the divine beloved being, God, and its consequences for man on earth.