Ulil Albaab
Ulil Albaab - أولي الألباب : the term occurs a few
times in the Qur'an. It speaks of those endowed
with hearts: or the higher understanding,
a faculty that is located in the 'heart'.
This page will feature thoughts
on the Qur'an from a few أولي الألباب .
Faith of An Unlettered Muslima
from: Hasan Askari, Alone to Alone (1991): 113.
For a long time she would allow her eyes to rest
on the two open pages before her. The letters in green ink
from right to left, row benath row, each shape mysteriously
captivating, each dot above or below a letter an epitome
of the entire scripture, each assembly of letters a group of
dervishes raising their heads in zikr, each gap between two
enigmatic shapes a leap from this world into the next,
and each ending the advent of the Resurrection.
She would thus see a thousand images
After spending much time in just looking at the open book,
she would then, with strange light glowing on her face,
lift her right hand and with the right finger start touching
the letters of each line, then another line, to the end of the page.
What transpired between the Book and that touch, and what
knowledge passed, without any mediation of conscious thought,
directly into her soul, only the Qur'an and the strange reciter
could know. The entire world stood still at this amazing recital
without words, without meaning, without knowledge. With that touch
a unity was established between her and the Qur'an. At that moment
she had passed into a state of total identity with the word of God.
Her inability to read the Scripture was her ability to hear once again:
Read! Read, in the name of this Lord.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Jawahir al-Qur'an:
from:Kristin Zahra Sands, Sufi commentaries
on the Qur'an in classical Islam (Routledge, 2005): 7.
I will rouse you from your sleep, you who have given
yourself up to recitations, who have seized upon
some of its outward meanings and sentences.
How long will you wander about the shore of the sea
with your eyes closed to its wonders? Was it not for you
to sail through its depths in order to see its amazing
things, to travel to its islands to pick its delicacies,
to dive to its bottom and become rich from obtaining
its jewels? Don’t you despise yourself for losing out
on its pearls and jewels as you continue
to look on its shores and exoteric aspects?
Haven’t you heard that the Qur'an is an ocean
from which knowledge of all ages branches out
just as rivers and streams branch out from the shores
of the ocean? Don’t you envy the happiness of people
who have plunged into its overflowing waves
and seized red sulfur, who have dived into its depths
and taken out red rubies, shining pearls and green chrysolites,
who have roamed its shores and gathered gray ambergris
and fresh blooming aloes wood, who have clung
to its islands and found an abundance in their animals
of the greatest antidote and pungent musk?
Allama Iqbal: from Javeed Nama
translation by - A. J. Arberry
Originality is at the root of creation,
Never by imitation shall life be reformed;
The living heart, creator of ages and epochs,
That soul is little enamored of imitation:
If you possess the spirit of a true Muslim
Examine your own conscience, and the Qur’an –
A hundred new worlds lie within its verses,
Whole centuries are involved in its moments;
One world of it suffices for the present age –
Seize it, if the heart in your breast grasps the truth.
A believing servant himself is a sign of God,
Every world to his breast is as a garment;
And when one world grows old upon his bosom,
The Qur’an gives him another world.
Frithjof Schuon: from Understanding Islam
In order to understand the full scope of the Qur'an
we must take three things into consideration: its doctrinal content,
which we find made explicit in the great canonical treatises of Islam
such as those of Abu Hanifah and Et-Tahawi; its narrative content,
which depicts all the vicissitudes of the soul; and its divine
magic or its mysterious and in a sense miraculous power;
these sources of metaphysical and eschatalogical wisdom,
of mystical psychology and theurgic power lie hidden under a veil
of breathless utterances, often clashing in shock,
of crystalline and fiery images, but also of passages
majestic in rhythm, woven of every fiber of the human condition.
Titus Burckhardt: from The Essential Titus Burckhardt
…the play of art always obeys easily fathomable rules,
whereas the waves of sacred speech, though they sometimes
exhibit regular patterns, have behind them a whole ocean
without form. In the same way, the state of inner harmony
engendered by the words and sonorous magic of the Koran
is situated on quite another plane than the satisfaction
that can be obtained, for example, in perfect poetry.
The Koran does not satisfy, it gives and takes away
at the same time, it expands the soul by lending it wings,
and then lays it low and leaves it naked; for the believer,
it is both comforting and purifying, like a rainstorm.
Purely human art does not possess this virtue.
That is to say, there is no such thing as a Koranic stye
which can simply be transposed into art; but there
does exist a state of the soul which is sustained
by the recitation of the Koran, and which favors
some formal manifestations while excluding others.
The diapason of the Koran never fails to unite
an intoxicating nostalgia with the greatest sobriety:
it is a radiation of the divine Sun on the human desert.
It is to these two poles, drunkenness and sobriety,
that the fluid and flamboyant rhythm of the arabesque
and the abstract and crystalline character
of architecture respectively correspond.
