Mulla `Ali al-Qari (d. 1014 AH)
Mulla `Ali al-Qari (d. 1014 AH) A Great Hanafi
Hadith Master
One of the great Hanafi masters of hadith and Imams
of fiqh, Qur'anic commentary, language, history and tasawwuf, he authored several
great commentaries such as al-Mirqat on Mishkat al-masabih in several volumes,
a two-volume commentary on Qadi `Iyad's al-Shifa', and a two-volume commentary
on Ghazali's abridgment of the Ihya entitled `Ayn al-`ilm wa zayn al-hilm (The
spring of knowledge and the adornment of understanding). His book of prophetic
invocations, al-Hizb al-a`zam (The supreme daily dhikr) forms the basis of Imam
al-Jazuli's celebrated manual of dhikr, Dala'il al-khayrat, which along with
the Qur'an is recited daily by many pious Muslims around the world.
He writes in the foreword to his commentary on Ghazali:
I wrote this commentary on the abridgment of Ihya' `ulum al-din by the Proof
of Islam and the Confirmation of Creatures hoping to receive some of the outpouring
of blessings from the words of the most pure knowers of Allah, and to benefit
from the gifts that exude from the pages of the Shaykhs and the Saints, so that
I may be mentioned in their number and be raised in their throng, even if I
fell short in their following and their service, for I rely on my love for them
and content myself with my longing for them.1
On the obligation to seek purification of the heart he writes:
The greatest of the great (al-akabir) have striven to pray only two rak`at without
conversing with their ego about dunya in the midst of their prayer, and they
were unable to do this. Therefore there is not any such ambition for us of ever
achieving this. Would that one saves only half of his prayer, or only a third,
from the whisperings and the passing thoughts turning over in the mind. He is
like him who mixes good and bad, like a glass full of vinegar into which water
is poured: inevitably vinegar is spilled in proportion to the water poured and
the two amounts never coexist. We ask for Allah's help!2
The last chapter of Qari's commentary on Ghazali, perhaps the most valuable
of the entire work, is devoted to Ghazali's and Qari's explanations of the verse
"If you love Allah, follow me, and Allah will love you!" (3:31) and is reminiscent
of al-Harawi's Kitab sad maydan on the same topic. In it Qari cites al-Hasan
al-Basri as saying: "Whoever (truly) knows his Lord loves Him, and whoever (truly)
knows the world does without it." Qari begins the chapter with a warning that
the various spiritual states of love for Allah described by Sufis in their terminology
all proceed from the same Qur'anic source and that it is not permitted to deny
them unless one denies the source itself: Love and the discipline of the path
(al-mahabba wa al-suluk) mean the path of love and longing, and whoever does
not scoop his drink from the ocean of gnosticism does not know the reality of
love, even if the genus, examples, and terminology are different. Love has no
other meaning than the exhortation to obedience, and whoever denies love denies
familiarity (uns) and passion (shawq) and taste (dhawq) and effacement (mahu)
and clarity (sahu) and extinction (fana') and subsistence (baqa') and contraction
(qabd) and expansion (bast) and all the rest of the necessary characteristics
of love and longing, and the rest of the stations of the People of Gnosis.3
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M. Hisham Kabbani's The Repudiation of
"Salafi" Innovations (Kazi, 1996) p. 397-398.
Notes:
1. al-Qari, Sharh `Ayn al-`ilm wa zayn al-hilm 1:1.
2. Ibid. 1:78.
3. Ibid. 2:354-355
