Ahmad Ghazzali (d. 1125) was the younger brother of the famous Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazzali, the Islamic theologian. The latter's seminal achievement was to put the faith of Islam in a time of crisis on a firm theological footing (a work comparable to that of Thomas Aquinas with respect to Western Christianity). Another accomplishment of Abu Hamid was to bring Sufism into the fold of mainstream Islam.
Ahmad Ghazzali was a giant among spiritual men and a master of masters, the teacher of Divine Love par excellence, and the first to undertake the task of writing explicitly (though rather unsystematically) about the metaphysics of Love.
His most famous disciple was `Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (1098-1132), a spiritual prodigy of rare genius. Their spiritual relationship is, after that of Rumi and Shams Tabrizi, perhaps the best-known in Sufi history.
Where Ahmad brought innovations into the Sufi doctrine of love as well as the Sufi view of Iblis (Satan) as the "highest devotee", `Ayn al-Qudat carried his master's ideas so far that he was brutally martyred at age 33 for expounding them.
"Sawanih" is the longest and the most important book that Ahmad wrote in Persian. According to his teachings, when a mystic goes beyond the phenomenal world, he passes through three different plains: the Heart (dil), the Spirit (ruh), and the Subtle or Secret (sirr). The world of the spirit is thus the intermediate ontological plain, and it is the proper domain of love. It is on this plain that the mystic becomes a lover. The ideas or notions that the mystic experiences while passing through this plain is called, "sawanih".
In later generations, the school of Ahmad Ghazzali kept its influence almost exclusively in poetry. The world-famous odes of Hafiz of Shiraz are in fact its most exquisite and sublime expressions.
If you like "Divine Flashes (Lama'at)" by Fakhruddin `Eraqi (ISBN 0281038678), then you will also like these "Sawanih" by Ahmad Ghazzali, although Eraqi's "Divine Flashes" are much more accessible and systematic.
"In the sorrow of love, we condole ourselves.
We are distracted and bewildered by our own work,
Bankrupted by our own fortune,
Ourselves the hunters, ourselves the game."
- Ahmad Ghazzali
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