Mansur al-Hallaj and al-Fatiha

I was stunned to read the following description of the execution of Mansur al-Hallaj which appeared in one of three lectures delivered at the School of Oriental Studies, the University of London in the summer of 1922 by Reynold A. Nicholson, Lecturer in Persian in the University of Cambridge, formerly Fellow of Trinity College:

"Ibrahim ibn Fatik relates as follows: When Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj was brought to be crucified, and saw the cross and the nails, he laughed so greatly and violently that tears flowed from his eyes. Then he turned to the people and seeing Shibli among them said to him, "O Abu Bakr, hast thou thy prayer-carpet with thee?" Shibli answered, "Yes, O Shaykh!" Hallaj bade him spread it out, which he did. Then Hallaj stepped forward and prayed two rak'as on it, and I was near to him. In the first rak'a he recited the Fatiha, and a verse of the Koran, namely,

Every soul shall taste of death. Ye shall
be given your full rewards on the day of
Resurrection, and whoso shall be put far from
Hell-fire and caused to enter Paradise, happy
is he! The present life is but the goods of vanity.
(Sura 3:182)

In the second rak'a he recited the Fatiha and a verse of the
Koran, namely,

We will surely try thee with somewhat of
fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives
and fruits. And bring a message of joy unto
the patient who say, when an affliction befalls
them, "lo, we belong to God and to Him we
shall return" Those are they upon whom
are blessings from their Lord and mercy, and
those are in the right way.
(Sura 2:150-152).

And when he had finished, he uttered a prayer of which
I remember only these words:

...O Lord, I beseech Thee to make me
thankful for the grace Thou hast bestowed
upon me in concealing from the eyes of other
men what Thou hast revealed to me of the
splendours of Thy radiant countenance which
is without a form, and in making it lawful
for me to behold the mysteries of Thy inmost
conscience which Thou hast made unlawful to
other men. And these Thy servants who are
gathered to slay me, in zeal for Thy religion
and in desire to win Thy favour, pardon them
and have mercy upon them; for verily if Thou
hadst revealed to them what which Thou hast
revealed to me, they would not have done
what they have done; and if Thou hadst
hidden from me that which Thou hast hidden
from them, I should not have suffered this
tribulation. Glory unto Thee in whatsoever
Thou doest, and glory unto Thee in whatsoever
Thou willest.

Then he remained silent for a time, communing with his Lord,
until Abu'l-Harith, the executioner went and smote him on the
cheek, breaking his nose with the blow, so that the blood
gushed out. Thereat Shibli cried aloud and rent his garment
and fell in a swoon, and so did Abu'l-Husayn al-Wasiti and
a number of well-known Sufis. And it almost came to riot."
(1964, pp. 45-47)

~ Excerpted from "The Idea of Personality in Sufism" by
Reynold A. Nicholson.

Sigmund Freud on Sura 1:7 and Nabi Musa

After returning to Santa Barbara from my visit to the Freud Museum in London on 09-09-09, I was compelled to read "Moses and Monotheism." This was on the heels of reading Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's book "Freud's Moses - Judaism Terminable and Interminable" which I had bought at the Freud Museum gift shop. "Moses and Monotheism" was to be Freud's last book. In it he considers the role of Moses in the history of Judaism and the possible causes for the lasting influence that Moses had on his people. This might be considered Freud's commentary on Sura 1:7:

"Let us agree, therefore, that the great man influences his contemporaries in two ways: through his personality and through the idea for which he stands. This idea may lay stress on an old group of wishes in the masses, or point to a new aim for their wishes, or again, lure the masses by other means. Sometimes - and this is surely the more primitive effect - the personality alone exerts its influence, and the idea plays a decidedly subordinate part. Why the great man should rise to significance at all we have no doubt whatever. We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them. We have learned from the psychology of the individual whence comes this need of the masses. It is the longing for the father that lives in each of us from his childhood days, for the same father whom the hero of legend boasts of having overcome. And now it begins to dawn on us that all the features with which we furnish the great man are traits of the father, that in this similarity lies the essence, which so far has eluded us, of the great man. The decisiveness of thought, the strength of will, the forcefulness of his deeds, belong to the picture of the father; above all other things, however, the self-reliance and independence of the great man, his divine conviction of doing the right thing, which may pass into ruthlessness. He must be admired, he may be trusted, but one cannot help also being afraid of him. We should have taken a cue from the word itself: who else but the father should in childhood have been the great man?

Without doubt it must have been a tremendous father imago that stooped in the person of Moses to tell the poor Jewish labourers that they were his dear children. And the conception of a unique, eternal, omnipotent God could not have been less overwhelming for them: he who thought them worthy to make a bond with him promised to take care of them if only they remained faithful to his worship. Probably they did not find it easy to separate the image of the man Moses from that of his God, and their instinct was right in this, since Moses might very well have incorporated into the character of his God some of his own traits, such as his irascibility and implacability. And when they killed this great man they only repeated an evil deed which in primeval times had been a law directed against the divine king, and which as we know, derives from a still older prototype." (1939, pp. 139-141).

~ Excerpted from "Moses and Monotheism" by Sigmund Freud.

On the Meaning of the Straight Path

Nasir Khusraw was a leading Shia Ismaili poet and theologian-philosopher of the eleventh century (1004 to circa 1088 CE). In an English translation of his Gushayish wa Rahayish by Faquir Hunzai, Khusraw explains his understanding of the Siratal Mustaqim:

On the Meaning of the Straight Path

(168) O brother! You asked: 'What is the sirat (lit. path, way, bridge)? It is said that the sirat is stretched over hell, that it is thinner than an hair and sharper than a sword, and all people have to cross it. The fortunate ones cross it and reach paradise, whereas the unfortunate ones fall from it into hell. Explain, so that we may know.'

(169) Know, O brother, that (the word) sirat (in Persian, rah) means a path or a way. The path is of two kinds: one is the external path that the people walk upon the surface of the earth, and the other is the path which people follow with their souls in goodness and badness. Had the path stretched over hell been the only one which people have to cross, God in His book would not have mentioned it in the Surat al-hamd and commanded us to remember Him so that He would show us the path, as He says in the verse: 'Guide us to the straight path (al-sirat al-mustaqim)'. (1:5) Since He has commanded us to seek the straight path, it is a proof that on the path which is not straight but crooked is found that which is other than God. If God had made only one path on which we had to walk and traverse, He would not have commanded us to say this prayer. (The straight path is the way of those upon whom God has bestowed His favours, and they are the prophets,the truthful, the witnesses, and the righteous.) As He says: ('All who obey God and the Messenger are in the company of those) upon whom God has bestowed (His) favours: the prophets (nabiyyin) the truthful (siddiqin), the witnesses (shuhada), and the righteous (salihin). (4:69)

(170) Thus, it is established that the sirat is not (a path for the body) but the path of the soul which it should traverse, because God obliged (this path) first for the prophets, then their legatees (wasis) and the true Imams, and then their (proofs (hujjats)), as mentioned. These are the ones whom God has obliged: the prophets who are the Messengers, and they are so called because they convey the news of that world to the people; 'the truthful' by which He means the legatees who (expounded) the ta'wil of the shari'at and the book to the people, and by so doing disclosed the reality of the parables which they contained and provided to the wise that the Messengers are truthful; by 'the witnesses' are meant the true Imams as they are witnesses of God among the people; and by 'the righteous' are meant their (proofs) because of the betterment of the souls of people is due to them.

(171) When we come to know that the sirat is the path of the soul and not a path for the body, and with regard to what has been said that it stretches over hell, that it is thinner than an hair and sharper than a sword, that people have to traverse it in order to reach paradise, and if they fall from it they reach the eternal fire - all this is correct, but it is necessary to know its esoteric meaning (ta'wil), not (merely) the exoteric description. Thus we say that the sirat has the status of man (who is positioned) between animality and angelicity, and is required to walk on it straight because unless he traverses it he will be unable to reach paradise. Paradise is the higher (spiritual) world and hell is the fire which surrounds this lower (material) world. The ta'wil of this statement is that paradise means our liberation from the world of animality, and hell means to remain in that (animal) nature. If man practices the shari'at without understanding its ta'wil, then he makes himself into an animal, he inclines towards the left hand and falls into hell from the sirat. If he acquires (esoteric) knowledge, but does not practice the shari'at while claiming angelicity, he inclines towards the right hand and falls into hell from the sirat. However, when man walks on the path of humanity, in which he has a share from both animality and angelicity - that is, he does the work which is the share of his body and acquires knowledge which is the share of his soul - he walks on the straight path (sirat-i mustaqim); then when he traverses the sirat he is said to have reached paradise. This is so because having walked on the straight path using both knowledge and practice, when his soul leaves the body which is his sirat, he reaches the higher world, the place of angels and the true paradise." (1998, pp. 104-106).

~ Excerpted from "Knowledge and Liberation - A Treatise on Philosophical Theology" by Nasir Khusraw, edited and translated by Faquir M Hunzai.

Depth Psychology and Imaginal psychology in Islam

Depth psychotherapy was clearly not unfamiliar in the Muslim world. Dr. Ihsan Al-Issa,Ph.D, editor of "Al-Junun: Mental Illness in the Islamic World" describes two depth psychotherapeutic interventions including one by the renowned physician and polymath,Ibn Sina(d. 1037):

"In the same vein, Ibn Sina treated a deluded prince who imagined himself to be a cow. He would low and urge that he should be killed so that his flesh would be cooked in to a stew. He stopped eating and his life was in danger. The patient was told that a butcher was coming to kill him. With a knife in his hand, Ibn Sina entered the patent's room with two attendants saying, "Where is this cow that I may kill?" The patient made a noise like a cow. Ibn Sina ordered that the patient's hands and feet be bound. Putting his hand on the patient's side, he said, "He is very lean and not fit to be killed; he must eat fodder until he is fat." The patient ate in the hope that he might become fat and they might kill him, but within a month he was completely recovered (Browne, 1921). Ibn Abi Usaybia cited by Burgel (1973) reported a similar delusional case treated by Ibn Malka. The patient believed that he carried a precious vase on his head and feared its being knocked off. Ibn Malka arranged so that one of his assistants threw a similar vase down from the roof at the same m oment when another assistant pretended to knock down the imagery vase off the patient's head. This was a shock to the patient who believed that it was his vase that was broken and in this way he lost his delusion. It is important to note that both ancient and medieval physicians tended to reinforce the patient's delusion as an initial point in the process of therapy instead of denying the "reality" of these delusions as it is usually practiced in modern psychiatry." (2000, pp.60-61).

Clearly, Islam was able to adopt this Galenic approach to psychological treatment in the Medieval period to obtain the necessary results for effective treatment. This approach is fully validated by contemporary theory in imaginal psychology.

Al-Fatiha in Prophetic Medicine

Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith write about the healing power of al-Fatiha in their book "Medieval Islamic Medicine:"

"Treatises on Prophetic Medicine also advocated in varying degrees folkloric and magical remedies in addition to numerous invocations for warding off afflictions and protecting from jinn and the Evil Eye. The early tract based on Shi'ie imams had, for example, the following prescriptions:

He (the Prophet) said: 'Keep many domestic animals (dawajin) in your houses so that the demons are occupied with them instead of your children.'


(The imam Ja'far ibn Muhammad) al-Sadiq said to him (one of his clients whose fever would not subside): 'Undo the buttons of your shirt and put your head in it. Recite the call to prayer (adhan) and the introduction to prayer (iqamah), and recite seven times the 'surah of praise' (Al-Hamd, that is, the 'Opening', al-Fatihah, no.1).' The man said: 'I did that and recovered as quickly as a camel loosened from its cord.'

He (al-Sadiq) said to him (someone suffering from colic (or intestinal obstructon, qawlanj): 'Write for him the opening (surah) of the Qur'an (al-Fatihah, no.1), the surah 'Purity' (al-Iklhas, no. 112), and two surahs for seeking protection (al-ma'udhatan, the last two surahs of the Qur'an, 'Dawn', al-Falaq, and 'People', al-Nas, nos. 113 and 114). Then write underneath: "I take refuge in the presence of God, the Great, and in His might, which is unceasing, and in His power, which nothing can resist, from th evil of this pain, and the evil within it." Then swallow it with rainwater on an empty stomach. You will be cured of it, God the Exalted permitting.' " (2007, p. 150).

~Excerpted from "Medieval Islamic Medicine" by Peter E. Porman and Emilie Savage-Smith.

Renowned clinical intervention in Medieval Islamic Society

Dr. Taha Baasher recounts the following story in "World History of Psychiatry". The modern reader is reminded that the Abbasid court of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) represented an era that was patriarchal and from the modern perspective, probably sexist. However, the court physician was the most trusted and reputable medical practitioner in the land:

"An often quoted example is the story of Harun el Rashid's maid, who developed what appeared to be a state of hysterical conversion, involving her right upper limb. The maid lifted her hand up and could not bring it down. Massage and other physical treatments were of no avail. Gabriel (Gibreel Ibn Bakkhta Yashue), the court physician, in the presence of the Caliph and his entourage, pinched the maid from behind, and unconsciously the up-lifted arm dropped down. Though the explanation given by Gabriel was based on humor pathology, his therapeutic approach was obviously psychological." (1975, p. 557).

~ Excerpted from "World History of Psychiatry" edited by John G. Howells

Sura 1:5's healing force

Dr. Taha Baasher, a Sudanese psychiatrist writes this in "World History of Psychiatry:"

"Obviously the whole Koran is endowed with sacred blessing (baraka), but there are certain passages or chapters which are more concerned with healing holiness. The passage in the first chapter which states "to thee we worship and into ye we take refuge" is of central importance in incantation and treatment in general, because of its particular submission to God. References are also to the prophet's consideration of the emotional side of treatment. Muslims were urged to relieve patients of their emotional tensions when visiting them."(1975, p.555).


~ Excerpted from "World History of Psychiatry" edited by John G. Howells