Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE HERMIT OF LAHORE
great influence on the entire subsequent hagiographic tradition:
references to and borrowings from it are to be found in such famous
works as ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliyā (Memoirs of the Saints) and
Jami’s Nafahāt al-uns (Whiffs of Friendship). Dara Shikoh, constantly
quoting al-Hujwiri in Safīnāt al-awliyā, gives an appraisal of his
predecessor’s work: ‘Among the books on tas¸awwuf not even one
has been composed so well as the “Revelation of the Veiled”, and no
one can raise any objection to it’ (Dara Shikoh 1965: 22).
Information about al-Hujwiri is well known at least from V. A.
Zhukovsky’s foreword to the edition of the Persian text of Kashf
al-mah˛jūb (al-Hujwiri 1926: 15) and R. Nicholson’s preface to its
English translation. I would, therefore, dwell on them only in witness
of the fact that one’s biography cannot serve as the basis for sainthood.
According to R. Nicholson, al-Hujwiri was born in the last decade
of the tenth century or in the first decade of the eleventh century in
Ghazna. Dara Shikoh explains the three-tier nisba of the saint – al-
Jullabi al-Hujwiri al-Ghaznavi by the fact that Jullab and Hujwir are
two regions of the city of Ghazna (Dara Shikoh 1965: 56). A Sunnite
of Hanafi madhab, born to a family known for its piety, he received
a traditional Muslim education and at an early age showed the faculty
of a religious writer and a vocation for mysticism.
The Kashf al-mah˛jūb is the last in chronological order and the only
extant work of al-Hujwiri, his magnum opus. According to his own
statement he was the author of another nine books (including a dīwān
of verses), none of which are available now. To a certain extent al-
Hujwiri became a victim of the absence of the law of copyright. He
writes:
A certain individual borrowed my poetical works, of which
there was no other copy, and retained the manuscript in his
possession, and circulated it, and struck out my name which
stood at its head, and caused all my labour to be lost. May
God forgive him! I had also composed another book, entitled
‘The Highway of Religion’ (Minhaj ad-din), on the method
of Sufism – may God make it flourish! A shallow pretender,
whose words carry no weight, erased my name from the
title page and gave out to the public that he was the author,
notwithstanding that connoisseurs laughed at his assertion.
(al-Hujwiri 1992: 2)
Having suffered twice from literary piracy, al-Hujwiri became more
cautious, and whether called for or not, inserted his own name into
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