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

THE HERMIT OF LAHORE
Miraculous or portentous dreams accompany al-Hujwiri in all his
travels. In Damascus he stops at the tomb of Bilal b.Rabah and in his
dream sees Mecca and the Prophet, who was affectionately pressing
some elderly person to his bosom.
I ran to him and kissed the back of his foot, and stood
marvelling who the old man might be; and the Apostle was
miraculously aware of my secret thought and said to me:
‘This is thy Imam and the Imam of thy countrymen’,
meaning Abu Hanifa.
(al-Hujwiri 1992: 95) 7
The gift of divining one’s thoughts, of foretelling the future and of
general clairvoyance, forming a part of karāmāt (miracles), is ascribed
by al-Hujwiri to the most important of those mystics whom he had
occasion to meet. During his visit to Farghana he became acquainted
with a Shaikh, Bab ‘Umar by name, ranking high in the hierarchy of
the saints (al-Hujwiri calls him one of the four awtād, ‘supports’,
of this world).
When I entered his presence he said: ‘Why have you come?’
I replied: ‘In order that I might see the Shaykh in person and
that he might look on me with kindness’. He said: ‘I have
been seeing you continually since such and such a day, and
I wish to see you as long as you are not removed from my
sight’. I computed the day and year: it was the very day on
which my conversion began. The Shaykh said: ‘To traverse
distance is child’s play: henceforth pay visits by means of
thought; it is not worth while to visit any person, and there
is no virtue in bodily presence’.
(al-Hujwiri 1992: 234–35)
Another time the author makes for Ramla to call upon the mystic Ibn
al-Mu‘alla. He is accompanied by two dervishes, with whom he
makes an agreement: ‘On the way we arranged that each of us should
think of the matter concerning which we were in doubt, in order that
that venerable director might tell us our secret thoughts and solve our
difficulties’ (al-Hujwiri 1992: 343). Mystics often subjected their
mentors or rivals to such ‘examinations’ of the gift of prevision and
thought-reading at a distance; these examinations were as if a part
of the routine of spiritual intercourse, and constituted a peculiar
parapsychological game, although murshids and pīrs invariably
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