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

THE HERMIT OF LAHORE
yet his ‘path’ is not soundly established on any principle, and his state
is not fixed in any position, and his experiences are largely mingled
with error’ (al-Hujwiri 1992: 152).
In his book al-Hujwiri divides dervishes into muqīmān (settled)
and musāfirān (wandering). The first had an advantage over the
second because they had already completed their search and had
settled down at one place in order to serve God in khalwat (solitude)
or to pass on knowledge to their murīds. At the same time the
wanderers had superiority over the settled as they did not burden
themselves with family and property and, consequently, were
less attached to the world. Besides that, the life of the musāfir
actualized the metaphor of ţarīqat: commensurate with the physically
traversed path a mystic advanced further and further along the
spiritual Path. For years al-Hujwiri himself belonged to this second
category.
Musāfirān to a large extent depended on the hospitality and generosity
of muqīmān, who in accordance with the existing code of
relations between Sufis, provided shelter, food, clothes and many
other services to the wandering dervishes. At the same time the settled
dervishes in their turn endeavoured to make the visits of well-known
mystics suit their own ends, in particular for the sake of consolidating
their relations with the authorities but also simply in respect of the
members of the community. Since the status of a mystic, who had
settled down and taken root in a given locality and a particular social
environment, presupposed the responsibilities of spiritual sustenance
of the faithful and performance of their religious rites, muqīmān not
infrequently tried to shift this task onto their guests.
With the passage of time the mode of life of a musāfir and
dependence on a settled fraternity become irksome to al-Hujwiri. Let
us recollect how sensitively he endured the rudeness and arrogance
of the Khurasan-based dervishes, who threw melon rinds at him. He
considered the need to pay for hospitality by participation in purely
temporal affairs of etiquette as a humiliation and akin to penal
labour.
Certainly, it is not right that a resident dervish should take
a traveller to salute worldly men or to attend their entertainments,
sick-beds, and funerals; and if a resident hopes to
make travellers an instrument of mendicancy (ālat-i-gadā’i)
and conduct them from house to house, it would be better for
him to refrain from serving them instead of subjecting them
to humiliation. Among all the troubles and inconveniences
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