Barriers and  Heights: Classical Islam and Mulla Sadra on barzakh and a`raf

 By: Prof. Jane I. Smith

In classical Sunni Eschatological understanding two concepts have served to suggest an intermediate or temporary separation between the living and the dead, and between the abodes of the Garden and the Fire. The first of these is barzakh, which occurs three times in the Qur`an (23:100, 25:53, and 55:20) and has been interpreted in eschatology as the barrier  separating the Fire and Garden and/or the interval between earthly death and the resurrection. The Qur`an describes graphically the events to take place signalling the yawm al - qiyama, the day of resurrection signalled by cataclysmic events in the natural order and culminating in God`s judgment of human lives and consignment to felicity or doom. It does not, However, deal specifically with details of what happens to the dead between the end of their mortal lives and the coming of that day. Popular eschatological literature has developed such details at length, as e.g. al- Durra al - Fakhira attributed to Abu Hamid al- Ghazali.(1)  Such literature, which is generally interpreted exoterically, describes the various circumstances in which the dead may find interpreted exoterically, describes the various circumstances in which the dead may find themselves an a result of the quality of their previous deeds and actions.

 The second concept is that of al-a'raf, the heights, mentioned once in the Qur'an (7:46) and interpreted by classical Sunni commentators to mean the partition that separates the inhabitants of the Garden from those of the Fire; on it are men who are able to view persons in both circumstances. The verse has elicited wide speculation, and early Qur'an commentators such as al - Tabari and al - Razi suggested a great variety of possibilities in its explanation. Among them are that the men on the heights are: (a) people who are in a kind of intermediate state in which neither their good or evil deeds predominate, awaiting final judgment; (b) not human at all but angels who distinguish between the blessed and the damned; (c) persons killed fighting in the way of God but whose disobedient deeds keep them from entering paradise; (d) the most excellent of the pious people, such as the righteous [salihun], the legists [fuquha'], or the learned doctors [fuquha'](2).

 Mulla Sadra gives each of these concepts a very different interpretation, in which the idea of separation is appropriate only if defined in quite other terms. For him  barzakh  is understood to be a modality of the soul in a half-way position between the physical and the noetic (apprehended intellectually through self- evident knowledge). It is one of Mulla Sadra's common ways of referring to the psychic modality of being in which one has an enlightened awareness of the diving presence. In  a secondary meaning he uses barzakh to refer to the shadows of material form that can both block and manifest the true light of being.(3)  In a similar vein, he interprets the a'raf as the high position achieved by those who have perfected their knowledge and inner understanding. By means of inner vision they are able to see persons who are located in the two abodes of paradise or the fire. He also uses a'raf  to refer to the condition of those whose bodies are present in this world, i.e. they have not physically died yet, but whose hearts are exalted such they that have entered paradise in spirit.(4)

 The proposed paper will develop the exoteric understanding of barzakh and al - a'raf in classical Sunni eschatological understanding, contrasting it with the esoteric interpretation given by Mulla Sadra in his classification of the states and stages of illumination and realization of divine presence.

 1. See Jane Idleman Smith, The Precious Pearl, a translation from the Arabic with Notes of the Kitab al - Durra al - Fakhira fi Kashf ' Ulum al - Akhira of Abu Hamid Muhammad al- Ghazali (Scholars Press, 1979).

 2. Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (State University of New York Press, 1981): 90-91.

 3. Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Sadr al- Din Shirazi and his Transcendent Theosophy (Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1978): 50 refers to a treatise of Mulla Sadra on barzakh which had not been located as of that writing.

 4. See James Winston Morris The Wisdom of the Throne (Princeton University Press, 1981):II.C.13 (228-31)