THE NATURE OF MINDText Box:  
IN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

Barriers and Heights: Classical Islam and Mulla Sadra

on Barzakh and A'raf

Jane I. Smith

The Qur'an is clear and explicit in its insistence on human accountability, and implicitly connects that accountability with the acknowledgment of God's essential oneness (tawhíd). We humans will surely perish, but that is not the end of it. When God so pleases we will be resurrected and will again be returned to Him, and the condition of that return is one in which judgment will be rendered in terms of the way we have chosen to live our lives. It is a common observation that two of the earliest and most important messages given to Prophet Muhammad were of the oneness of God and the accountability of human beings at the last day. Classical Sunnī Islamic understanding thus supports a straightforward message: Because God is one it is incumbent upon human beings to live lives of integrity (integratedness), of moral and ethical uprightness, and it is on the basis of the degree to which one does that that judgment it rendered and final felicity or purgation accorded. It is no coincidence that those who earn a place in the Garden are often referred to as ahl al-tawhíd, the people who affirm God's oneness.1

The arrival of the day of resurrection will be signaled by cataclysmic events in the natural order, as the Qur'an attests in graphic detail, and will culminate in God's judgment of human lives and consignment of souls to felicity or doom. In classical Sunnī eschatological understanding two concepts have served to suggest places of intermediate status which separate two classes of human beings. The first of these is barzakh, which divides the dead from the world of the living. It has been interpreted in most tafasir and in eschatological texts as the barrier separating the Fire and the Garden and/or the interval between earthly death and the yawm al-qiyamah, the day of resurrection. The second concept referring to a kind of intermediate state or position in relation to the afterlife is that of al-a'raf, the heights, located between the ultimate abodes of the Garden and the Fire. It has been interpreted by classical Sunnī 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 as to its meaning, and early Qur'an commentators suggested a variety of possibilities in its explanation. Contemporary exegetes have broadened the understanding of al-a’raf only slightly.

Sadr al-Dín al-Shírazí, known as Mulla Sadra, has dealt with eschatological themes in many of his texts and treatises.2 Best known among them are the following: (a) Risalat al-hashr 3 whose eight chapters cover the in-gathering, return and awakening of the various modalities of being at the time of resurrection and return of everything to God. (b) al-Mabda' wa'l ma'ad 4 which treats metaphysics, cosmogony and eschatology. Al-ma'ad, the return, refers to the resurrection and the last day, and to the self-awareness of the soul that is so important to understanding Mulla Sadra's concept of eschatology. Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his introduction to the work notes that in it Mulla Sadra departs from his description in other writings of corporeal resurrection meaning the union of the soul with the ``subtle'' body, the essence of the physical body, and seems to speak here of the soul as returning to the same physical body it has in this world.5 (c) Mafatíh al-ghayb, 6 a large compendium dealing in 20 sections with essentially the same themes of metaphysics and last things. (d) Kitab al-hikmat al-'arshiyyah, translated as The Wisdom of the Throne,7 the work on which the brief observations of this essay primarily depend. (e) al-Hikmat al-muta'aliyyah fi'l asfar al-'aqliyyat al-arba'ah,8 Mulla Sadra's most extensive work, which deals in its later sections with the punishments and rewards of the grave, both spiritual and corporeal resurrection, the coming of the Hour and the modalities of judgment, the states of paradise and punishment, and the stages of perfection that lead to the various levels of the Gardens of Paradise.9 Others of his works, such as the Kitab al-masha'ir,10 treat concerns of judgment and final dispensation is less detail.

The second part of the Kitab al-hikmat, entitled in English translation the “Second Place of Illumination, concerning knowledge of the Return,” puts al-Shírazí's interpretations of barzakh and a'raf into the broader context of his understanding of death and resurrection. Not surprisingly, each of these concepts is given a significantly different interpretation than one finds in classical Sunni texts, one in which the idea of separation is appropriate only if defined in quite other terms. Fazlur Rahman in his excellent volume The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra11 underscores the great importance of Ibn ‘Arabí on al-Shírazí's doctrine of the “realm of images,” a concept which was also treated by al-Ghazalí and al-Suhrawardí. Mulla Sadra clearly built on Ibn ‘Arabí's notion that the human soul will construct images in the hereafter that are as real as what is perceptible to the senses. Both Ibn `Arabí and Sadra use this idea as a kind of proof of a “physical” resurrection, arguing for actual physical suffering and bliss in the respective abodes of the hereafter. As Rahman puts it,” …what the soul will imagine in the hereafter will be so strong and real that it will literally take the place of material bodies and vents”.12

This essay will develop the exoteric understanding of barzakh and al-a'raf in classical Sunni eschatological thought and in light of more recent commentaries. In a very initial and introductory way these concepts will be contrasted with the esoteric interpretations of these concepts given by Mulla Sadra in his classification of the states and stages of illumination and realization of divine presence, particularly as these are presented in The Wisdom of the Throne.

Barzakh

There is little mention in the Qur'an of what happens to persons during the period between death and resurrection. The Holy Book picks up the story with the exciting descriptions of the reversal of the natural order that will occur just preceding the coming of the hour of resurrection and judgment. Belief in some kind of life in the grave was ancient and common, part of Islamic understanding from the earliest times. Thus questions were inevitably raised in the young Islamic community about the intermediate or waiting period: Are we asleep? Are we in communion with family and friends? Do we receive reward or punishment? The name generally given to the period and/or the place of this intermediate stay is barzakh, which has been interpreted to mean, among other things, the physical barrier between the Garden and the Fire or between this world and the life beyond the grave, and also the period of time separating individual death and final resurrection.13

            In one sense the death of the body by definition means a cessation of involvement with things of this earth, dunya, and thus a necessary entry into the sphere of the afterlife or akhirah. A few Qur'an commentators actually include the barzakh as the first stage of al-akhirah. Most, however, interpret the circumstance of the deceased awaiting resurrection as a kind of third realm.14 As it came to be developed over the centuries of Sunni thought, barzakh actually served to illustrate the often-found coincidence in eschatological literature of time and space. As a time/place concept barzakh is taken primarily from S 23:100 of the Qur'an, which expresses the inability of the departed to return to earth: {... behind them is a barrier [barzakh] until the day when they are resurrected.} S 25:53 and S 55:20 also mention barzakh, but with the meaning of a barrier separating the sweet and salt waters of the earth. There are no references to barzakh in the early canonical traditions. The concept as meaning simultaneously the time every individual must wait between death and resurrection and the place or abode of that waiting came to be more fully developed in the succeeding interpretations and texts. The clear intention of S.23: 100 seems to be that persons who have died will in no way be able to return to this earth. To underscore the dominant Qur'anic understanding that there is a direct continuity between this life and the next, however, barzakh might well be seen not so much as a barrier as a bridge, linking our lives and actions on earth with the final dispensation of justice at the eschaton.

The only clue in the Qur'an as to whether or not the dead have any degree of consciousness is the indication S 35:22 that the living and the dead are not alike, and that while God can accord hearing to whomever He wills, the living cannot make those in the graves hear them. This distinction is supported by the commentary on the verses mentioning the barzakh, which stresses the absolute separation between this world and the realm of the dead. Having passed into that realm, one can never return, either to right past wrongs or to communicate with the living. The eschatological manuals go into elaborate detail as to the various happenings that will befall the soul in the barzakh, and assign to that period a series of clearly defined events. That has not been the interest of the mutakallimun, however, who generally have been interested not in determining any kind of sequence of events after death. Often they use particular references to the barzakh state to illustrate points about the nature of God. Thus the orthodox creeds generally representative of orthodox Sunni Islam15 make consistent mention of only two specific occurrences: the questioning of the angels soon after death, and the punishments of the grave ['adhab al-qabr]. The concern for punishment in the context of theological discussion is part of the larger question of God's divine justice. As the details and particulars of the forms of this punishment came to be spelled out more clearly in the additional materials, however, the general picture of events in the barzakh period was expanded, amplified, and enriched.

Some commentators describe a journey apparently modeled on the mi'raj or heavenly ascent by Prophet Muhammad in which individual souls are reported to be taken shortly after the moment of death. This is seen as one of the first events of the barzakh experience. As a kind of “dry run” of the final journey to God, the soul that on earth lived a good and responsible life, which slips easily and painlessly from the body at death, is wrapped in perfumed coverings and taken by angels up through the seven successive layers of heaven.16 At each of the seven gates the soul is asked, Why are you? And the angel Gabriel answers, This is so-and-so, who did various kinds of good deeds during his life. The end of the journey is a vision of God, after which the soul returns to the grave to be reunited with the body and await the resurrection. Souls of the less fortunate, those who rejected the signs of God and wreaked corruption on earth, have to be pulled forth from their bodies painfully at death, “like skewers out of wet wool.” They are evil smelling and noxious, and upon reaching the lowest of the seven heavens are forced to turn back, as the angels therein will not grant them admittance. This journey serves as a precursor to the final meeting with God at judgment, when the faithful will be admitted to the Garden to reside in the presence of God and the kafirs will be doomed to the Fire, denied (perhaps only temporarily) the final and lasting visiting of the Lord.

Upon return from that journey, say the traditions of Sunni Islam in elaborating what can be expected in the barzakh, after having been reunited with the body, several personages visit the soul. The angels Munkar and Nakír, fearsome of visage and with fangs rending the ground, come with the questions: Who and what is your God, your prophet, your religion, your scripture, and your prayer-direction?17 For those who can answer the questions, a window is opened in the top of the grave for sweet breezes to waft in from the Garden of eternity, reminding the faithful of what awaits him or her on the day of resurrection. For the one so conditioned by past deeds that the answers do not easily come, the punishment of the grave sets in. Some narratives say that to every soul a personification of his or her deeds done while on earth appears as another reminder of the connection between one's actions on earth and the final punishment or reward.18

The immediate consequences of the mi'raj-like journey, if it is admitted, and the questioning of the angels, which is more universally accepted, give way to the possibility of further or continuing forms of retribution for the person who is in the barzakh. The nature of punishments in this state, the 'adhab al-qabr, is an issue that has occupied Sunni theologians through the centuries. The orthodox conclusion has been that these punishments are a reality, and elaborate details have been given in the traditions about the tomb itself tightening around the poor unfortunate being inside so that his or her shrieks can be heard by animals passing through the graveyard.19 Does the punishment of the grave happen to the soul and the body, or to the soul without the body, or to the body without the soul? Do the body and soul share in the pleasure and punishment of the grave? This question, says Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah in Kitab al-ruh has a variety of answers, but he argues that the ahl al-sunna wa'l-jama'a are in general agreement that punishment and pleasure are for the soul and the body both. Some or the Mu'tazilah agree that bodies will be returned, but not until the day of resurrection, necessitating that pleasure or punishment in barzakh is only for the spirits. But most of the people of kalam and hadíth, he says, agree that the spirit will be returned to the body in the grave for punishment. Ibn Qayyim himself concludes that the way of the salaf is to say that the dead person when he dies is in pleasure or punishment with the spirit and the body.20

Al-Durrat al-fakhirah, attributed to Abê Hamid al-Ghazalí although probably not by his hand, is an eschatological treatise covering conditions of the deceased from the moment of death through the events of the day of resurrection.21 In the chapter in which he describes souls after death as divided into four groups according to their activities on earth, and assigned corresponding abodes in the period between death and resurrection, the author concludes with what he calls “the punishment of the barzakh”. ”Such are the conditions of the death”, he says. ”When their individuality disappears from them some are stationary, some move around, some are stricken and others are punished”. The Durra goes on to describe the different circumstances of the four categories of people in the barzakh in some detail. Those whose individuality remains high are able to perceive the revolution of night and day. Some even recognize Fridays and feast days. “When one of the [newly] dead leaves the earth”, it says, “they [these conscious souls] all gather around him and recognize who he is. This one may inquire about his wife, another about his son, another about his father, each on asking about his own concerns”.22 In fact there is some real disagreement in the traditions as to whether or not the dead will actually be recognized by other dead in the barzakh. Jalal al-Dín al-Suyuti cites several narratives similar to that in the Durra in which spirits of believers recognize the newly dead and ask him about friends and families.23 Others deny that any such recognition is possible, further supporting the idea that the barzakh is truly a place cut off from the world of the living.

In some eschatological texts, however, barzakh is described as a place where, although the deceased cannot return to this world, there is a possibility of communication between the living and the dead. This is done through the medium of dreams, in which the one who is sleeping is said to actually encounter a deceased person whom, normally, he or she knew at an earlier time.24 Qur'an 39:43 (see also S 6:60) serves as a departure for further speculation on the part of theologians and writers of eschatological treatises. According to this verse God takes the souls at death, and those that do not die He takes during their sleep. The Arabic says yatawaffa al-anfus, literally, “He takes to Himself the souls,” which suggests two things: (1) that the Arabic tuwuffiya, which is normally understood as synonymous with mata, to die, in this case refers to the act by which God takes unto Himself both the living and dead for a period of time, 25 and (2) that it is the souls (anfus) and not the spirits (arwah) that are taken. The meeting of those who are alive with the deceased seems to be for the specific purpose of communication and edification, and that of several sorts: description of the state of the deceased (which can serve as either assurance or warning), chastisement and admonition, request for particular favors, and the expression to the living of appreciation for duties responsibly discharged. Not surprisingly, they almost all carry a clear message for the one who is sleeping (whose soul is to be returned for the appointed time)- that there is a responsibility to be met and that the results may be dire if it is not. This implies either a specific task, the fulfilling of which will ease the circumstances of the deceased, or the more general warning that one's own fate may be like that of the unfortunate one he has encountered in the sleep realm should he fail to conduct his life according to the standards of Islam as instituted by God (or, and this seems to apply in fewer instances, the assurance of a felicitous situation in the barzakh should that be duly earned).26

In general the interpretation given of barzakh by modern interpreters of the Qur'an and essayists on eschatological themes is of its nature as a separation between this world and the next, erected so that we cannot return to rectify earlier wrongs. There is, in other words, no chance in the immediate world after death to make up for what one has done or not done in this world. In this they break little new ground, although they deal more with barzakh as a concept than earlier writers and less as the location for a series of specific activities. In a section entitled “The world of the barzakh from the grave to the resurrection,” for example, Husayn Bandar Amali says that barzakh linguistically is the partition or dividing wall (al-hajiz) between two things and that which prevents them from reunion. When a person's life ends and he dies, his spirit is transported to another world, the world of the barzakh. It is the first place for the person after death, where the spirit continues its life in that world until all creation is extinguished. The spirit in the barzakh lives a happy and pleasureful life if he was a good mu'min, but a life of wretchedness and punishment if he was a sinful kafir.27

Acknowledging that barzakh is indeed a place, modern writers nonetheless put more stress on its nature as a period of time, even a journey. “Truly it is a journey on which the person passes after his life on earth,” says Shakir `Abd al-Jabbar,

and it stretches to the coming of the hour when God will resurrect all those who are in the graves... The good person (al-Salih) looks forward to meeting God when he will find contentment and honor and tranquility, while the wretched one dreads that meeting when he will find wrath and disgrace and gloom.28

 While not suggesting that more than a few individuals are capable of extraordinary feats while in the barzakh, `Abd al-Hamid Kiskh insists that according to the Messenger of God the prophets in the graves pray and even perform pilgrimage and that in so doing they come closer to God. The title of his work, Rihla ila al-dar al-akhirah, also suggests the theme that life in the barzakh involves movement and progress.29 Some contemporary writers emphasize the difference between the world of matter and its conditions and states, and the world of the spirits. “The spirit in the barzakh is in a sphere wider than what it had in the body on earth because the body is like a prison or a cage in which the spirit is imprisoned,” writes Muhammad `Abd al-Zahir Awad. “But the spirits after separating from the bodies remain endowed with reason and of greater importance in respect to what they were in their early lives...”30

Commentator Tantawi Jawhari uses the Qur'anic descriptions of two lives and two deaths (S 2:48 and S 40:11) as the occasion to provide an interesting and dynamic interpretation of life in the grave, the barzakh life. First you die in the world, then you are awakened in the grave for questioning, then you die in the barzakh, and then receive life at the resurrection. Man at the time of death takes off the physical body and the spirit remains connected with the ethereal body, which is similar to the physical body. This is death and movement from one condition to another different condition. There man will know the marvels in his spiritual body. He will see pictures of his previous work; all the bad and evil things he did that make him feel miserable. This is a spiritual suffering - he will experience shame which he cannot bear and a physical fire that will stay with him like a shadow. It is in this barzakh condition that there is a transferal and a change. There may appear a new condition for the spirit in which it is changed, similar to the change which comes with the death of the body. This will be considered the second death. Then man will be made alive again and that will be the second life... It is also possible that in the barzakh there will be numerous changes of condition because of the speed of the changes that occur to the spirit... 31

It is interesting to see how some modern interpreters have dealt with the question of punishment in the grave. There is a kind of transition from physical punishment, although the line is obviously not a sharp one, to semi-psychological torment. (When I refer to contemporary interpretations I am not necessarily speaking of mutakallimun or mufassirun, but also include some of the kinds of thinking illustrated by popular writers.) Punishment is closely related, of course, to the question of what remains of the human individual after death. With the full recognition that the physical body rapidly disintegrates, some have nonetheless felt that despite the death of the brain cells the memory per se continues, “remaining alive constantly,” as Egyptian writer Mustafa Mahmud says, “reminding us in our second spiritual life (meaning the life of the grave) of every deed we have done”. 32 According to `Abd al-Razzaq Nawful, another recent writer on issues of life after death, “There is no question about the punishment in the grave. In whatever form a person may be buried, the cells start their work to remind him of what he was”. 33 The brain cells take a long time to disintegrate, he says, and while they may of course participate in the process of transmutation, appearing in other animals, plants or whatever, 34 they will continue until the day of resurrection to affect and to remind the living soul who is in barzakh of his or her good and evil past deeds. Thus the main concern of the barzakh life for these modern writers, as it is for life on earth, is with activity and human responsibility.

For Mulla Sadra, the understanding of barzakh fits into his concept of the soul as having a form or existence before entering the human body. He argues that the soul exists in a variety of states and modes of being, the last and final one that actualized through the return to God as is assured in Qur'an 89:27-28 {O you righteous soul, return to your Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing}. Al-Shírazí employs many Arabic terms used throughout the Qur'an such as al-ba'th, al-qiyamah, al-hashr and others to refer both to eschatological realities and to physic and noetic modes of being. The soul develops through successive stages characterized by increasing unity and increasing simplicity, which Fazlur Rahman notes is an application of his principle of substantive motion and belongs to neo-Platonic types of thought.35 As the soul begins in a corporeal being, so it ends as a spiritual being, or consisting of spiritual matter (maddah ruhaniyyah). The final perfection of the potential of being, realized in the spiritual state, can occur only after death. “... compared to the forms man will see after death, the forms he sees in this world are like dreams… . Then the Unseen becomes directly visible, and knowledge becomes immediate vision. In this is the secret of the ‘Return’ and the resurrection of the body”.36 Within the human person who is created of elements and natural bodies, those elements that constitute his physical self, there is what Mulla Sadra calls “a man of soul,” intermediate between that which is physical and that which is spiritual/intellectual (noetic). The word he uses for intermediate is barzakh. The man of soul says al-Shírazí “has Life by his very essence. And this Man of soul is a substance intermediate in being between the physical man and the Man of (pure) Intellect”.37 It is Mulla Sadra's conviction that the providential ordering of all things guarantees that the soul could not be kept from passing through the intermediate, psychic world steadily toward its natural perfection.

As the Qur'an refers to the barzakh in S 18:59 as the confluence of two seas, Mulla Sadra uses it to mean the junction of that which is corporeal and that which is spiritual, the symbolic place or moment in which the last of the corporeal realities transmutes into the first of the spiritual realities. In some mystical interpretation this reference is to the place where Moses encountered the spiritual guide al-Khidr. It is interesting to note that while Sunni commentators generally do not interpret this particular Qur'an verse mentioning barzakh as having an eschatological reference, for al-Shírazí it serves the same function as that mentioned above of providing a connection between the material and the noetic. This kind of technical use of barzakh parallels its usage by Ibn 'Arabí. In the section in Wisdom of the Throne dealing with the twofold blowing of the Trumpet of Israfíl, Mulla Sadra cites Ibn 'Arabí has having said:

When the forms [of things in the physical world] take shape [in nature], the wick of their preparedness [to be ‘resurrected’ in the world of the soul] is in a state like the readiness of the coal to be set aflame by the fire that is hidden in it. But it [only] comes into the open with the blowing [on it], and [likewise] the forms in the intermediate world [of the soul] are set aflame by the spirits they contain.38

Here the use of barzakh includes both the realm of psychic being and the more popular interpretation favored by Sunni writers of a place where souls exist while awaiting the day of resurrection. The notes to the text indicate that while Ibn 'Arabí seemed to want to convey both of these meanings, leaving it up to the predilection of the reader to favor one interpretation over the other, Mulla Sadra clearly stresses the more philosophic understanding. He uses the term barzakh again when talking about the day of separation or division (yawm al-fasl) mentioned in Qur'an 77:30, saying that “those who have been freed from the graves (of attachment to physical being) and the intermediate worlds will pass directly into the divine Presence at the Rising of the Hour, without the waiting and delay which is the fate of those confined to this world and shackled with the bonds of (bodily) connections”.39

Al-A'raf

As barzakh has been interpreted as a barrier in space and time between the living and dead, so al-a'raf, mentioned only once in the Qur'an, has generally been understood in Sunni eschatological interpretation to refer to the top of a kind of barrier between the realms of the Garden and those of the Fire. Sêra 7:44-46 says:

And the dwellers of the Garden cry until the dwellers of the

Fire: We have found that which our Lord promised as the truth. Have you found what your Lord promised as the truth? They said, Yes. Then a crier among them cried out, Truly the curse of God is upon the wrong-doers, those who keep people from the way of God and would have it crooked, and who are rejecters of the (reality of) the last day. Between them is a partition (hijab). And on the heights (al-a'raf) are men (rijalun) who know them all by their signs. And they call to the inhabitants of the Garden, “Peace be upon you.” They do not enter it, though they wish to.

 The exegesis of this verse has developed into what some have called the “limbo” theory of Islam, or the supposition that there is an intermediate class of people who do not automatically enter the Garden or the Fire.

The Qur'an contains no other reference to the a'raf, although it does mention a wall (sur) of separation in S 57:13 (with no specification of its location), which many commentators have equated with the hijab, whose uppermost portions are the a'raf. It is clear from the Qur'an that this partition separates the inhabitants of the Garden from those of the Fire, and that the men on the heights can view persons in both circumstances. It seems very doubtful that the Qur'anic intention was of an abode for those understood to be in an intermediate category, but this has come to be the most commonly held interpretation. A rather straightforward description of the men on the heights, for example, is provided in an English text prepared for the edification of Muslims and non-Muslims in America by The Islamic Center in Washington D. C. entitled The End of the Journey. An Islamic Perspective on Death and the Afterlife.40 The author concludes his short text with these words on the a'raf:

Another group is composed of those who did not perform enough good deeds to get them into heaven and those who did not commit enough bad deeds to put them in hell. These people are between heaven and hell. Not only do these people see heaven and the people of heaven, but they can actually talk to them. They also see hell and the people of hell and can talk to them. The people between heaven and hell want Allah to save them from the hell fire... The destiny of these people depends on Allah's mercy.

Sura 7:44-46 has elicited wide speculation, and early commentators suggested a great variety of possibility in explanation of it. Both al-Tabarí and al-Razí in their expositions on the passage list various theories that have been posited about the inhabitants of the a'raf, 41 among which are that they are (1) the most excellent of the pious people, such as the righteous (al-Salihun), the legislates (al-fuqaha), the learned doctors (al-'ulama), and the martyrs (al-shuhada); (2) not human at all, but angels who distinguish between the blessed and the damned before taking them to the Garden or the Fire; (3) the prophets; (4) persons killed fighting in the way of God, but who disobeyed their parents in so doing; (5) persons whose good deeds keep them from the Fire and whose evil deeds keep them from the Garden, i.e. those whose actions balance in terms of merit and demerit, and who are therefore the last to enter the Garden, at the mercy of their Lord.42 Abu Hamid al-Ghazalí in Book IV of his Ihya 'ulum al-dín 43 divides humankind into four categories at the day of judgment. One of those categories, he says, is for a group who have neither good or evil works that would be sufficient for the rendering of account. Such might be those who are insane, children of non-believers, and persons who for whatever reason have never heard the word of prophecy. Thus, they occupy an intermediate place which is al-a'raf.

The majority of Sunni exegetes have supported the interpretation of a balance of good and bad deeds for both negative and positive reasons. Citing the last phrase of the verse, which says the men on the heights do not enter the Garden, they insist that this rules out the most virtuous of the Islamic community, who would automatically be granted such entrance. They therefore posit an intermediate position, the highest place on the partition separating the Garden from the Fire, from which the dwellers on the a'raf gaze down at the inhabitants of the two abodes and recognize them by their distinguishing signs. (These signs are often said to be the smiling glad faces of those in the Garden and the black faces and blue eyes of those in the Fire!) 44 Their good and bad deeds equal, they must wait until all the rest of humanity has been assigned to its just destiny. The people of the heights call out to God, asking Him that they not be consigned to the Fire, the agony of whose inhabitants they witness, and express their hope of joining the dwellers in the Garden. The majority of mufassirun use this verse as another occasion to extol the mercy of God, saying that the dwellers on the heights will, in fact, finally be granted admission into the Garden through God's good will and pleasure. Many include the particulars of the entrance into Paradise, such as the initial bathing in the river of life (nahr al-hayat) so that they can go into the Garden refreshed and purified.45

Contemporary Qur'an commentators, while occasionally citing other views in reference to the companions of the a'raf, are virtually unanimous in saying that they are those whose good and bad deeds are equal and who must remain the last to enter the Garden. One apparent exception to this is Muhammad Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi46 who inclines toward the interpretation that because a'raf means the loftiest part, these folk are to be understood as the best of the mu'minên, such as the martyrs, prophets, etc. The principle of divine justice is underscored in the insistence that recompense is exact and in the implicit recognition that God will not unfairly punish or unduly reward.47 Muhammad al-Jammal summarizes all the opinions of the traditional commentators into three groups, saying that the rijal on the heights are (1) those whose good and bad deeds are equal, (2) the children of deficient parents, and (3) prophets, martyrs, and the pious.48 The whole passage, says Muhammad Mahmud Hijazi, points to the fact that every person deserves the recompense of his work with accuracy.49 As justice is always seen to be tempered with (or, more accurately, fulfilled through) mercy, however, the verse provides the opportunity to expand on this twin aspect of the divine in relation to ultimate recompense. Thus, says `Abd al-Karim al-Khatib, “These men are similar to observers (or arbiters) witnessing from a place between two opposing groups. They look first at one group, then at the other, and they are in a circumstance of wonder and perplexity, of happiness and affliction, of hope and fear. It is a kind of punishment that is touched by the kindness of God, and the mercy of God surrounds them”.50

For a full examination of Mulla Sadra's discussion of classical commentaries on Qur'an 7:46 dealing with the a'raf the reader is directed to his Asfar IX, pages 316-18. At this writing that work was unavailable to me, so I must limit my remarks to his treatment of the subject in al-Hikmat al-'arshiyyah, part II, principle 13. Al-Shírazí clearly admits that the most common interpretation of the verse is of a wall between Paradise and the Fire, whose inner side faces the former and whose outer side looks onto the latter. On it sit those whose deeds of good and evil are exactly balanced, such that one of their eyes is looking toward the Garden and the other the abode of punishment. This, as we have seen, is the most common Sunni view. His own understanding of al-a'raf, however, he clearly states to be something different. He gives two alternatives for the derivation of the term. (1) It comes from the Arabic 'arafah, specifically referring to al-'irfan or inner knowledge. (2) It comes from al-'urf, which means the mane of a horse, or al-'urfa, a high sandy hill. In the latter cases of the mane or the hill, each indicates height and alludes to the exaltedness and sublimity of the essences of those who occupy those high places. “The people of al-A'raf, then, are those who have become perfect in knowledge and true inner understanding, who know each group among mankind by their marks”.51 They are the ones with such inner vision and discernment that they are able to see the people in Paradise and in the Fire and to understand their states in those realms.

What is most interesting about Mulla Sadra's interpretation, however, is that the people who have achieved such heights of wisdom and perspicacity are still in this world in their earthly bodies. Again he cites Ibn 'Arabí, who says that while their bodies are in the lowest world, their hearts are on the heights in the lofty assemblies; while their physical forms are of corporeal being, their spirits are of the Throne. They have not yet died physically, but they have achieved Paradise in spirit by virtue of their spiritual advancement. They are “hoping” for a final destination of Paradise, and Mulla Sadra insists that this is equivalent to actualizing and attaining it. In the meantime, however, they occupy an intermediate position on the heights between the Garden and the Fire. “For their hearts are blessed with all the delights of inner knowledge and true faith belonging to the Gardens (of Paradise); but their bodies are still tormented by all the sufferings and cares of this world...”52

Al-Shírazí confirms the correctness of this interpretation by citing the Imams who said that they themselves are al-a'raf, a tradition which he cites at greater length in the Asfar IX and which is identified as Imam Ja`far's rendering of a reply given by `Ali when questioned by a woman about the meaning of Qur'an verse 7:46. Since the Imams are al-`araf, `Ali is cited as having affirmed that the way to know God is through the inner knowledge (ma'rifah) of the Imams. “... no one will enter Paradise but those whom we have acknowledged [or “caused to know”: 'arrafnahu]; nor will anyone enter Hell but those whom we have denied”. 53 Mulla Sadra reasons that because the verse itself indicates highest praise for those on the heights, it makes no sense to assume that these are people with a balance of good and bad deeds, and that because the verse says that they know those who are in the two circumstances of Garden or Fire by their signs, it is clear that only those of the highest degree of true inner knowledge would be able to claim such knowledge. The context of such knowledge must be before death and in the realm of this world, in the expectation that after death will be the promised time either for joyful reunion with God or for despair at the ultimate exclusion from His presence.

Notes

1. For a study of Sunni beliefs about events to occur from the death of the individual to the resurrection and judgment of all humanity see Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany NY, 1981).

2. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sadr al-Dín Shírazí and his Transcendent Theosophy (Tehran, 1978), 40-50, lists those works relating to eschatology and the afterlife. These are also noted in Nasr's ``The Writings of Sadr al-Dín Shírazí,'' Reserches d'Islamologie (Louvain, 1977): 261-71.

3. Tehran, 1984.

4. Tehran, 1976.

5. Mulla Sadra, al-Mabda' wa'l-ma`ad, x.

6. Tehran, 1391 hijri.

7. James Winston Morris, trans. (Princeton NJ, 1981).

8. Tehran, 1378 hijri.

9. Nasr, Sadr al-Dín Shírazí, 66-67.

10. Trans. Parviz Morewedge as The Metaphysics of Mulla Sadra (Tehran, 1992).

11. Albany NY, 1975.

12. Philosophy, 12-13.

13. The most comprehensive English work on the subject is Ragner Eklund, Life Between Death and Resurrection According to Islam (Uppsala, 1941).

14. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya in his popular 14th century manual of eschatological concerns, Kitab al-ruh (Cairo, 1357 h.), for example, discusses three abodes: the dar al-dunya, the dar al-barzakh, and what he calls the dar al-qarar, abode of everlastingness, that which the Qur'an calls the dar al-akhirah.

15. See al-Ash`arí's Maqalat al-Islamiyín and Ibana 'an usul al-diyanah, al-Tahawi's `Aqidat ahl al-sunna wa'l-jama`a, the Sharh al-`aqa'id al-Nasafiya, the Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, and Fiqh akbar II.

16. Versions of this, related in eschatological manuals, are based on traditions such as those cited in the following: Sahih Muslim 51; 75; al-Sunan (Nasa'i) 21:9; al-Sunan (Ibn Majah) 37:31; Musnad (Ahmad ibn Hanbal) 2:364, 4:287, 295, 6:139; Musnad (Tayalisi) Nos. 753,2389.

17. Non-Qur'anic and seldom mentioned by name in the canonical traditions, these angels are referred to frequently in the medieval Islamic texts and are part of such credal statements as the Wasiyat Abi Hanifa, the Fikh Akbar II (Article 23), and the Sharh al-`aqa'id al-Nasafiya.

18. Reminiscent of the female daena of Zoroastrian mythology, the personification of one's deeds who visits the third day after death in the form of a beautiful maiden or ugly hag, this figure in Sunni lore is portrayed as a male personage whose appearance corresponds to the quality of the deeds represented.

19. A study of contemporary Egyptian beliefs about life after death by sociologist Sayyid `Uways (Min malamih al-mujtama` al-masri al-mu`asir [Cairo, 1965]) suggests that such beliefs are still held by a large portion of Egyptian society.

20. Kitab al-ruh, 74ff. Cf. Hadi al-arwah ila bilad al-afrah (al-Dammam, 1977), 243-47.

21. See Jane I. 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-Ghazalí (Missoula, Mt, 1979).

22. The Precious Pearl, 42-44.

23. Bushra al-ka'ib bi-liqa'al-habib (Cairo, 1969), 29. See also his al-Budur al-safira fi umur al-akhira (Beirut, 1996), 616-17.

24. See Jane I. Smith, ``Concourse between the Living and the Dead in Islamic Eschatological Literature,'' History of Religion 19/3 (February 1980): 224-36.

25. This is not to suggest that mata and tuwuffiya are ever equated in the exegesis of this verse. Al-Zamakhshari, for example, parallels tawfiya with imata as meaning deprivation of the perceptive, sensory life (al-Kashshaf 4:131). This underlines the commonality of the situation of the soul during sleep and death, the distinction apparently lying in the question of duration.

26. Islamic folklore, of course, is replete with tales of the living visiting their live relatives and kinsmen during sleep. That belief in this kind of phenomenon is still widely held, at least by Egyptians, is attested to by sociologist Sayyid `Uways, who has done extensive surveys of the religious convictions of both urban and rural people. It is not only the saints, he says, who are able to interact with the living, but also the dead who with some regularity seem to make their requests known through dream visitations. (Hadíth `an al-thaqafa [Cairo, 1970], 124).

27. Risalat fi al-mawt wa'l-barzakh (Beirut, 1996), 73. Cf. Ahmad Hijazi al-Saka, al-Tadhkira fi ahwal al-mawt wa'l-umur al-akhira (Cairo, n.d.), 217-18, who reports that the Prophet said that when one dies he is neither in al-dunya or al-akhira, but in between the two in the barzakh, where he will remain until the day of resurrection.

28. Madha ba'd al-mawt ? (Baghdad, 1984), 59.

29. Cairo, 1980, 65.

30. Kitab al-dar al-barzakhiya (Cairo, 1974), 242-43.

31. al-Jawahir fi Tafsír al-Qur'an al-karim 19 (Cairo, 1932), 9.

32. Rihlat min al-shakk `ila' l-iman (Cairo, 1971). Mustafa Mahmud was a Cairo journalist, a self-styled theologian whose writings on questions of life after death and other religious subjects are readily accessible and widely read in his part of the world.

33. Yawm al-qīyama (Cairo, 1960), 77-80.

34. Cf. Abu'l - `Ala al-Mawdudi, al-Hadara al-Islamiya (Beirut, 1967), 247 sq.

35. Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, 202-203.

36. Wisdom, 138.

37. Wisdom, 142.

38. Wisdom, 185.

39. Wisdom, 206. The translator observes that on the esoteric level, the ``Rising''... is the passage from the inner assumption of the self-subsistent, separate reality of material and psychic forms, to the enlightened awareness of those phenomena as subsisting with and manifesting the divine ``Presence'' (al-hadra al-ilahiya).

40. Abdullah Muhammad Khouj, 1988.

41. Abu Ja`far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, al-jami` al-bayan fi Tafsír al-Qur'an 8 (Cairo, 1954-), 188-94; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Tafsír al-kabir 4 (Cairo, 1934-62), 86-90.

42. One of the fullest listings of possibilities is that of al-Qurtubi quoted by `Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha`rain in Mukhtasar tadhkirat al-Qurtubi (Cairo, 1315h), 62-63; most of these possibilities are included in the categories treated by al-Tabari and al-Razi.

43. Cairo, Dar al-`Ulum, n.d.

44. Cf. al-Razi, Tafsír al-kabir 4, 87.

45. Cf. al-Baghawi, Mishkat al-masabih 2 (Lahore, 1965), 1185-86.

46. Mahasin al-Ta'wil 7 (Cairo, 1957-70), 2691-92.

47. See, e.g. Muhammad Kafaji, Tafsír al-Qur'an al-karim 8 (Cairo, 1967-70), 119-20; Hafis Isa `Ammar, al-Falsafa al-Qur'aniya 1 (Cairo, n. d.), 170; Muhammad Farid Wajdi, al-Mushaf al-mufassar (Cairo, 1968), 199; Ahmad al-Maraghi, Tafsír al-Maraghi 9 (Cairo, 1953), 159;Muhammad Shahin Hamza, Ma`a'l-fikr al-Islami 8 (Cairo, 1970), 90-92.

48. al-Tafsír al-faríd li'l-Qur'an al-majíd 2 (Cairo, 1973), 998.

49. al-Fafsir al-wadih 8,59.

50. al-Tafsír al-Qur'aní li'l-Qur'an 4 (Cairo, 1967-70), 405.

51. Wisdom, 229.

52. Wisdom, 230.

53. Wisdom, 230, note 273.

 


 

 Print This Document

Save This Document on Your System