This book, SAHÂBA ‘the
Blessed’, was written by the great Islamic
scholar Ahmad Fârûq-i-Serhendî ‘rahmatullâhi ’aleyh’, and revised by Hadrat
Sayyid Abdulhakîm Arwâsî.
Immured within the smothering haze of complacency pampered by a
smattering of science somehow acquired in the name of knowledge, we were
bluntly unconscious of the existence of great Islamic scholars and their
gigantic works, and especially of the so many highly exalted savants and Walîs
who were compared to the Israelite prophets ‘salawâtullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaihim
ajma’în’, and all we possessed in the name of religious knowledge was a
precariously diminutive assortment which consisted of whatever we had heard
from our parents and which was being gnawed away piecemeal by the storms
blowing
around us; and the pitiable situation would have become no better, if not worse
for the sake of most unflagging optimism, had it not been for Sayyid Abdulhakîm
Efendî ‘quddisa sirruh’; a great genius, a gift that
Allâhu ta’âlâ bestowed upon the Turkish nation and who made us hear
about the names of innumerable Islamic books each and every one of which is a
treasure of values and virtues and a key to the eternal felicity, and who caused
us to attain the fortune of reading and understanding their contents which have
a curing effect on psychopaths; a savior of the innocent and credulous people
who had been fooled into lethal heresies and perdition by the sequinned
fallacies of unbelievers and renegades; a learned psychotherapist who forearmed
the younger generations with panacea by making people suffering from mental
perplexities taste the existence of Allâhu ta’âlâ, the
superiority of our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi
wa sallam’ and the inner nature of îmân and Islam; the refreshing morning
breeze that swept away the clouds of unbelief and apostasy which had been
blackening the hearts and obscuring the sacred path of our noble ancestors; a
sun of knowledge and ma’rifat that cleared the horizons of the gloom of
irreligiousness that had thoroughly enveloped the sources of îmân; a noble
descendant of the Best of Mankind ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ and a
profoundly learned Walî possessed of an expertise in all the subtle particulars
of the four Madhhabs and in the sublime facts about the (spiritual grades
attained through various paths and called) Wilâyat. It has therefore been seen
fit to present a brief biography of that virtuous worldly and next-worldly
guide and thereby to leave a keepsake for those happy people who have had the
fluke of reading his books.
Sayyid Abdulhakîm bin Mustafâ Arwâsî ‘qaddas-Allâhu ta’âlâ
asrârahumâ’, one of the greatest scholars in the (chain of scholars called)
Sôfiyya-i-aliyya and a model of excellence among those scholars who faultlessly
practised their religious knowledge, was a personified treasure of faculties
well above his colleagues and contemporaries in the accomplishment of Islamic
services such as terwîj-i-dîn and nashr-i-’ilm and seha-i-tâbi’ and in the
enactment and practice of the shar’i sherîf-i-Ahmadî ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa
sallam’.
He was born in Başkal’a (Bashqal’a), a town within the limits of Van,
(an Eastern Turkey) province, in 1281 [1865 A.D.]. He
received
an ijâzat [a diploma] in the earlier half of the hijrî year 1300. Not only did
he receive an authorization from the Allâma Sayyid Fehîm ‘quddisa sirruh’ in
sciences such as ’ilm-i-sarf and nahw (the Arabic grammar); mantiq (logic);
munâzara (argumentation); wadi’, (which means, literally, posture, attitude,
legislation); bayân (expression, discourse); ma’ânî (lexicology, semantics);
bedî’ (rhetoric); kalâm (speech, branch of science helpful in understanding the
Qur’ân al-kerîm); usûl-i-fiqh (methodology
employed in fiqh); tafsîr (explanation of the Qur’ân
al-kerîm); tasawwuf; nush-i-li-l-muslimîn; iftâ-’alal madhhabîn;
’ulûm-i-hikamiyya, or hikmat-i-tabî’iyya, [which covers sciences such as
physics and biology]; hikmat-i-ilâhiyya; riyâdiyya (mathematics); hay’at
[astronomy]; and ’ulûm-i-zâhiriyya. The same profoundly learned scholar taught
and gave him full authorization in the orders of Tasawwuf such as Mujaddidî;
Qâdirî; Kubrawî; Suhrawardî; and Cheshtî. His father was Sayyid Muhyiddîn,
whose father was Sayyid Muhammad, whose father was Sayyid Abdurrahmân, who was
at the same time Sayyid Fehîm’s father’s father ‘rahmatullâhi ’alaihim
ajma’în’. That his paternal chain traces back to Alî Ridâ bin Kâzim, one of the
twelve imâms ‘rahimahumullâhu ta’âlâ, is written in the registers of canonical
lawcourt in Iraq, which is a document bearing the blessed signature of Sayyid
Abdurrazzâq ‘quddisa sirruh’, a grandson of Sayyid Abdulqâdir Geylânî
‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’.
Surviving the oppressions and massacres perpetrated by the Armenians,
who were emboldened when the Russian army reached a spot only an hour’s march
from Başkal’a on the first day of the blessed month of Rajab, 1332 [1914 A.D.],
Sayyid Abdulhakîm Arwâsî and seventy of his kith and kin, women, children and
all, set out on a middle-eastern migratory odyssey which carried them via a
number of Iraqi and Anatolian towns and cities such as Ruwandiz, Erbil, Mosul,
Adana and Eskişehir, and which eventually ended in the township of Eyyûb
Sultân, Istanbul, in the early Shawwâl of 1337 [1919 A.D.]. First they were
accomodated in the Yazılı Madrasa, a school building in the market-place. Then
he was appointed as imâm in the mosque called Murtadâ Efendi, which was in the
vicinity of Idris Köşk at Gümüşsuyu. He had made hajj twice before the migration.
He has a number of letters in the form of pamphlets. Among them are such
extremely valuable masterpieces as his
work
telling about the commencement of religious practices such as Mawlîd and the
using of the (prayer beads termed) Tesbîh and their canonical lawfulness; his
booklet entitled Râbita-i-sherîfa; his
book entitled er-Riyâd-ut-tasawwufiyya,
which he wrote during his career as a mudarris [professor] of Tasawwuf in the
Islamic university called Madrasa-i-mutahassisîn
during the reign of Sultân Wahîdaddîn Khân; his books Sahâba-i-kirâm (Sahâba ‘the Blessed’) and Ajdâd-i-Peygamberî; and his work on the Islamic
jurisprudence; in addition to his poems in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. He
neither ventured into politics, nor involved himself in any political
complications. He was against all factions, especially those which were being
carried on in the disguise of mystic orders. He was never heard to mention
words such as ‘shaikh’ and ‘murîd’ after the enactment of the law banning
tekkes. Not only was he himself an ideal model in strict law-abidingness, but
also he would always advise his company to follow his example. However, his
sermons on the pulpits of various mosques of Istanbul such as Eyyûb Sultân,
Fâtih, Bâyezîd, Bakırköy, Kadıköy and Ağa, Beyoğlu, wherein he reiterated his
disapproval of a group of impostors who were exploiting the Islamic values for
their worldly advantages, incurred the ire of the iniquitous rogues, who had
recourse to calumniation in counteraction. So vigorous was the smear campaign
they waged against him, that eventually he was arrested in his home in Istanbul
on the eighteenth of Ramadân, 1362, which coincided with the eighteenth of
September, 1943, a Saturday, and transported to Izmir, where he was first
lodged in a hotel, Meserret, and then moved to a private house. After an almost
three months’ sojourn there, he left for Ankara on the tenth day of Zilqa’da,
Monday, and, arriving in the city on Tuesday, he went to his nephew Fârûk
Işık’s place, where he stayed bedridden for eighteen days. It was eighteen
minutes before sunset, twelve according to the adhânî time and six-thirty by
the zawâlî time, on the twenty-ninth of Zilqa’da, 1362, which was the
twenty-seventh of Teshrîn thânî [November], Saturday, 1943, when he attained
his eternal palace in the Hereafter. A light earthquake was recorded during the
night. That day his blessed corpse was taken to his son-in-law Ibrâhîm’s house
at Keçiören, where he was washed and shrouded, the (prayer termed) janâza salât
was performed, and the blessed corpse,
(which
had served one of the darlings of Allâhu ta’âlâ for
eighty-one years,) was interred at Bağlum, a township twenty-four kilometres
north of Ankara, at sunset. Husayn Hilmi Işık was the lucky person who was
honoured to join the janâza salât for him, to enter his blessed grave, and to
undertake the duty of talqîn. (Please see the thirteenth through nineteenth
chapters of the fifth fascicle of Endless Bliss
for information about death and terms, duties and services connected with
death.) His grave is on the north-eastern part of the cemetery, which in turn
occupies a gentle slope some fifty metres west of the township. Beside the
entrance to the mosque of Bağlum is the blessed grave of Hadrat Sayyid
Burhânaddîn Mûshî. May Allâhu ta’âlâ make his
rank even higher! May He make us attain his shafâ’at! May He bless us with
reading his books, following the path he guides, and always reaping spiritual
fruits from his blessed soul! Âmîn.
Let each Muslim weep and shed tears of blood,
For Sayyid Abdulhakîm has left the world!
Âlim-ul-âmil and Walî-i-kâmil he was,
And a wealth of sublime, occult secrets.
All were suddenly orphaned, so destitute
Are now, both Islam and truth, no doubt.
My eyes reject what they themselves see;
Has that noble received the Divine Command ‘Be’?
The earth danced with joy throughout the night,
And embraced him the next day, with delight.
Alas, our blessed Sun has declined;
Unique is the time that his being defined!
He was, in his latest days, so grief-stricken,
Afflicted with pains’n sorrows, a sign for the woe-be-gone;
By the Islamic world it must be seriously taken:
Apathy whose issue with bloody tears cannot be undone!
In the name of eternity that has embraced his soul,
I have summarized a life that’d make a history.
A croud without him is a carcass without a soul;
Islam bemoans, and heavens weep over this story!
Mehmet Timuroğlu