The Wujūdiyyah — also called Ittiḥādiyya, Mulhid, or Zindīq — is the doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) in the form in which it was developed at the court of Acheh by Hamzah Pansuri and his successor Shamsuddin of Pasai in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and against which Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī directed his polemic after his arrival in Acheh in 1637. The doctrine is set out in the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* and the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq li-dafʿ az-zindīq* of Raniri, where it is divided into the upper-wind (bovenwindse) and lower-wind (benedenwindse) Wujūdiyyah; to the latter belong Hamzah Pansuri and his school.
The doctrine
The doctrine of the Wujūdiyyah, as set out by Raniri in the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq*, is that “being is one, namely the being of God; this is not a self-subsistent existent distinct from creation, but is enclosed in all that is created; so that the world = God, God = the world.” The Wujūdiyyah say: “nothing exists but God; lā ilāha illā Allāh means ‘there is no being of mine, only the being of God’” — by which they intend: “God’s being is this my being.” They further teach that “God and we are of one genus and of one being,” and that “the essence of God is knowable, and his quality and quantity are manifest, insofar as he exists outwardly in time and place.”
The distinction from orthodox Sufism
Raniri distinguishes sharply between the orthodox Sufi position and that of the heretical Wujūdiyyah. The Sufis, Raniri argues, accept the theologians’ doctrine of two beings — the necessary being of God and the contingent being of the created world — but employ a different terminology in which “being” signifies only the divine essence, while the world is mere manifestation (maẓhar) and shadow (ẓill). In the Sufi’s saying “God and the world are one,” the meaning is that the world is an accident of God, not counted, in the same way that a mirror-image is not a second sun. The Wujūdiyyah, by contrast, mean by the same formula that God and the world are one in essence — a position Raniri judges to be that “of an unbeliever and an atheist.” The Sufi position is, in Raniri’s argument, that of the orthodox mutakallimūn in different terminology; the Wujūdiyyah position is a heresy that conflates shadow and substance.
The Achehnese Wujūdiyyah
The Achehnese Wujūdiyyah of the school of Hamzah Pansuri is the principal object of Raniri’s polemic. Hamzah’s *Asrār al-ʿārifīn* and *Kitāb al-Muntahī* expound the doctrine of the unity of being in its most extreme Achehnese form, drawing on the Sufi tradition of Ibn ʿArabī and on Persian Sufi poetry. Shamsuddin of Pasai (d. 1630) continued Hamzah’s school at the court of Iskandar Muda, and his Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn and Chirkah (or Ḥarakah) developed the metaphysics of the unity of being in Malay. The Wujūdiyyah flourished at the Achehnese court until the death of Iskandar Muda in 1636.
The orthodox reaction
The arrival of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī in 1637, in the first year of the reign of Iskandar Thani, opened the orthodox reaction against the Wujūdiyyah. Raniri refuted the adherents of the extreme Wujūdiyyah mysticism in a public debate in the presence of the sultan; the disciples of Hamzah Pansuri were put to death and his books burned. The composition of the *Tibjān* and the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq* — both directed against the Wujūdiyyah — followed at the command of Iskandar Thani and his successor Taj al-Ālam. Raniri continued to enjoy royal favour under both sultans; his authority replaced that of the Wujūdiyyah mystics at the Achehnese court, and the production of Malay religious prose in the new orthodox dispensation — the *Ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm*, the *Bustān as-Salāṭīn*, the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill*, the *Jawāhir al-ʿulūm* — replaced the Wujūdiyyah literature of the age of Iskandar Muda.
Sources and authorities
In his refutation of the Wujūdiyyah Raniri cites a number of authorities. The principal among them is Ibn ʿArabī in the Futūḥāt Makkīya, who is quoted as rejecting those who identify the visible world with God. The Indian mystic ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Mahāʾimī (d. 835 H / 1432) is cited in the Ithbād an-naṣīḥa and the Irāʾat ad-daqāʾiq to the effect that “whoever teaches that the Reason, the Soul, etc., are the Highest Reality is as wrong as one who says ‘Zaid’s hand is Zaid,’ and is an unbeliever and atheist.” Muḥammad b. Faḍl Allāh is cited in the Tuḥfa al-mursala. The lost *Laṭāʾif al-iʿlām* is cited on the unity of being. Raniri also distinguishes the orthodox Wujūdiyyah (Wujūdiyya al-muwaḥḥid) — who are the Sufis — from the heretical Wujūdiyyah (Wujūdiyya al-mulḥid), who are the atheists.
Significance
The controversy over the Wujūdiyyah is the central event of the religious history of Acheh in the seventeenth century. It marks the transition from the golden age of Achehnese mystical poetry — the age of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai — to the age of the orthodox reaction under Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī, and the composition of the *Tibjān* and the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq* is the principal literary deposit of the controversy. The polemic against the Wujūdiyyah also preserves, in the form of citations and refutations, the only extended fragments of the works of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai — works whose own manuscripts have survived only in fragments and which are known to us chiefly through the writings of their opponent.
See Also
- Acheh
- Ahmad al-Mahaimi
- Asrar al-‘arifin
- Bahasa Djawi
- Chirkah
- Hamzah Pansuri
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Ibn Arabi
- Iskandar Thani
- Kitab al-Muntahi
- Lata’if al-asrar
- Lata’if al-i’lam
- Mir’at al-muhakkikin
- Muhammad b. Fadl Allah
- Raniri
- Raniri’s public debate against the Wujudiyyah in Acheh
- Shathihiyat
- Shaikh Shamsuddin of Sumatra
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Sultan Tajul-alam
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §3 (“Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq li-dafʿ az-zindīq”), pp. 37–43, where Raniri’s account of the four positions on the divine being is summarised.
C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze, Sjamsu’l-Dīn van Pasai: bijdrage tot de kennis van de Sumatraansche mystiek. Leiden, 1945.
The Achehnese, Vol. I and Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.