Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq

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tagsdocument, religious-work, manuscript, islamic-scholarship, polemic, precolonial, 17th-century, aceh, malay, gujarati, wujudiyyah
aliasesḤujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq li-dafʿ az-zindīq, Hujjat as-siddiq, Hujjat as-siddīq, Argument of the Pious for the Refutation of the Heretic, Raniri's Hujjat, Maxwell 93

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The Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq li-dafʿ az-zindīq (“The argument of the pious one for the refutation of the heretic”) is the second of the two Malay treatises of Nuruddin ar-Raniri edited in facsimile by P. Voorhoeve in the 1955 volume of the Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje. Shorter than the *Tibjān* and directed entirely against the Wujudiyyah, it sets out four positions on the relation of God’s being to the world — those of the theologians, the Sufis, the philosophers, and the heretical Wujūdiyyah — and refutes the last. The Voorhoeve edition reproduces the only known complete manuscript, no. 93 of the Maxwell collection in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, pp. 119–145.

Composition and provenance

The colophon of the Maxwell manuscript records that the work was written by “the Shaikh Nuruddīn b. ʿAlī b. Ḥasanji b. Muḥammad, of the lineage (bangsa) named Ḥamīd, ar-Rānīrī, of the Shāfiʿite school,” in the Bahasa Djawi (the Malay of the Achehnese court), translated from Sufi and other works, at the request of “a notable friend,” in order to refute the “fanatical and opinionated ignorant persons” who had been spreading aberrant doctrines concerning the divine being and the relation of the world to the Real. Voorhoeve dates the Ḥujjat to the Achehnese period of Raniri’s life — that is, between 1637 and 1644 — since the doctrines it attacks are precisely those that flourished at the court of Iskandar Muda under Shamsuddin of Pasai and that were suppressed after the public disputation at the court of Iskandar Thani. The work must therefore be read alongside the Tibjān as the second of the two manifestos by which Raniri consolidated the orthodox reaction in Acheh.

Argument and structure

The Ḥujjat is divided, in Voorhoeve’s analysis, into twenty-seven numbered sections. After an opening doxology (§1) the author announces himself and his purpose (§2). The argument proper begins (§3) by setting out the four positions on the question whether the being of God and the being of the world are different or one:

  1. The dialectical theologians (mutakallimūn) — who teach that being is twofold: the necessary being of God, self-subsistent; and the contingent being of the world, created by God out of non-being into outward being. In their terminology, this distinction is between real being (wujūd ḥaqīqī) and metaphorical being (wujūd majāzī). Whoever teaches that these two are one is an unbeliever.
  2. The Ṣūfīs — who accept the theologians’ doctrine but employ a different terminology. In their usage, being is one — namely, the essence of God; the world has no being, it is absolute non-being (ʿadam maḥḍ); how then could it be one with absolute being? The world is merely a place of manifestation (maẓhar) and a shadow (ẓill), the property of the Highest Reality. God is to be compared to one who looks in a mirror, the world to the mirror-image he sees. The being of God and the being of the world are neither different nor one, for both difference and unity presuppose two self-subsistences. Therefore the Sufis say: God (1) + World (0) = 1; for the world has no real being. The intent of the theologians and that of the Sufis is the same; the difference is one of words (ikhtilāf lafẓī) not of meaning (maʿnawī), like “fifteen” and “a-half-ten-and-five.”
  3. The philosophers (falāsifa) — who teach that God’s being and the world are both eternal (qadīm), because the world proceeds from God’s being by a natural overflowing (taʾthīr) of the Highest Reality, as the heat of the sun proceeds from the sun’s essence. As long as the sun exists, so does its warmth; as long as God exists, so does the world, from eternity to eternity.
  4. The heretical Wujūdiyya (Wujūdiyya al-mulḥid) — who teach that being is one, namely the being of God; that 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. They 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. God and we are of one genus and of one being.

Raniri then (§10–§15) develops his refutation. He cites Ibn ʿArabī in the Futūḥāt Makkīya rejecting those who identify the visible world with God; he notes that the Wujūdiyyah disguise their doctrine with the formula “God is our self and our being, and we are God’s self and God’s being,” but that a wise man is not deceived by such attire. He compares their doctrine to that of the ʿAlī Allāhiyya and Ismāʿīliyya among the Rāfiḍīs (who held that Allāh was incarnate in ʿAlī), of the Jews (who hold that ʿUzair is the Son of God), and of the Christians (who hold that ʿĪsā is the Son of God and teach the Trinity and the descent of God from divinity into humanity). He cites the Zubad: “in twenty-eight places God’s Word speaks of man as created.” He quotes ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Mahāʾimī in his Irāʾat ad-daqāʾiq: “Whoever teaches that the Reason, the Soul, etc. etc. are the Highest Reality is as wrong as one who says ‘Zaid’s hand is Zaid,’ and is an unbeliever and atheist.” He cites the Ithbād an-naṣīḥa of the same al-Mahāʾimī and the lost *Laṭāʾif al-iʿlām* on the unity of being.

The remainder of the treatise (§16–§27) develops the orthodox Ṣūfī position. The being of God and the being of the created are not the same. Ibn ʿArabī is quoted: “The Necessarily Existent is the absolute Being.” God’s being is knowable in quality and quantity but not in deepest essence. Proofs from the Quran and the Sunna, from the prophet Dāwūd and from Abū Bakr, are adduced to show that the knowledge of God is obtained only by grace. The Shaikh Shibli is cited; so is the tradition: “none knows God but God.” The true meaning of lā ilāha illā Allāh is expounded: “there is nothing that exists but God” — that is, nothing has in truth being but God. The being of creatures is only shadow and metaphorical being. There is a great difference between a Sufi’s saying “God and the world are one” and the Wujūdiyyah’s saying the same: the Sufi means that the world is an accident of God, not counted; the Wujūdiyya mean that God and the world are one in essence. The author of the Miftāḥ al-ghayb is cited: the perfect do not deny the world like the ecstatics (mastūrūn), nor affirm it like the veiled (mahjūbūn), but accept both God and the world, and distinguish between them.

The treatise closes with a notable pronouncement on the shathīyāt — the ecstatic utterances such as anā al-ḥaqq of al-Ḥallāj. These are to be compared with latah; although God will not punish them on the Day of Judgement — because the words come from Him — yet by the religious law they must be punished, even killed. Whoever, being in his senses, pronounces such shathīyāt, must be killed and will burn in hell eternally. A prayer for preservation from this evil closes the work.

Manuscripts

The Voorhoeve edition reproduces the only known complete manuscript:

  • The Maxwell manuscript — Royal Asiatic Society, London, Maxwell collection no. 93, pp. 119–145. The first part of this codex contains the well-known Malay handbook of faith and religious duties entitled Bidāyat al-mubtadi bi-faḍl Allāh al-muhdī. Voorhoeve was enabled to study the manuscript first in London and later in Leiden through the help of Sir R. O. Winstedt, while the Royal Asiatic Society granted permission to reproduce the text of the second part. Some lines have become unclear through damp-stains in the original; these are transcribed in Voorhoeve’s notes.

A second witness, an Arabic text only, had been noted as early as 1866 by Van der Tuuk in BKI 13, p. 464:

  • A — Bataviaas Genootschap, KBG 420 Mal. (not in the catalogue). Long thought lost, it was recovered by Dr. R. Roolvink. Comparison showed that the copyist, working from a complete Malay exemplar, had transcribed only the Arabic words and sentences written in red ink, producing an incoherent text that nonetheless contains fewer copyists’ errors than the Maxwell manuscript and was repeatedly useful for its correction.

The colophon of the Maxwell manuscript records that the copy was completed on Sunday 12 Shaʿbān 1186 (corresponding to late 1772/early 1773), the year Wāw, after the morning prayer, by Encik ʿAbdul ʿAzīz.

Significance

The Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq is, with the Tibjān, one of the two manifestos by which Raniri carried the orthodox reaction into the religious life of Acheh. Its sustained argument, its systematic exposition of four positions on the being of God, its careful citation of authorities, and its final pronouncement on the shathīyāt — comparing them to latah and demanding death for those who pronounce them in their senses — make it the most methodical statement of the position that won the favour of Iskandar Thani and Taj al-Ālam. The treatise is also, in its careful distinction between the orthodox Sufi position and that of the heretical Wujūdiyyah, the locus classicus for understanding how Raniri could at once be an orthodox mystic — a Rifāʿī shaikh — and the persecutor of the mysticism of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai.

See Also

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 (p. 37: inhoudsopgave; pp. 40–43: aantekeningen); facsimile pp. 1–27 of the second part.

H. N. van der Tuuk, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië 13 (1866), p. 464.

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