The Laṭāʾif al-asrār (“The Subtleties of the Secrets”) is a lost Malay Sufi treatise by Nuruddin ar-Raniri, cited by Raniri himself in the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* as the source to which the reader is referred for a fuller refutation of the heretical Wujudiyyah than the Tibjān itself provides. No manuscript of the Laṭāʾif al-asrār is known to survive; its existence is attested solely by Raniri’s own references to it. Voorhoeve notes that the work “has been lost” (Dit geschrift van Rānīrī is verloren gegaan).
Citations by Raniri
The Laṭāʾif al-asrār is cited by Raniri in the *Tibjān* at the close of his survey of the heretical Ṣūfī sects (p. 95 of the Voorhoeve facsimile). After treating the Wujūdiyyah and refuting in detail the Kitāb al-Muntahī of Hamzah Pansuri and the Mirʾāt al-muḥaqqiqīn and Chirkah of Shamsuddin of Pasai, Raniri refers the reader to the Laṭāʾif al-asrār for a fuller refutation. The reference is significant: it shows that the Tibjān, although a work of encyclopaedic scope, was not Raniri’s last word on the Wujūdiyyah, and that the fuller polemic was reserved for a separate treatise of which the Laṭāʾif al-asrār was the title.
Character and probable content
The very title — “The Subtleties of the Secrets” — places the work in the genre of Sufi laṭāʾif literature, the literature of the “subtleties” (laṭīfa, plural laṭāʾif) by which the inner meanings of the mystical path are disclosed to the adept. The word asrār (“secrets”) reinforces the esoteric character of the work. It may be conjectured that the Laṭāʾif al-asrār was a sustained Sufi treatise, of the same character as the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill* and the *Ḥujjat aṣ-ṣiddīq*, in which the orthodox Sufi position on the divine being and its relation to the world was set out in greater detail than the Tibjān permitted, and in which the doctrines of Hamzah Pansuri and Shamsuddin of Pasai were refuted at length.
Significance
The loss of the Laṭāʾif al-asrār is one of the major lacunae in the literary remains of Raniri’s Achehnese period. Its existence is nonetheless of consequence for the interpretation of the Tibjān: it shows that the Tibjān, although comprehensive, was conceived by its author as a work of polemical introduction rather than as a definitive refutation, and that the fuller argument was reserved for a separate treatise. The Laṭāʾif al-asrār thus belongs, with the *Ḥall aẓ-ẓill* and the *Jawāhir al-ʿulūm*, to that body of Raniri’s writings in which the orthodox Sufi position was developed at length.
See Also
- Acheh
- Bahasa Djawi
- Bustan al-Salatin
- Chirkah
- Djawahir al-‘ulum
- Hall al-zill
- Hamzah Pansuri
- Hudjdjat as-siddiq li-daf az-zindiq
- Kitab al-Muntahi
- Mir’at al-muhakkikin
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Raniri’s public debate against the Wujudiyyah in Acheh
- Shaikh Shamsuddin of Sumatra
- Sirat al-mustaqim
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
- Wujudiyyah
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 §2a (“Inhoudsoverzicht”), p. 9, where the Laṭāʾif al-asrār is named as the work to which Raniri refers his reader for a fuller refutation of the Wujūdiyyah; and the apparatus criticus ad p. 95 r. 4.