Religious
Scholars

in the days of the Messenger,

those who had lived in the jahiliyya were overwhelmed by the words of the Qur'an,

and the new muslims readily surrendered to their experience of Islam.

For those who were close to the Messenger,

their lives were part of the world the Message spoke of,

and God addressed what was happening to them directly.

So all muslims are familiar with the names of at least some of those companions,

the first four caliphs, and perhaps some others

like Hamza, Bilal, Abbas, Salman Farsi and Abu Dharr,

and the lives and personalities of many others who were close to the Messenger

have been recorded by muslim historians.

Then the next generation,

with less involvement in the happenings of the days of revelation

told of what they remembered and had heard from their elders,

and their children did the same,

and so the Message of Islam was handed down through the generations.

But some were closer to the Messenger than others,

and some had better understanding than others,

and were more able to explain the meaning of the muslim way of life than others,

and as Islam rapidly spread far and wide,

there were clearly some who called themselves muslim

whose way of life had little in common with that of the Messenger,

including many if not most of those

who held political power over the new empire.

But there were always scholars who tried to find ways

to express the muslim way of life

in words that were valid for everyone.

They studied the Qur'an,

and stories of the Messenger

and tried to define the deen as a set of laws,

God's requirements for muslim behaviour.

By the time a hundred years had passed,

these ideas were beginning to have an agreed form,

and it is then that that we find the most famous muslim lawyers,

the founders of the sunni schools of law,

Abu Hanifa, Malik Ibn Anas, Muhammad Al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal,

set out their ideas as to how valid laws should be established,

and those ideas are still accepted around most of the muslim world today.

And as the law became more reliant on ahadith to define it,

so scholars tried to sift the millions of ahadith being passed around,

to sort out those that were most trustworthy,

and by about two hundred years after the Messenger,

several collections were put together

and written down by the famous sunni muhadithun,

the six books of Bukhari, Abu Dawud, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majab, and Nasa'i,

though of course there had been other collections

such as the Muwatta of Imam Malik.

But there was another side of the Islamic experience,

perhaps given more prominence in the Shi'a understandings of the time,

tracing a spiritual lineage through Hazrat Ali,

and his collected sayings in the Nahj-ul-Balagha,

and leading through a line of imams

from the Messenger's grandson Hussein to the Imam Jafar al-Sadiq,

who was a brilliant astronomer and doctor

as well as a muhadithun, and lawyer

and teacher of Abu Hanifa.

You see,

laws and understandings can be put into words,

but experience rarely can,

and in the peak moments of experience never.

How often do you hear people say it is impossible

to put something they feel into words.

Of course we use words for states like love and elation,

but in the knowledge that they can't do the actuality justice,

so we use poetry

to give a hint of something between the lines,

a scent of what it is trying to describe.

An experience of God's presence can't be put

into words, but in some ways it can be communicated,

one person guiding another,

and that experience the companions derived from the Messenger,

they passed on to others, who did the same themselves,

and those lines of transmission

became known as the sufi tariqas, many of which exist today,

tracing their lineages back through famous sufi teachers

from whom they get their names,

to individual companions,

and through them to the Messenger.

Some of the most famous are the Naqshabandi

followers of Baha-ud-Din Naqshaband,

the Qadiri from Abd-ul-Qadir Jilani,

the Chisti from Moinuddin Chisti,

the Suhrawardi from Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi,

and others like the Burhaniyya, the Tijaniyya, the Batiniyya,

the Bektashi, the Darqawi, and the Rifa'i,

and perhaps the best known in the west,

the Mevlevi, famous for their whirling dervishes,

and even more so for the poetical writings of Rumi.

There have been many sufi poets, but none have matched

Mevlana Jalal-ud-Din Rumi.