Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān in a praise session at the Amman takya, Jordan (17 May 2017).
Allah (high is He) is present and sees and witnesses what happens. He is the King of Kings, “His is the creation and the command” (al-Aʿrāf 7:54). Allah is eternal; Allah is alive and never dies, “To Allah we belong and to Him we will return” (al-Baqara 2:156); “every soul will taste death” (Āl ʿImrān 3:185). Every day, we come closer to death because every day brings the appointed time closer. We have to take advantage of life and dedicate it to obeying Allah (exalted and high is He). No one lives forever.
Think well and have faith in Allah (high is He), obey His commandments, and refrain from what He ordered you not to do. Your Ṭarīqa guides you to the closeness of Allah. Always hold yourselves to account, exchange advice and guidance, and love each other in Allah’s cause. Remember Him often and often read prayers on our Master the Messenger (PBUH). May Allah bless you. Allāhumma ṣallī ʿalā sayyidinā Muḥammadi ʾl-waṣfi wal‑waḥyi war‑risālati wal‑ḥikmati waʿalā ʾālihi wa-ṣaḥbihi wa-sallim taslīmā. “Our Lord! Give us good in this world and good in the hereafter and protect us from the torment of the Fire!” (al-Baqara 2:201).
Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān (Sermon, 2 April 2000)
This book is mainly extracted from my detailed biography of Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān. I should introduce that book first before talking about the current derivative work.
The first Arabic edition of my detailed biography of our Master (may Allah sanctify his secret), Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān al-Ḥusaynī: A Life in the Footsteps of the Best of Lives, was published in October 2018. A revised second edition followed in May 2019. As the English translation of the biography was about to be completed, on 4 July 2020, Allah chose our noble Shaikh to be with Him, in the company of the Prophets, the truthful, the martyrs, and the righteous. After serving as the Shaikh of Ṭarīqa of his great-grandfather, the Prophet Muḥammad (PBUH), for forty-two years, he was succeeded by the man he had chosen decades earlier to take over after him, his eldest son, Shaikh Shamduddīn Muḥammad Nahro al-Kasnazān. Less than two months later, the English translation of the biography was published at the end of August 2020.
I compiled the material of the biography from a variety of sources. I took the thinking and opinions of our Shaikh directly from him. I confined my sources in this case to his public sermons that I was fortunate enough to attend or obtain video or audio recordings of, his speeches and conversations in private sessions that he was generous enough to give me the opportunity to attend, and his published writings. When quoting from his sermons, I converted the wording from the Iraqi dialect to standard Arabic and edited them, carefully preserving the original meaning without any change.
I have taken the details of our Shaikh’s life, as well as the history of the Kasnazānī Shaikhs before him, from two main sources, in addition to him: first, his relatives and followers who accompanied him in the various stages of his life, before and after assuming the Shaikhdom; second, his sermons, conversations, and writings. I would like to particularly thank Shaikh Sāmān Maʿrūf, who is married to one of our Shaikh’s sisters and whose sister was married to our Shaikh; caliph Yāsīn Ṣūfī ʿAbd Allah, who accompanied our Shaikh closely and knew him since his childhood and was a dervish from the time of his father and predecessor, Shaikh ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Kasnazān. I am also greatly indebted to caliph ʿImād ʿAbd al-Ṣamad who, in addition to providing me with some of the material of the book, facilitated the collection of other material. My wife, Dr Shetha al-Dargazelli, contributed immensely valuable corrections and comments on drafts of the book.
I carefully examined the historical details that I did not get directly from the Shaikh. He instructed me to be particularly careful when examining accounts of supernatural feats of the Shaikhs of Ṭarīqa, to spot and discard false reports and to investigate and verify any inaccuracies in reports of real events. He asked me to check with him or with Shaikh Sāmān if need be. Many events are decades old, and human memory often forgets some details over time or even changes them inadvertently. Additionally, the narrators of some events did not witness them but conveyed what they had heard. I compiled and scrutinised these narratives with care, something that I was helped with by the multiplicity of sources. I did not include narratives where I could not feel confident in their authenticity and accuracy. At times, I could not verify certain details of a particular event, so I documented the details that I determined to be accurate and ignored the rest.
While listening to my interviewees talking about the history of our Shaikh during the compilation of the material for the book, the following majestic line of poetry would appear in my head now and then:
Never I sat to talk to people
but you were the subject of my speech with my conversants.
The martyr al-Hallāj here describes the complete engrossment with the love of Allah (mighty and sublime is He) that took over his mind, heart, and senses such that he could no longer talk about anyone other than his Beloved. Talking about the Shaikhs of Ṭarīqa and their lives is a form of remembering Allah. What distinguished them and made them the centre of attention is the life of piety and worship that every one of them led. In addition, they dedicated their lives to guiding those who seek nearness to Allah and urging and showing them how to be a source of good for themselves and others.
Nearness to Allah grants every Shaikh of Ṭarīqa great, special blessings that are manifested in countless supernatural wonders. These “karāmas”, as they are known, are the ink with which a large part of the Shaikh’s life is written. Karāmas play a major role in the Shaikh’s life, surrounding him even before becoming a Shaikh. Some karāmas point to him even before his birth, confirming his selection by Allah for that spiritual leadership. Accordingly, wonders permeated all stages of the life of Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān. It is only natural, then, that his biography is imbued with supernatural feats.
As there are countless karāmas and they continue to occur all the time, no book can compile more than a tiny number of them. I have only mentioned wonders that have explanatory functions in their respective contexts. The life of our Shaikh cannot be sufficiently covered without referring to the history, legacy, and karāmas of the Shaikhs of Ṭarīqa Kasnazāniyya who preceded him. I have, however, quoted only a small part of this blessed history, as required by the subjects and objectives of the book.
I wrote the biography in a unique way. It introduced the life of the honourable Shaikh in the context of explaining the Sufi method to get close to Allah, and it expounded Sufism in the course of narrating his life story. Said differently, the book explained Sufism through our Shaikh’s life and, at the same time, recounted his life events through an introduction to Sufism, which represents the spiritual side of Islam. Many who are interested in the life of the Shaikh would also be interested in an introduction to Sufi concepts and practices, in particular, if they are not familiar with Sufism. This integrated introduction to both the life of a Sufi Shaikh and his thought is possible because his life embodies his beliefs.
Some readers, however, would rather read the biography of our Shaikh and his Sufi thought separately so that they can concentrate on one of them at a time. I, therefore, decided to extract two middle-sized books from the large-volume biography: one focuses on the biography of the Shaikh and the second introduces Sufism according to Ṭarīqa ʿAliyya Qādiriyya Kasnazāniyya (Ṭarīqa Kasnazāniyya). I did my best to avoid any repetition between the two books other than the minimal amount that I considered necessary to appear in both books. To ensure the two books covered all the topics of the sourcebook, I worked on them at the same time. I also had to restructure and rewrite the source material. I have also taken this opportunity to add to both books additional materials that I did not include in the sourcebook.
I substantively abbreviated the two chapters on the Shaikh’s involvement in the Kurdish movement and the persecution of Ṭarīqa by the Iraqi regime in the 1990s. Details of various events in these chapters were necessary to cover in the original book to serve as a reference for historians, but much of this information is of little interest to those who are not specifically concerned with the details of these two periods. The two abbreviated chapters in this book document what is relevant from these two periods to the life of the Shaikh and Ṭarīqa.
I decided to write these two books in Arabic first and then translate them into English. The first book, Ḥayātun wa fanāʾun fī ḥubbi al-Nabī Muḥammad (PBUH): sīrat al-sayyid al-Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān, which focuses on the biography of the Shaikh, came out in November 2020. The second, which explains the Sufi path according to Ṭarīqa Kasnazāniyya, was published one month later, under the title al-Taṣawwuf fī al-Ṭarīqa al-ʿAliyya al-Qādiriyya al-Kasnazāniyya: manhajun taṭbiqiyyun lil-jānib al-ruḥī lil-Islām. The present volume is the English translation of the biography book.
.Louay Fatoohi 2004-2024. All rights reserved
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