Chapter (13) Worshipping and Qiyām al-layl

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Sheikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān during prayer, possibly in Sulaymaniyah, (possibly 2001/2005).

Let’s say that there are only five hours between the time you go to bed and the dawn prayer. Give yourself three or four hours and give one hour to Allah, to your grave, to your Ṭarīqa. Wake up, perform ablution, and perform a few prostrations. Focus on Allah and start your worship, dhikrs, and wirds until the muezzin calls for the prayer. Perform the Sunna two prostrations before the dawn prayer. In the eyes of Allah, these two prostrations, as the Messenger said, are “better than this world and all it contains”. These two prostrations are Sunna of the Messenger before the dawn prayer. Then, perform the prayer of dawn and complete your wirds. Then sleep a little before waking up to go to work. Do your work until the afternoon prayer is called for, so you perform the prayer, and so on. Night worship is a necessary duty for the seeker. The seeker who does not perform night worship does attain those results, “Arise [to pray] the night, except for a little” (al-Muzzammil 79:2), “And in a part of the night, pray with it (the Qur’an) as additional worship for you that your Lord may raise you to a praised station” (al-ʾIsrāʾ 17:79).

Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān (Sermon, 9 September 2013)

Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad loved performing dhikr and prayers and worshipping in general. He would urge dervishes to worship and would try to bring worshipping closer to their hearts. He gave students permission to prioritise their studies over dhikrs during exam times and compensate for what they missed later. Yet he insisted that the obligatory prayers must be upheld all the time. He would reiterate Prophetic ḥadīths about the importance of prayers and them being the cornerstone of religion.[1]

He never stopped praying, not even for a single day. When he was bedridden by illness, he would perform whatever was possible of the prayer movements. When body movements were not possible—for instance, because his body was wired up to medical devices—he would emulate the prayer movements with his head.

Our Shaikh used to be amazed by how little Shaikh ʿAbd al-Karīm used to sleep, but after succeeding him to the Shaikhdom, the Shaikhs instructed him not to sleep before reading the dawn prayers and his dhikrs and the sun had risen. He recounted that in the early days, he once felt sleepy while sitting on his chair waiting for the sun to rise. His neck started to gradually dangle until his chin touched his chest. At this point, he saw Shaikhs Ḥusayn and ʿAbd al-Karīm on his right and left, respectively, each strongly shaking one of his arms and saying, “What are you doing?” It felt as if he had committed a serious fault, so he woke up in a panic. He said that he was not asleep when this happened but was only feeling sleepy.

The Shaikh used to urge dervishes to compete in performing qiyām al-layl (night worships)[2] and would describe for them its beauty:

There is something that is critical for the seeker who would like to reach high ranks in spiritual matters, which is qiyām al-layl, “And in a part of the night, pray with it as additional worship for you that you Lord may raise you to a praised station” (al-Isrāʾ 17:79). Look how you should sacrifice, O seeker! How beautiful it is when you worship in the night and there is no one between you and your Lord. You repent and ask for forgiveness. You perform ablution and prostrate. To whom? For al-Raḥmān! You prostrate to your creator. You prostrate to the one in whose hand are all matters of this world and the hereafter. You prostrate to this creator who created you. He created everything and counted it. You prostrate to Him, “So prostrate and draw near” (al-ʾAlaq 96:19). How beautiful it is when you prostrate, draw near to Allah. Ask in your heart, in your prostration, “seek Me and you will find Me”.[3]

As for the Shaikh himself, he performed qiyām al-layl every day, even when he was over eighty. He would demand of himself the kind of worship that people are rarely capable of. After leaving his public assembly, usually between midnight and 1 a.m., he would go to his private room to get some sleep. He would wake up around 2:30 a.m. and start preparing for qiyām al-layl. After performing ablution, he would get changed, comb his hair, and wear perfume, as if he were expecting a very important guest. He would explain this by saying that a person must be in the most beautiful condition when preparing to meet Allah. His personal assistant would then provide him with a few bottles of water and then leave him alone on the prayer mat, facing the qibla, to start his worship and dhikrs. After having a kidney transplant in 2010, he could not sit on the prayer mat so he would worship while sitting on a chair.

Our Shaikh would continue with his dhikrs until the call of the dawn prayer. After performing this prayer, he would go back to his dhikrs and continue worship until seven-thirty or eight o’clock, that is, after sunrise. During this daily seclusion, he would not speak to anyone nor would anyone speak to him at all. He used to read his dhikrs in a low voice. ʿῙsā al-Mazrūʿī, who was the Shaikh’s personal assistant from 2004 until his death, said that during his qiyām al-layl and performing dhikr, an augustness would show on the Shaikh such that even he would feel a sense of awe when looking at our Shaikh’s face.

When going to bed for some sleep after finishing his worship, the Shaikh would look exhausted, as if he had been doing hard physical work for long hours. ʿῙsā said that even when our Shaikh was asleep, his sleep was not deep, as he used to hear him asking for madad from the Shaikhs and remembering Allah every now and then. After sleeping for two to three hours, he would wake up to start his worship and daily duties in managing the affairs of Ṭarīqa. In the later stages of his life, his health condition and the medications he had to take limited what he could do.

Our Shaikh would let go of his beads only to sleep or perform ablution. Whether sitting alone to worship, speaking to people about Islam, receiving visitors, or doing anything else, his beads would always be in his hand, moving with the movement of his tongue and heart in remembering Allah. When he ate, he would put the beads around his neck, which he would also do at times when going to the markets. If his hands were kept busy by something that forced him to put the beads aside, he would pick them up as soon as possible. When talking about dhikr, he would at times mention a story involving Shaikh Junayd al-Baghdādī. Shaikh Junayd was once asked, “Why do you still carry the beads even though you have arrived at this honourable position?” He replied, “This is the way through which I arrived at my Lord, so I would not depart it”.[4]

Following in the steps of all Kasnazānī Shaikhs, Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad would join dervishes in performing Wird al-ʿAṣr and the dhikr circle. However, since Shaikhdom is a unique and special spiritual rank, a Shaikh has dhikrs that are particular to him that would differ from those of the disciples.

He had special wirds that he would read after the dawn prayer until sunrise, walking while reading them, sometimes from his bedroom to an adjacent yard if available, or simply to the bedroom’s entrance, even if it was a short distance. It seems that walking while reciting these particular dhikrs was one of their requirements. The Qur’an tells us that dhikr may be performed in any posture and position, as in this description of worshippers, “Who remember Allah while standing, sitting, and lying on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth” (Āl ʿImrān 191).

Sheikh Sheikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān during prayer, in Sulaymaniyah (first half of the first decade of this century).

Another special worship the Shaikh carried out early in his Shaikhdom, when he was living in Kirkuk, was to pray four prostrations one hour before the call to the noon prayer. The timing was so precise that he would stand on the prayer rug a minute or two before the time for this prayer, looking at his watch until it was exactly one hour before the noon prayer, at which point he would begin praying. Whenever there was someone in his assembly that did not know of this daily practice, he would inform them before the prayer that the time for the noon prayer had not yet arrived, so that they would not be confused.

He had wirds where he would not speak to anyone except by gesture when reading them. At times, he performed such dhikrs after the sunset prayer until the time of the night prayer. When a person did not understand his gesturing, he waited until he finished that dhikr, and then spoke to them about what he wanted. Shaikh ʿAbd al-Karīm would also devote himself to worship after the sunset prayer. His personal assistant would leave him alone and return only when he neared the end of his wirds.

Shaikh Sāmān, who is married to the Shaikh’s sister and whose sister was married to the Shaikh, sometimes had to sleep in the Shaikh’s bedroom in his house in Karbchna because there was no space in other rooms. He relates that our Master would often read the Qur’anic chapter of Yāsīn when he went to bed. One astonishing thing he noticed was that sometimes our Shaikh would doze off while reading Yāsīn, but when woke up, he would go back to completing the chapter from the verse he had been reading before he fell asleep!

The following special spiritual experience demonstrates how remembering Allah was fused with our Master inwardly and outwardly. Before having a kidney transplant in 2010 in the USA, the Ṭarīqa’s Shaikhs told him that they had already performed the surgery in their spiritual hospital, so the operation in the hospital of this world would be successful. After waking up from the anaesthesia, the Shaikh found himself outwardly reading the last two verses of the chapter of al-Tawba, “There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves. Grievous to him is what you suffer; [he is] concerned over you and to the believers is kind and merciful. If they turn away [O Muḥammad], say: ‘Sufficient for me is Allah; there is no deity except Him. On Him I have relied, and He is the Lord of the Great Throne’” (al-Tawba 9:128-129), while he found himself inwardly reading the two verses of the Prophet Jonah’s supplication and Allah’s answer, “‘There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers.’ We responded to him and saved him from distress. And thus do We save the believers” (al-Ᾱnbiyāʾ 21:87-88). The Prophet Jonah called out this supplication when he was in the whale’s belly, while our Shaikh was inwardly reading these two verses while he was under the effects of anaesthesia. There seemed to be an element of similarity in the Prophet Jonah’s being in the whale’s depths, temporarily isolating him and his senses from his natural surroundings, and our Shaikh’s being anaesthetised, temporarily isolating his external existence from the world.

[1] Al-Tirmidhī, Al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, VI, no. 3788, p. 125.

[2] Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān, sermon, 22 December 2005.

[3] Shaikh Muḥammad al-Muḥammad al-Kasnazān, sermon, 3 October 2013.

[4] Al-Qushayrī, Al-Risāla al-qushayriyya, 80-81.

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