The Aesthetics of Fanā’ in al-Niffarī’s Kitāb al-Mawāqif

Abstract

A central concept within the history of Sufism is fanā’, which names the annihilation of the self in proximity to the divine. To speak from a condition of annihilation is to speak from the perspective of a kind of non-perspective, which is a theological paradox that the history of Sufism has found many creative ways of engaging. We see one such  engagement in ‘Abd al-Jabbār Ibn al-Hasan al-Niffarī Book of Standings—the Kitāb al-Mawāqif—of the mid-tenth century. The Kitāb al-Mawāqif resembles in some ways the ecstatic sayings, or shatahāt, but distinguishes itself insofar as it raises the question of fanā’ specifically in terms of writing rather than speaking. In essence, the text asks and creatively answers what it might entail for a person to write from the condition of fanā’. In what follows, I consider the reports of the scene of the writing of the Kitāb al-Mawāqif as they have been passed down to us in conjunction with the text itself. I will make the argument that we misread the Kitāb al-Mawāqif if we do not acknowledge the role this scene has to play in establishing the meaning and the significance of the text. I then provide a close analysis of sections of Standing 44 [Mawqif 44] in terms of the textual effects evidenced there—textual effects that are likewise deep reflections on the unique difficulty of writing and expressing fanā’.