it was simply an organized flux of religious energy sweeping around Islamic
society on the loose organizational pathways of popular respect for religious
piety, plus a politically generated distrust of the official expressions of religious
ritual. How this vague religious experience was interpreted depended on the
structures that divided the intellectual world at any particular time. Mystical
experience, trans-intellectual though it may be, is always interpreted in terms
of ideas, and these are produced by the historical networks of the intellectual
community.
The radical al-Hallaj epitomizes a particular interpretation of Sufi mysti-
cism (Massignon, 1982). It is a philosophical vision of the world capped by a
divine reality beyond words and concepts; compared to this the world itself is
unreal, and the individual experiencing this vision loses all sense of duality and
becomes absorbed into the divine light and power. In 922 the outraged authori-
ties responded to al-Hallaj’s claims with ritual vehemence, mutilating, tortur-
ing, crucifying, and burning his body, while from his cross al-Hallaj ecstatically
called to the Baghdad crowd: “I am the truth!” For all the monstrousness of
this drama, it is a product of the social structure of the intellectual field.
Al-Hallaj did not depart from Islamic society into the periphery, experiencing
his mystic union in remote solitude; he challenged Islamic religious power in
its capital. His was not an inspired idiosyncracy; he was a direct pupil of the
lineages of the most important Sufis. In Figure 8.1 we see the Sufi networks,
which had been building up for five generations, brought together in al-Hallaj.
And he was an intellectual cosmopolitan, with connections to all the important
factions of his day. Even his doctrine of extreme person-centered pantheism
was itself a version of Neoplatonism, just then emerging as the dominant
position among the falasifa. Al-Hallaj’s extraordinary self-confidence, deliber-
ately provoking martyrdom, was a boiling-over of emotional energy at a time
when the intellectual community of Islam was maximally focused.
Realignment of Factions in the 900s
The early 900s were a time when all the structural tendencies of intellectual
life came to a head. In Figures 8.1 and 8.2 we notice in this generation the first
two really dominant figures in Islamic philosophy: al-Farabi and al-AshÀari;
Saadia, the first major Jewish philosopher;^11 plus a concentration of notable
secondary figures, including Abu Bakhr al-Razi (Rhazes),^12 the most important
secular and anti-religious philosopher; the Sufi extremist al-Hallaj; plus notable
logicians (Matta), developers of rational theology (al-Maturidi), and the last
creative MuÀtazilite (Abu Hashim). This was also the generation in which
occurred a crucial event for Islamic theological politics: the long-standing
Imamite pretenders to the caliphate withdrew from active political opposition
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^407