The Han Kitab Authors 131
After its initial publication, the Mirsad became popular from In-
dia to the Middle East. Daya’s work provides a systematic and
elaborate description of the key concepts of Sufism and Islam as well
as a Sufi exegesis of the Qur’an. It also includes important informa-
tion about the Islamic world of his time and a polemic against the
Hellenizing tendencies of Islamic philosophers. The main purpose
of the book, however, is to guide the Sufi practitioner through the
path to God and back. Hence the title “Daya” (wetnurse) attached
to the author, implying that the person who takes the path is like a
newborn infant sustained only by maternal milk.^32
Like many other Sufi texts, the Mirsad was written in reaction
to a disaster. Born in 1177 in the Persian city of Ray, Daya wit-
nessed the sacking of this city by the Mongols and spent thirty-five
years of his life fleeing them. The Mirsad was written while the au-
thor was in hiding. Daya died in Baghdad in 1256 , two years before
that city was taken by the Mongol armies. He described the cir-
cumstances under which he wrote the Mirsad in a long introduc-
tion to the work, also translated into Chinese by Wu. The book
was translated into Chinese shortly after the Manchu invasion of
China, but if Wu himself saw a parallel between the two periods of
turmoil, he did not mention it in his preface to the translation.
The Mirsad was probably the most popular text in the Chinese
Muslim educational network and among its constituency. Every
subsequent author, translator, and editor made reference to it. Per-
haps the best testimony to its centrality is the apocryphal story
told by Zhao regarding the “miraculous” circumstances under
which it was “discovered” by Feng Bo’an in Yunnan, hidden be-
—————
Persian the word murshed (guide) is used mostly in a religious context and usually
refers to a Sufi master of the highest rank.
32. See Algar, The Path of God’s Bondmen, pp. 8 , 222 : “Just as the infant drinks
milk at the breast of its mother or wetnurse, receiving from them the sustenance
without which it would perish, so too the infant of spirit drinks the milk of the
Path and of the Truth from the nipple of the mother of prophethood or the wet-
nurse of sainthood, receiving from the prophet or the Shaykh—who stands in
place of the prophet—that sustenance without which it would perish.” Or in Wu’s
translation: 即如乳子從母的乳上吃或從乳母的乳上吃漸漸的調養以致無傷此命
的乳子也須從聖從生母乳中吃或從道長乳母的乳中吃憑聖教道至道的乳漸漸調
理也無傷了( 8. 3 a).