The Imaginal World (Alam al-Mithal) in the Philosophy of Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi

The Imaginal World (Alam al-Mithal) in the

Philosophy of Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi

Fuad.S.Naeem

Whenever a thorough and systematic history of Islamic philosophy as well of the intellectual sciences (al-ulum al-aqliyyah) in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent will be 'written, Qutbal-Din Ahmed Ibn Abdul Rahim better known as Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi (1703 - 1762) will undoubtedly stand as the best known intellectual figure from the Indian heritage of Islamic philosophy. He is also perhaps the only Indian Muslim intellectual figure, along with Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (D 1624), well known in the West. Even then, he is known in the West and among modernized Muslims primarily as a religious "reformer" and socio-political figure and not as a hakim, philosopher and Sufi, which he principally was. It is difficult to describe in a few words the great significance of Shah Wali Allah for the South Asian Islamic tradition in all its facets in the transmitted religious sciences as well as theology, philosophy and sufism. It might suffice to say that almost every important religious and intellectual school or figure of the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent that came after him was significantly influenced by him. He was also one of the very few Indian Muslims whose influence spread to the rest of the Muslim world, including the Arab world and the ottoman world.

 

The fact that Shah Wali Allah was primarily a metaphysician and mystic is born out amply by his written output. Among his more metaphysical and philosophical works, most of which also treat the subject of this study, the imaginal world, are:

 

1. AI~Khayr al-Kathir (Abundant Blessings): a metaphysical treatise in Arabic often chapters dealing with such questions as the nature and reality of Being, the Names of God, the relationship between man and God, knowledge of God, the nature and characteristics of prophecy and sanctity.

 

2. Sata'at (Radiance): a short but very important treatise in Persian which outlines the gradation of Being in Shah Wali Allah's metaphysics.

 

3. Lama’at (Lightning Flashes): A small treatise in Arabic which is Shah Wali Allah's best-known work on philosophy. It extensively deals with the question of Being (wujud). It also addresses various other philosophical and cosmological questions such as the creation of the world, the nature of the cosmos, the angels, and the prophets.

 

4. Tafhimat-i-Illahiyyah (Divine Instructions): one of Shah Wali Allah's most important metaphysical and philosophical work. It consists of articles and letters written in both Arabic and Persian" at different times dealing with many important metaphysical and philosophical questions. It contains Shah Wali Allah's celebrated reconciliation of an issue that had created great controversy in the Indian Subcontinent, that of opposition between wahdat al-wajud (Unity of Being) of the school of Ibn al-Arabi and wahdat al-shuhud (Unity of Consciousness) of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi.

 

5. Hujjat Allah al-Balighah (The Conclusive Argument from God): this is often called the magnum opus of Shah Wall Allah and certainly deserves the title as far as the integration of the transmitted (naqli) sciences with the intellectual (aqli) sciences is concerned.

 

Many of the above-mentioned works as well as a few others exist in English translation. Unfortunately, these translations mostly made in the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent, are not always up to scholarly standards and even if the philosophical understanding of the translator is sound, as in the case of G.N. Jalbani, the main translator of Wali Allah's works into English, the precise rendering of a philosophical work of the caliber of Shah' Wali Allah's work requires a deep understanding of both Islamic and Western philosophy as deep knowledge of philosophical terminology in both the original language, Arabic or Persian and English.

 

Shah Wali Allah's many works bear the mark of his wide knowledge and depending on the capacity from which he was speaking and the nature of the audience, he elaborates his philosophical and doctrinal ideas differently. In certain of his works, he writes as a metaphysician in the line of Mulla Sadra and the school of Ibn al-Arabi ; at other times he writes as a Sufi or a theologian or a Muhaddith (scholar of Hadith). Hence, his treatment of the Alam al-mithal is also undertaken from different angles and points of view in different works. In addition, he treats almost every aspect of the Islamic tradition, both of the transmitted sciences (al-ulum al-naqliyyah) and the intellectual sciences (al-ulum al-aqliyyah) and within the latter, he deals extensively with everything from ontology to cosmology to angelology to eschatology.

 

The idea of the Alam al-mithal has a long and rich history in Islam before Shah Wali Allah whose treatment of this world is the object of this study. Its origin lies in the Qur'an and especially in the Hadith, as Shah Wali Allah demonstrates, but it was alluded to in its developed form by Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (RA) and fully elaborated for the first time and given the title of Alam al mithal by Shaykh al-lshraq Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash al-Suharwardi (d. 587/1191). Suharwardi discussed the imaginal world only in terms of the microcosm. Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-' Arabi (d. 1240) fully expanded and elaborated on the doctrine of the imaginal world, speaking of both a microcosmic and macrocosmic imaginal world. Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi better known as Mulla Sadra (d. 1050/1640) further developed this theme and also fully applied the doctrine of the imaginal world to Islamic eschatology. Shah Wali Allah was the inheritor both of Ibn al-Arabi and Mulla Sadra and integrated the philosophy of the latter into the Sunni context. Shah Wali Allah's exposition of the Alam al-mithal is, therefore, indebted especially to both these figures.

 

THE IMAGINAL WORLD IN THE METAPHYSICS OF SHAH WALI ALLAH

 

Shah Wali Allah's teachings of the doctrine of the imaginal world (Alam al-mithal) are scattered throughout his works.

 

As mentioned, it plays a significant role in many branches of Shah Wali Allah's teachings, especially his metaphysics. In all these domains it serves as the faculty and realm through which the corporeal and incorporeal, the material and the spiritual are joined and in contact with one another. For these pairs are opposite and without an intermediary, remain opposed to one another. In lieu of this, the Alam al-mithal serves as an isthmus (barzakh) between the two. As Shah Wali Allah writes: “The Alam al-mithal is an intermediate space (barzakh) between the empirical and divine world.” Shah Wali Allah's whole vision of the nature of existence is permeated with the idea of the imaginal world, for the two topics that all his writings are based upon are God and man, and therefore, the relation between the two. In both God's movement towards man and man's return to God, Alam al-mithal has an important role to play as both a means of manifestation and a means for the final becoming of man.

 

The Alam al-mithal, then, is a world, where spiritual realities assume bodily form before they are manifested on, or "descend to earth. The Alam al-mithal, has an eminent role to play in the cycle of manifestation. It is the very power by which the spiritual and incorporeal is able to be determined and manifested as the material and the corporeal. And it is the link between the supranormal worlds and the worlds of form. In Shah Wali Allah's cosmology following peripatetic lines, the macrocosm is called the Universal soul (al-nafs al-kulliyah).

 

Furthermore, complementing this vision of the creative imagination of the Universal soul (nafs kulliyah) is its direct connection with the Divine Throne. It is the Divine Throne where all that will be manifested in the phenomenal world is first determined and after that, descends to the nafs kulliyah and is shaped in an imaginal form, and then is manifested phenomenally in the world. In this way, Shah Wali Allah, being a religious scholar and theologian as well, preserves the fundamental Islamic vision of everything proceeding from and depending upon God at all times as well as the hierarchy of Being that accompanies this vision. He also says, "the Alam-al-mithal is an extensive plane in which all the Attributes of God, mentioned in the Holy Books, assume an exemplary representation (tamaththul)". This elegantly summarizes all about the function of the Alam al-mithal. The Names and Attributes of God, being relations between the world and God, are what bring the world into being.

 

This brings out two important elements of the imaginal realm in Shah Wali Allah. One, it describes the nature of the Alam al-mithal which is not material yet shapes and colours exist in it. Two, it is the place from where destiny is figured before it arrives at the level of the macrocosm and microcosm. Shah Wali Allah further clarifies the nature of the Alam al-mithal in a passage from Hujjat Allah al-Balighah where he attempts to give a broad definition of the imaginal world that would be intelligible even to the theologians and religious scholars:" Be informed that many traditions of the Prophet indicate that a non-elemental world exists in which abstract meanings are represented by quasi-bodily forms corresponding to them in quality." He also states of its nature that "the World of prefiguration Alam al-mithal) is made of a material of extreme refinement....

 

As far as the role of the Alam al-mithal in the Divine decreeing of the destiny is concerned, it has been alluded to in the idea that all that is made manifest in the corporeal world-first manifests itself in the imaginal world. Shah Wall Allah has a very elaborate and complex doctrine concerning the Decrees of God and human destiny which is closely tied to his extensive angelology, for it is the angel who are directly involved in the manifesting of the destinies of human individuals and communities. There is a mutual interplay between God and man passing through the angels and the imaginal realm in the sense that prayer, good intentions and actions, rise up to God from man, while grace (tawfiq), blessings, help, or wrath, punishment, and affliction descend from God to man. In this constant interaction, the traffic is not one-way, so to speak, and Shah Wali Allah greatly elaborates this mystery of Divine grace and human endeavour, which combine to shape the destiny of man.

Much more can be said about the role that the imaginal world plays in the metaphysics of Shah Wali Allah and especially in the relation between God and man, including the role it plays in the lives of prophets, in Divine theophanies (tajalliyat) on earth, in visions, dreams, and miracles, in the world of the angels and its relations with that of man.

 

ESCHATOLOGY

The eschatology of Shah Wali Allah is one of the crowning achievements of his work. In it, he is able to completely synthesize the Qur'anic doctrines of the life after death and the final becoming of man with the traditional philosophy and theosophy (hikmah). His eschatological teachings are some of the richest and most elaborate on the subject in the annals of Islamic literature. Their richness comes from the fact that they incorporate the whole of the Qur'anic and Prophetic teachings on life hereafter with the doctrines developed in the long Islamic intellectual tradition, which includes theoretical Sufism (irfan), philosophy, theosophy (hikmah), and kalam.

 

The Alam al-mithal has a very important role to play in Wali Allah's eschatology. As the barzakh between the Divine and the human, between the earthly and the celestial, the imaginal world has a prominent place, as mentioned, in both the descent of man from God to the world and his ascent from the world to God. If the metaphysical doctrine of Shah Wali Allah mainly concerned the descent, his eschatological writings are mainly concerned with the ascent and return of man to his Origin.

 

Shah Wali Allah beautifully summarise the cyclical doctrine of man. Man is in his origin a pure intellect and then descends to the imaginal world, from whence he comes to this lower world. After a short stay here, he ascends again to the imaginal world and then ascends further to the intelligible world and is once again who he was in the beginning, a pure intellect. In both his descent and his ascent, man passes through the imaginal realm. It is to the second of these -- the return of man to his Origin-- that Shah Wali Allah turns right.

 

Shah Wali Allah states that there are three stages after man's death: one, the stage of the grave; two, the Day of Gathering (Hashr); three, Paradise. Shah Wali Allah expounds in detail on the first two stages, but refuses to say anything substantial about the third stage, stating that it is better to remain silent about its mysteries. So his doctrines mainly concern the first two stages, both of which are found in the descriptions of the afterlife in the Qur'an and Hadith, and both are situated in the Alam al-mithal according to Shah Wali Allah. It might be asked why the third stage does not mention Hell, usually thought of as the counterpart of Paradise. The answer to this, Shah Wali Allah gives, by saying that, contrary to popular belief, Hell as well as the Gates of Paradise, are located on the level of Hashr, and he also states that there will come a time when every last person will be taken out of Hell and brought into paradise.

 

No discussion of Shah Wali Allah's exposition of the imaginal world in his writings would be complete without mentioning his integration of theosophical, Sufi, and philosophical terms, including the idea of the imaginal world, into the corpus of the religious sciences. Shah Wali Allah was a renowned Muhaddis, as well as trained in Tafsir, Fiqh, and other religious sciences. He was also very well-versed in Kalam. In almost every topic he discusses, the notion of Alam~al-mithal is present in the discussion. The reason for this is that this intermediary world is what connects the Divine to the human and therefore, religion, which descends from the Divine to the human, and through man ascends to the Divine, cannot be explained without recourse to the intermediary world. Whenever the Divine descends or man ascends, the Alam al-mithal must be passed through.