[عربي] This is a summary of an article I’ve written in Arabic, in which I tried to investigate whether Mansour Al-Hallaj the famous Sufi, had a manic episode that caused his grandiose ideas. Mansour Al-Hallaj was born in Iran or in Iraq in the 9th century and he was recognized for his non-dualistic and metaphysic Sufi poetry. He is also one of the most famous Sufi figures in history.
Based on one historical account, it was mentioned that Hallaj was confusing the general audience and the authorities that later imprisoned him for his thoughts. It says that he used to appear like a classical religious person sometimes, then to pretend that he was a representation of God on other occasions, which gave me the impression that he might have been suffering from a manic episode that caused him to go into another phase of reality. But it doesn’t look like that, at least based on the other accounts from Baghdad’s History book[1], the book that covered a lot of stories about Al-Hallaj.
The first thing that made me think of more supportive evidence about the mania hypothesis is the details of the clothes that he used to wear, which shows two different types of clothes, the very venerable style, or the very simple and partly clothed style. Appearance is considered as one of the factors for the young mania rating scale (YRMS) for example, in addition to the grandiose ideas and other factors. However, it has been mentioned also that Al-Hallaj used to wear wool, as a kind of rough lifestyle of Islamic Sufism. So, his basic clothing could simply belong to that rather than to the manic episode symptoms.
He also did have other practices of the rough life, he used to sit for long hours under the sun in a mountain in Mecca for example. Also, in one of his poems, he says:
I want you; I want you not for the recompense, but I want you for your punishment
I tried all my desires, except my delicious lust with torture
This masochistic passion could add more explanation to the case of the pain and lifestyle in Al-Hallaj’s personality if some professional psychologist wanted to understand him.
The other aspect about Al-Hallaj is that he wasn’t only a devoted Sufi worshipper, he was rather a regional preacher that used to write letters to areas in Iran and beyond, and the critics towards him used to change gradually. Ahmed Ibn Atta’ described him a year before he becomes a superstar as: “served by the Jinn” which is an indirect accusation of practicing magic, and for being on the opposite side of pious. But a year later he changed his opinion to “A son of righteousness”. Al-Hallaj was also able to afford to travel around the continent visiting: India, Khorasan, Fars, Turkestan, Khuzestan, Basra, and others. He was able to broadcast his letter sufficiently to be known in these regions.
In addition to his financial ability, Al-Hallaj dedicated some time to learn magical tricks, but mainly in the style of providing food to people. Getting a fish from inside his house and claiming that he just went from Baghdad to the marshes in southern Iraq to get it within minutes; getting a piece of cucumber out of nowhere; or getting a levantese apple to a man in a season when there’re no apples, or doing the same with a rare type of sweet that he gave to his companions while in Mecca. One of his companions claims that he later went to all the sweets shops checking if any of them prepares that type of sweets, and they told him that he needs to travel for hundreds of kilometers to be able to find it. Al-Hallaj probably was a good chef.
One of the accusations against Al-Hallaj was that he is the delegate of the Fatimid Caliphate in the east (contemporary Iran and Iraq) and that they found letters proving this. The resources he had could only indicate that he had some form of strong financial support.
The non-dualism looks very clear in the letters and poetry of Al-Hallaj, either in describing his love for someone, or in his vague and sometimes bold referrals to his unity with God. Not as his son or as his special representation, but within the general Sufi framework, the unity of existence, he therefore and during one of the inquisitions sessions gave the Abbasid authorities a list of all those who share the same belief and say what he says, the list was nothing but names of the famous Sufi leaders in the region. It was correct, all those leaders could easily have many poets and sayings that match Al-Hallaj’s non-dualistic ideas.
In summary, Al-Hallaj didn’t seem to have had any special ideology that was different from the mainframe Sufiism in his time – which was already an era when the middle east was majorly inclined towards Sufiism – he also seemed to be influential in a way that cannot only be explained by his dedication to his ideology and passion, but rather to a good planning, good management of resources, and having the resources primarily. That almost debunks the idea that I thought of Al-Hallaj as a person with manic episodes that are accompanied by grandiose ideas.
After forming a multi-hundred or multi-thousand followers’ group in Baghdad, the suspicions from the authorities around him grew larger, he was arrested, moved between multiple prisons, and subjected to many inquisitions and forms of torture, and finally, he was executed in a slow torturous way, by whipping him 1000 times, cutting his arms and legs, slaying him, burning his body, and hanging his head there for some time.
It is very difficult to filter the conflicting accounts of his followers and all the Sufis from the other accounts of the traditional Islam narrators and the government-funded clerics and narrators. But neither of these accounts can deny the good financial status of Al-Hallaj, his version of Sufi unity of existence that doesn’t decline a lot from the common version, and that he was treated as a dangerous phenomenon that required a very severe intervention from the vizier himself.
The place where Al-Hallaj was executed remained a holy place for centuries after his death, and it is still a holy place where women light candles and send them in the river – in a totally non-Islamic ritual – where they are supposed to be devoted to Al Khidr. Al Khidr’s vows ritual is just a recent change to the identity of the place that is located on the western side of the Tigris River in Baghdad after being known for centuries as the shrine of Al-Hallaj.
Reference
[1] تاريخ بغداد، الخطيب البغدادي – Tarikh Baghdad – Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi