Rene Guenon

Rene Guenon (Abd al-Wahid Yahya) was a French-born philosopher and writer. He was mainly interested in the interface between metaphysics, spiritual symbols and cultural traditions. He embraced Islam in 1912 and was initiated into the Sufi tradition by a wandering Swedish Sufi Abd al-Hadi Aqueli (1869-1917), who was the first official representative of the Shadhili order of Sufism in western Europe.

Guenon believed that the core teachings of all religions were based on what he called Universal Truth. He was highly critical of Western society which, in his opinion, was disorganised and reckless. He assailed Western culture for its denial of a greater power who maintained and regulated the universe. He scorned what he called the “illusion of democracy” whereby the majority—which lacks sufficient wisdom and judgement—is vested with enormous powers. Guenon migrated to Cairo in 1930, married an Egyptian lady (after the death of his first wife) and lived there as a Sufi until his death in 1951. Guenon wrote a compendium of universal spiritual symbols, Fundamental Symbols: The Universal Language of Sacred Science, which was posthumously published in 1962.

Martin Lings returned to London in 1952 and enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies where he received a B.A. in Arabic studies and subsequently a doctorate on the Algerian Sufi saint, Shaykh Ahmad Al Alawi, whose ideas had a profound impact on him. In 1955 Lings joined the British Museum as Assistant Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books. He later shifted to the British Library where he was asked to take charge of Quranic manuscripts. Here he worked on his famous and classic book The Quranic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination, published in 1976. This book offers marvellous full-page reproductions of some of the monumental masterpieces of Quranic calligraphy executed in various calligraphic styles in various regions of the classical Islamic world in different periods. There are 114 colour plates in the volume, of which 75 are spread over two pages. The book includes 17 plates from Quranic manuscripts in the British Library; the remaining 97 have been chosen from the finest examples of Quranic calligraphy and illumination in the libraries and museums of Istanbul, Cairo, Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, Tunis, Kairouan, Dublin, San Lorenzo del Escorial, Paris and Manchester.

One of Lings’s important and popular books is Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (1983). Lings had an extraordinary gift for narrative and a rare ability to communicate his thoughts and ideas with flowing smoothness. The lucidity and elegance of his writing, as reflected in Muhammad, is admirable. The last paragraph of the book movingly describes the scene following the passing away of the Prophet.

Great was the sorrow in the City of Light, as Medina now is called. The Companions rebuked each other for weeping, but wept themselves. “Not for him do I weep,” said Umm Ayman, when questioned about her tears. “Know I not that he hath gone to that which is better for him than this world? But I weep for the tidings of Heaven which have been cut off from us. “It was indeed as if a great door had been closed. Yet they remembered what he had said: “What have I to do with this world? I and this world are a rider and a tree beneath which he teeth shelter. Then he goeth on his way, and leaveth it behind him.” He had said this that they, each one of them, might say it of themselves; and if the door had now closed, it would be open for the faithful at death. They still had in their ears the sound of his saying: “ I go before you, and I am your witness. Your tryst with me is at the Pool.” Having delivered his message in this world, he had gone to fill it in the Hereafter, where he would continue to be, for them and for others, but without the limitations of life on earth, the Key of Mercy, the Key of Paradise, the Spirit of Truth, the Happiness of God (p. 345).

Lings’s book Muhammad was awarded a prize by the government of Pakistan and nominated as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference held in Islamabad (Pakistan) in 1983. It has been translated in several languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Dutch, Malay, German, Tamil, Arabic, Sindhi and Sinhalese.

Martin Lings had a deep and abiding interest in Sufism. He not only wrote on Sufism but also drew sustenance from it in his personal life. The celebrated British Orientalist Arthur J. Arberry once wrote about Lings: “His erudition and saintliness recall the golden age of the medieval mystics.” He wrote a short, highly readable book What is Sufism (1975). He published his doctoral dissertation A Sufi Sant of the Twentieth Century: Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi in 1971. Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi (1869-1934), a charismatic Sufi saint of Algeria, was born in Mostaganem, Algeria in 1869. In 1894 he travelled to Morocco to meet Shaykh Muhammad al-Buzidi, an eminent Sufi of the Darqawi-Shadhili order. He became his disciple and remained with him until his death in 1909. He then returned to Mostaganem where he established his own order called Alawiyya. The Alawiyya order rapidly spread throughout Algeria as well as in other parts of North Africa as a result of his extensive travels, discourses and writings.

The celebrated British Orientalist Arthur J. Arberry once wrote about Lings: “His erudition and saintliness recall the golden age of the medieval mystics.

In the early decades of the 20th century, the Alawiyya order became highly popular among the North African Muslims settled in France. Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi himself travelled to France in 1926 and inaugurated the newly built Paris mosque in the presence of the French president Gaston Doumergue. His followers included some European intellectuals and artists, including Frithjof Schuon and Gustave-Henri Jossot. Schuon (1907-1998) was a Swiss-born philosopher, poet and artist who wrote more than 20 books on themes ranging from metaphysics, comparative religion and spirituality. He was greatly influenced by the ideas of Rene Guenon. He travelled to Algeria in 1932 where he met Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi and was greatly inspired by him. He met Guenon in Cairo in 1939.

Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi’s ideas had a profound impact on Muslims of North African descent in France who were being increasingly influenced by France’s secular culture. He sought to instil religious commitment and devotion in his followers and at the same time encouraged them to learn French, to send their children to French schools and to engage with French society. He also favoured the translation of the Quran into the French and Berber languages. Shaykh Al-Alawi’s piety and saintliness was widely acknowledged. Thus his personal French physician Marcel Carret, an atheist, once remarked, “What immediately struck me was his resemblance to the face which is generally used to represent Christ.”

Shaykh Ahmad Al-Alawi’s ideas had a profound impact on Muslims of North African descent in France who were being increasingly influenced by France’s secular culture. He sought to instil religious commitment and devotion in his followers and at the same time encouraged them to learn French, to send their children to French schools and to engage with French society.

Lings was not an armchair scholar who lived in an ivory tower. He was a keen participant in cultural, literary and communitarian activities. During his brief sojourn in Cairo, he used to organise every year Shakespeare’s plays, which attracted a fairly large number of students, writers and poets and members of the educated public. One of the students who used to be a part of the cast later became a film star. Lings’s passion for Shakespeare and his deep interest in the spiritual significance of his works led him to write a book The Secret of Shakespeare: His Greatest Plays Seen in the Light of Sacred Art.

Lings was closely associated with the World of Islam Festival held in London in May 1976. The Festival, in which 32 Muslim countries were involved, was a momentous event. More than 6000 objects and artefacts related to Islamic culture and art, collected from 250 public and private collections and museums from 30 countries, were put on display at the various exhibitions. The programmes included 162 public lectures on various aspects of Islamic civilization, delivered by distinguished scholars and experts from Europe, North America and the Islamic world. As part of the Festival, more than 140 Quranic manuscripts representing nearly every period and region of the Islamic world were displayed at the King’s Library at the British Museum. The exhibition was opened by the Rector of al-Azhar University, Cairo. Lings was closely associated with the organization of this exhibition. A little over a week before his death, he had addressed an audience of more than 3000 persons at the Wembley Conference Centre on the occasion of the Prophet’s Birthday.