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Founder of the Qadiriyya order; his full name is Muhyi al-Din Abu Muhammad Abd al-Qadir b. Abi Salih Musa Zangidost al-Gilani.
He was born in 470 (1077) in the village of Nayf, in the province of Gilan southwest of the Caspian Sea. His nisba is pronounced "al-Jili, al-Jilani" in Arabic, "Gili, Gilani" in Persian and Geylani in Turkish. His father Abu Salih Musa is known to have been a pious man, but little more is recorded of him. His mother, Umm al-Khayr Amat al-Jabbar Fatima, daughter of the well-known ascetic and Sufi Abu Abdullah al-Sawma'i, is herself held to have been among the women saints.
He lost his father in childhood and grew up with his mother under the care of his grandfather al-Sawma'i. At eighteen, with his mother's leave, he joined a caravan and went to Baghdad (1095), then the foremost centre of learning. There he studied hadith with scholars such as Abu Ghalib b. Baqillani, Ja'far al-Sarraj, Abu Bakr Susan and Abu Talib b. Yusuf; jurisprudence with jurists such as Abu Sa'd al-Mukharrimi, Abu Khattab and Qadi Abu Husayn; and literature with philologists such as Zakariyya al-Tabrizi. In a short time he acquired wide learning in the principles and branches of law and in the schools of thought.
In these years, during which he formed close friendships with the Sufis of Baghdad, he entered the Sufi path through Abu'l-Khayr Muhammad b. Muslim al-Dabbas (d. 525/1131); the sources report that he received the cloak of the order from al-Dabbas and became his son-in-law. In the madrasa at Bab al-Araj assigned to him by his teacher Abu Sa'd he taught hadith, exegesis, Qur'anic recitation, law and grammar, and began to preach; after a time he abandoned all of this and withdrew into seclusion.
According to the legend, at the end of a period of seclusion lasting some twenty-five years he vowed to eat nothing by his own hand unless another fed him; and although forty days passed and the cries "I am hungry, I am hungry" rose from within him, he held out with an extraordinary power of endurance.
When he first began to preach in 1127 he addressed only a few people. As his congregation steadily grew and the madrasa became too small, he moved his preaching assembly to a mosque at Bab al-Halba. It is related that 70,000 people came to Baghdad to hear the sermons he gave in the open air, and that those in the back rows heard his voice as easily as those in the front. Because he at once brought those he met under his influence he was also called Baz Allah (the falcon of God) and al-Baz al-ashhab (the falcon that does not lose its prey); according to al-Damiri this title was given him in the assembly of his shaykh al-Dabbas. The sources mention with one voice that in his sermons he promised his hearers salvation and paradise, that he spoke with enough certainty to give them a guarantee of it, and that his oratory was extremely effective.
His chain of transmission reaches Junayd of Baghdad through Abu Sa'd Mubarak al-Mukharrimi, Abu'l-Hasan al-Hakkari, Abu'l-Faraj al-Tarsusi, Abd al-Wahid al-Tamimi and Shibli. At the end of his period of seclusion he went on the pilgrimage with his son, and invested many of the Sufis he met at Mecca with the cloak. He died at Baghdad in 561 (1166).
His Circle of Influence — The Qadiriyya became one of the most widespread orders in the Muslim world. Its members are known in North Africa chiefly as sharif, shurafa, shorfa, and in Iraq, Syria and Anatolia as sayyid and Geylani. The Gilani sayyids of Baghdad and its region were at times compelled by the Mongol and Timurid invasions to leave Baghdad for Mosul and Iran, but later returned to Baghdad, where the tomb of their ancestor lies. He holds an important place in Turkish folk literature and folklore as well; the lines attributed to Yunus Emre, "Though you roam the world as a traveller, you will find no man like Abd al-Qadir", are among the examples.
His Poetry and Sufi Line — On going to Baghdad he left the Shafi'i school, to which he had belonged, for the Hanbali school, which he found better suited to his temperament, while continuing to issue legal opinions according to both schools to the end of his life. In his own time he became the imam of the Hanbalis, and for this was given the title Muhyi al-Din ('reviver of religion'). Saying "the best of the schools is the school of Imam Ahmad", he defended Ahmad b. Hanbal fervently in both practice and belief, and did not attempt to interpret the ambiguous verses figuratively. His attachment to the school is plain in all his works, and especially in al-Ghunya.
His Works — His best-known works are al-Ghunya li-talibi tariq al-haqq, which he states he wrote at the request of a disciple, and Futuh al-ghayb, compiled by his son Abd al-Razzaq from his addresses in his assemblies and divided into seventy-eight discourses. The most important part of al-Ghunya from the Sufi standpoint is its final section, "Adab al-murid". Futuh al-ghayb was commented upon by Ibn Taymiyya and by Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlawi. 🔴 The treatise Ghawthiyya (Khamriyya) ascribed to him — purporting to contain conversations between God and himself — is, in the source's explicit words, not his.
His Counsels and Teachings
The counsels below are read from the shaykh's own work: Futuh al-ghayb (from Muhtar Holland's English translation; the Arabic original is the edition of Muhammad Salim al-Bawwab). Since the work consists of seventy-eight discourses, references are given by discourse number, which is independent of any printing.
The three tasks of every believer — Three things inevitably demand the attention of every believer under all circumstances: a commandment to be obeyed, a prohibition to be respected, and a divine decree to be accepted with good grace. In even the most trivial situation at least one of the three is bound to apply; the believer must therefore keep his mind and feelings focused upon them. (First Discourse)
On good counsel — "Follow, without concocting innovations; obey, do not turn renegade; affirm the Unity of God, ascribing no partner to Him; entertain no doubts; profess your belief, without complaining; endure with patience, not getting upset; hold your ground, not turning to run; make your needs known, without venting frustration; wait and watch, never yielding to despair; behave like brothers, not like enemies; unite in obedience, instead of going your separate ways; feel love for one another, not mutual hate; make yourselves pure, free from the blemish and stain of sin." (Second Discourse) — A summary of this discourse is quoted in Turkish in the TDV article as well; the two sources corroborate one another.
The order in which a man turns for help — When the servant is tested with a trial, his first impulse is to cope with it by himself. If his own efforts get him nowhere he looks for help from other people — those in power, officials, men of influence and means, or physicians in the case of illness. If he still obtains no relief, he then resorts to his Lord through supplication, entreaty and praise. "As long as he finds it possible to manage on his own, he will not turn to other people; and while human help is available he will not turn to the Creator." (Third Discourse)
Dying by degrees — "When you die to the created world, you will be told: Allah have mercy on you — may He now let you die to passionate desire. When you die to your desire: Allah have mercy on you — may He now let you die to your willing and wishing. When you die to your will: Allah have mercy on you — may He now restore you to a life beyond which there is no death." (Fourth Discourse)
How to regard this world — When you see this world with its ornaments and vanities, its deceptions and snares, you must behave as one who averts his gaze from an indecent sight and holds his nose against a foul smell: so must you turn your gaze from the world's charms. (Fifth Discourse)
Miracles
What follows is the source's own framing on the question of marvels; the atlas does not compile reports.
The source records that many marvels were narrated of Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani already in his lifetime, and that his person became thoroughly enveloped in hagiographic narrative — so much so, it states, that his real identity lost its importance and was forgotten. Because his disposing power and marvels were believed to continue after his death, the cry his disciples raise in distress, "Help, O Abd al-Qadir!", became a tradition of the order. The atlas does not gather the reports one by one; it records this framing together with the criticisms set out in the section below. (Source: TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, ABDÜLKĀDİR-i GEYLÂNÎ, vol. 1, pp. 234-239.)
Differing Scholarly Views
An objection to his genealogy — The sources trace his descent to Ali: Abd al-Qadir b. Musa b. Abdullah b. Yahya b. Muhammad b. Musa al-Jawn b. Abdullah al-Kamil b. Hasan al-Muthanna b. Hasan b. Ali. Against this, pointing to such matters as his father's being known by the title "Zangi-dost" and his own being known in Baghdad as a'jami (non-Arab), it has also been argued that this descent from Hasan was constructed later. The atlas takes no side.
Serious criticisms of the hagiographic tradition — The source records that the tradition of narrative about al-Gilani was criticised from an early date, and names the critics: Ibn al-Jawzi, who wrote a work entitled Durar al-jawahir, criticised him seriously. Ibn Kathir says that most of what is said about him is the product of imagination, and that al-Ghunya and Futuh al-ghayb contain fabricated hadiths. Ibn Rajab states that Bahjat al-asrar and similar hagiographies are full of superstition and absurdity and cannot belong to Abd al-Qadir; al-Dhahabi concurs. Rashid Rida says that the Ghawthiyya, a forged work, was ascribed to him by his admirers, and that Indians in particular attribute sanctity to him and venerate him almost as an object of worship. It is also recorded that al-Sam'ani said, "I listened to his discourse and understood nothing"; the source attributes this to al-Sam'ani's being a stranger to the Sufi life.
The atlas does not conceal these criticisms. Reverence for a person does not require hiding the critical literature about him; the principle of transparency requires the contrary. The reader forms a judgement having seen both the hagiographic tradition and the objections raised against it.
A work that is not his — The treatise Ghawthiyya (Khamriyya) ascribed to him is, in the source's explicit words, not his.
Sources
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) — TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · vol. 1, pp. 234-239, entry “ABDÜLKĀDİR-i GEYLÂNΔ
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) — Abdülkādir-i Geylânî · p. 78 söylev, entry “Fütûhu'l-gayb”
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