شعرية الخطاب الصوفي : قراءة سيميائية صوفية في طواسين الحلاج

Abstract EN

This reading of all-Hallaj's narrative texts known as the Tawasin attempts to identify the sources of these texts' poeticalness and the rich variety of interpretations to which such texts give rise.

Particular attention is given to the piece entitled Tasin al-Nuqtah, which exemplifies the Muslim mystical principle of direct experiential knowledge, and which takes the symbol of the "point" as a means of exploring the intimate bond between God and the creation and of rendering this intimate bond more comprehensible to human reason.

It is this principle of direct experiential knowledge which led later to the crystallization of the related principles of wahdat al-shuhud (the oneness of witness) and wahdat al-wujud (the oneness of existence) in Muslim mystical thought.

This same mystic experience, or what is termed futuwwat al-hal (the power of the spiritual state), constitutes the source of the poeticalness that inheres in both the literal and metaphorical expressions—or what is termed futuwwat al-qal (force of expression)—in the texts of the Tawasin.

For to the extent that experience departs from the familiar by virtue of its profundity, richness and intimacy, so also will its meanings and the literal and metaphorical expressions by means of which these meanings are conveyed.

This study concludes that the fundamental element which generates the Tawasin's poetic expansiveness is, generally speaking, a structure marked by succinctness of expression and density of meaning.

This structure manifests itself in the following five ways: (1) Through the unconventional patterns of expression which al-Hallaj employs in the formation of literal and metaphorical expressions in an attempt to say the unsayable and to capture the illusive meanings associated with the direct experiential knowledge of the Muslim mystic.

(2) Through the creation of a mystic language charged with significations which are based on a spiritual and contextual source of authority specific to al-Hallaj—the language that came to serve as the basis for Muslim mystical terminology.

(3) Through the intertextuality that links the Tawasin with both verses from the Holy Qur'an and mystically significant situations from the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Through such intertextual links, the Tawasin offers a rereading of texts from the Qur'an and the life of the Prophet based on mystical experience of the Divine.

(4) Through a style of symbolic expression mediated by iconic signs that serve powerfully to encapsulate the meanings relating to direct experiential knowledge.

Indeed, such iconic signs might be said to be a subtext of Tasin al-Nuqtah.

(5) Through the rhythmic structure generated by the "bundles of signs" which lay scattered over the surface of the text, and which help to reveal its hidden meanings.