Early Sufi approaches to tawba: From the Qur'an to Abu T&dotbelow;alib al-Makki

Despite the central place of tawba in Islamic faith and practice, tawba has to date been the subject of very little serious academic research. The purpose of this study is to fill something of this scholarly lacuna by examining early Sufi approaches to this concept with a particular focus on the period that spans the 8th to the 10th centuries. The thesis is divided into two parts. It begins with an elaborate semantic analysis of tawba through a survey of the most important classical lexicons of Arabic, the aim of which is to problematize our common understanding of tawba as "repentance." While repentance, it is argued, serves as a viable translation of the Arabic term in many contexts, it fails to capture the defining features of tawba, and therefore limits and even occasionally obscures our understanding of the unique nature of the dialectical relationship that characterizes God and the human being in Islam. The study then proceeds to examine tawba in the Qur'an through an internal semantic analysis of the text by employing a methodology utilized by Izutsu in his own key studies of the Qur'an. The purpose of defining the conceptual boundaries of tawba in the Qur'an is to allow us to retrace the scriptural origins of many early Sufi notions of tawba and demonstrate Massignon's observation that the Sufis made a concerted attempt "to interiorize the Qur' anic vocabulary and to integrate it into ritual practice." 1 The second part of the thesis begins by examining some of the early tawba-narratives in the Sufi hagiographical literature. It is shown that tawba is presented in the Sufi tradition as a life-altering process of "interior conversion," and not merely a simple act of turning away from a particular sin. Tawba is therefore a process in which the seeker is moved to give himself entirely to the inner spiritual life of Islam. A taxonomy of this kind of "interior conversion" is also proposed to account for the differing means through which conversion might be sparked. The study then moves to examine the place of tawba within the ascending Sufi hierarchy of "states (ah&dotbelow;w al)" and "stations (maq ams)." This is followed by an analysis of various sayings attributed to the earliest Sufi figures. Finally, the thesis examines tawba in the thought of six pivotal figures from the early period: Abu Sa'id al-Kharr az (d. 899 CE), Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896 CE), Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 910 CE), Abu Bakr al-Wasit&dotbelow; i (d. 936 CE), al-H&dotbelow;arith al-Muh&dotbelow; asibi (d. 857 CE), and Abu T&dotbelow; alib al-Makki (d. 996 CE). Separate chapters are devoted to Muh&dotbelow;asibi and Makk i, whose writings provide us with the most comprehensive Sufi analyses of tawba up to the 10th century. The study demonstrates through a close textual analysis of early works of the mystical tradition that the most overarching concern in regards to the question of tawba in the early period was not with theoretical or metaphysical issues, but with the Sufi science of praxis or the 'ulum al-mu'amalat.;1 Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, trans. Benjamin Clark (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 8.