Book
AN EXCERPT FROM
THE
FOUNDATIONS
OF THE
KARKARIYA
ORDER
The Foundations outlines the spiritual principles and practices of the Karkariya Sufi Order and their basis in the Quranand the Sunnah. It covers key concepts such as the Pact (al-ʿahd), the Sacred Dance (al-ḥaḍra), and the invocation of the Singular Name (al-ism al-mufrad), guiding disciples on their path to divine knowledge and spiritual growth.
By Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari
Translated from the Arabic
by Dr. Yousef Casewit, Khalid Williams,
and Jamil Zaghdoudi
Originally published by Les 7 Lectures
In the Arabic language
In the Terminology of the Karkariya Order
It is to dwell in the tomb of life, in order to disengage from the sensory realm and journey to the world of pure meaning, while carrying the provision of the Name and practicing complete detachment, so that you may enter into the heart and keep the company of the Lord, till the veil is parted and inner vision is sharpened with the metal of eternity.
In the Holy Qurʾān
God says: So her Lord accepted her with a beautiful acceptance, and made her to grow in a beautiful way, and placed her under the care of Zachariah. Whenever Zachariah entered upon her in the sanctuary he found provision with her. He said, “Mary, whence comes this unto thee?” She said, “It is from God. Truly God provides for whomsoever He will with- out reckoning.” (Q Āl ʿImrān 3:37).
God says: And We appointed for Moses thirty nights, and We completed them with ten [more]; thus was completed the appointed term of his Lord: forty nights. And Moses said unto his brother, Aaron, “Take my place among my people, set matters aright, and follow not the way of those who work corruption.” (Q Aʿrāf 7:142).
God says: Dost thou reckon that the Companions of the Cave and the Inscription are a marvel among Our signs? When the youths took refuge in the cave, they said, “Our Lord! Grant us mercy from Thy Presence, and make us incline to sound judgment concerning our affair.” (Q Kahf 18:9-10).
God says: So he came forth from the sanctuary unto his people, and signaled to them that they should glorify morn- ing and evening. (Q Maryam 19:11).
In the Noble Hadith
ʿĀʾisha رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهَا related: “The first revelation given to God’s Messenger ﷺ was in the form of true dreams in his sleep, which were all as bright and clear as the rising sun. He used to go to Ḥirāʾ Cave and spend many nights there in worship, taking provisions with him, and then return to Khadīja for more. This went on until suddenly the truth descended upon him while he was in Ḥirāʾ. The angel came to him there and told him, ‘Recite!’ The Prophet ﷺ replied, ‘I am not a reciter.’”
[The Prophet ﷺ recalled:] “The angel took hold of me and embraced me until I could not no longer bear it, then released me and said, ‘Recite!’ I replied, ‘I am not a reciter.’ He took hold of me a second time and embraced me until I could no longer bear it, then released me and said, ‘Recite!’ I replied, ‘I am not a reciter.’ He took hold of me a third time and embraced me until I could no longer bear it, then released me and said, Recite in the Name of thy Lord Who created, created man from a blood clot. Recite! Thy Lord is most noble, Who taught by the Pen, taught man that which he knew not.” (Q ʿAlaq 96:1-5).
[ʿĀʾisha continued:] “Then he returned home with the Inspi- ration, trembling with terror. He went in to Khadīja and said, “Cover me! Cover me!” She covered him till his fear was over, and then he said, ‘Khadīja, what is wrong with me?’ He told her everything that had happened and said, ‘I fear for myself.’ Khadīja said, ‘Never! Rejoice, for by God, God would never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kin, speak the truth, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests gener- ously, and assist righteous causes.’ Khadīja then accompanied him to her cousin Waraqa, who had become a Christian during the pre-Islamic era and used to write the Gospels in Arabic. He was an old man and had lost his eyesight. Khadīja said to him, ‘Cousin! Listen to your nephew’s story.’ Waraqa asked, ‘Nephew, what have you seen?’ The Prophet ﷺ described what he had seen. Waraqa said, ‘This is the same Nomos that was sent down to Moses. I wish I were young and could live to see the day when your people drive you out.’ God’s Messenger ﷺ asked, ‘Will they drive me out?’ Waraqa replied, ‘Yes. Never did a man bring the like of what you have brought, but that he was treated with hos- tility. If I should remain alive till your day comes, I will lend you all my support.’ But Waraqa died shortly afterwards, and the Inspiration also paused for a while. (Bukhārī,Ṣaḥīḥ#3).
Ibn Masʿūd related that the Messenger of God , the Truth- ful Honest One, said, “The matter of the creation of a human being is put together in the womb of the mother in forty days, and then becomes a clot for a similar period, and then a piece of flesh for a similar period. Then God sends an angel who is commanded to write four things, and told: ‘Write down his deeds, his provision, his life-span, and whether he is felicitous or wretched.’ Then the spirit is breathed into him. Thus, a man may do good deeds till there is only a cubit between him and Paradise, but then his fate catches up with him and he does the deeds of the Hell-bound. And likewise, a man may do evil deeds till there is only a cubit between him and Hell, but then his fate catches up with him and he does the deeds of the Heav- en-bound.” (Bukhārī,Ṣaḥīḥ#2988).
Anas b. Malik reported that God’s Messenger ﷺ said: “Spend your lives in the pursuit of the good, and expose yourselves to the breezes of God’s mercy; for God sends breezes of His mercy upon whomever of His servants He wishes. Ask God to cover you when you are uncovered, and to grant safety to those in your care.” (Bayhaqī,Shuʿab#1081).
Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī reported that God’s Messenger ﷺ said, “He who devotes forty days to God will have springs of wisdom flow forth from his tongue.”
And We Appointed for Moses
God says, And We appointed for Moses thirty nights, and We completed them with ten [more]; thus was completed the appointed term of his Lord: forty nights. And Moses said unto his brother, Aaron, “Take my place among my people, set matters aright, and follow not the way of those who work corruption." (Q Aʿrāf 7:142).
When God wants to honor one of His servants, He arranges an appointment for them to rid them of the stain of heedless- ness, and ignite in their hearts the passion of repentance, con- trition, and humility. The turbidities of separation are burned away by the flames of passion and love, and the veils of the Acts and Attributes become finer.
This appointment is the hidden source of the Name, the door of mystical truth. It is called al-Dahr, the Aeon, which is both a Name and an Attribute. Abū Hurayra narrated that Mes- senger of God ﷺ said: “God says, ‘The children of Adam inveigh against the Aeon, but I am the Aeon; in My hand is the night and the day.’” (Bukhārī,Ṣaḥīḥ#5742).
The tradition of the Appointment was established so that your primordial dot may be written, and the secret of your vice- gerency may be made plain. As for God, He is hallowed beyond time and space. He has no beginning or end; nothing precedes Him or succeeds Him.
How, then, could our Lord come to an appointment, when He is the Aeon Itself ? In reality, every soul has a moment of unveiling and manifestation, a time of awe and presence, according to what was destined for it in pre-eternity. This is when the soil of his being rises, and the tree of divine content- ment and expansion sprouts from it, bearing the fruits of the wonders of beauty and perfection. He rises up in passionate rapture to the heaven of divine Oneness, and his innermost secret floats in the uncreated reality of the divine Ipseity, and he comes to naught between contraction and expansion, beauty and majesty.
Sayyidunā Ibn al-Fāriḍ (may God sanctify his secret) said of this:
When the Appointment drew near
For my all-enveloping union,
My mountain was rendered unto dust
In awe of the Self-Discloser.
Then was unveiled a hidden secret
That only one such as I could perceive:
Death in Him is my life,
And in my life is my death.
I am the tormented pauper,
Have pity on my wretched state!
God’s promise to His servant is noble and great. His appointment comes during the hour of love, and His meeting place is on the passionate mountain of Ṭūr, where the lovers gather in the holy presence of the Only.
Come, dear disciple, to Our appointment without your own being; come when no remnant of yourself remains in you, when you are annihilated in Our presence, subsisting by Our holiness, beholding Us and Our awesome Majesty and tender Beauty, your name annihilated in Ours, your trace in Ours, your whole and your every part belonging to Me. It is then that you will find Me. Majesty will show you the Path, and Beauty will light your way. You will find Me waiting for you, yearning for you even more than you yearned for Me, for you are but a part of Me, while I am your All.
Sayyidunā Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī said, “I called Abū Yazīd to God, but he refused, so I left him and went to God myself.”
And Sayyidunā Ibn ʿArabī (may God sanctify his secret) said:
I had loved ones who gave me the advice
That all the folk of love and gnosis give:
They advised me to invoke God at all times,
And the Invoked annihilated them from the presence of invocation;
Then, when they became extinct to all that exists,
And took comfort in nothing but the Night of Power,
The unity of the Folk became a holy Odd,
And the Odd delivered its discourse to Itself.
Separation (faṣl) and Union (waṣl)
The secret of gnosis (maʿrifa) is an isthmus between a thing and its shadow, negation and affirmation, presence and absence, yes and no. The human being is a gathering-place of opposites, and hence a disclosure-site of separation and union. God says, Truly We created man in the most beautiful stature, then We cast him to the lowest of the low (Q Tīn 95:4-5).
The most beautiful stature is pure union, and the lowest of the low is pure separation. Separation is the manifestation-site of the lower state, union of the upper state. Each necessitates the other, and there is a dia- lectical relationship between them, such that union can only come after separation, and there is no separation without union.
Now God breathed His spirit into man, and then tested him with a lower soul, and giving each of them their own powers and allies. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh says in one of his aphorisms: “Light is the ally of the heart, just as darkness the ally of the lower soul. When God wishes to assist His servant, He gives him allies of Light and blocks the influx of darkness and alterity.” (See the 56th aphorism of al-Iskandarī).
God says: God is the Protector of those who believe. He brings them out of the darkness into the Light. As for those who disbelieve, their protectors are the false idols, bringing them out of the Light into the darkness. They are the inhab- itants of the Fire, abiding therein. (Q Baqara 2:257).
So Light is the secret of union, the manifestation-site of the saintly protection that God lends His servant. As for darkness, it is the station of separation, of the false idol and its allies.
Ḥudhayfa related that God’s Messenger said, “Temptations are presented to the heart as a reed mat is woven, strip by strip. The heart that absorbs these [temptations] is marked with a black dot, while the heart that rejects them is marked by a white dot. Accordingly, there are two types of hearts: one that is white like as a white stone. It is unharmed by turmoil or temptation so long as the heavens and the earth remain. The other is dark and dusty like a turbid vessel. It neither recognizes what is good, nor rejects what is reprehensible, but judging all based on its caprice.” (Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ #211).
So each luminous mark leads closer to a union of sanctity between the Lord and His servant. If the Light continues to grow without interruption, it will result in a pure and illuminated heart touched by the Real. For just as the Name the All-Merciful ascends the throne, so the Name Allāh ascends the believer’s heart.
On the contrary, each black mark leads to separation and carries the servant farther from the Lord. If this black mark continues to grow, it will lead to the growth of the demonic tree of Zaqqūm, whose fruits are like the heads of demons.
There is allusion to this in God’s words: When Saul set out with the hosts he said, “Truly God will try you with a river. Whosoever drinks from it is not of me, and whosoever tastes not of it is of me—save one who scoops out a handful.” But they drank from it, save a few among them. So when he crossed it, he and those who believed with him, they said, “We have no power today against Goliath and his hosts.” Those who deemed they would meet their Lord said, “How many a small company have overcome a large company by God’s Leave! And God is with the patient.” And when they went forth against Goliath and his hosts they said, “Our Lord, pour patience upon us, make firm our steps, and help us against the disbelieving people.” And they routed them, by God’s Leave, and David slew Goliath, and God gave him sov- ereignty and wisdom, and taught him of what He wills. And were it not for God’s repelling people, some by means of others, the earth would have been corrupted. But God is Pos- sessed of Bounty for the worlds. (Q Baqara 2:249-251).
Before explaining those verses, I will lay down a general rule; if you hold to it and apply it, you will gain access to an understanding of God’s Book, and you will be able to dive into its esoteric meanings and glean its most precious secrets.
This rule is this: “Do not come out of your grave.” That is, remain within your body, because within you is gathered all the universe and its meanings, and the divine Names and their secrets. You are the manifestation-site of the opposites, the isthmus of the two seas, the master of this world and the next. So do not think that you are an insignificant tiny being, for the macrocosm is contained within you.
Now let us proceed:
When the Saul-spirit set out (faṣala) with his hosts, God tempted them with the river of the base desires of separation (faṣl). The spirit said to the hosts, Truly God will try you with a river. Whosoever drinks from it is not of me; that is, not from the world of the spirit and unveiling; and whosoever tastes not of it is of me; that is, from My world, and he will receive My Lights and disclosures; one who scoops out a hand- ful, according to what is permitted by wisdom and the principle of gradualness.
But they drank from it, namely those who supported the soul and were destined for separation because of the powerful correspondence between them and it; for it was the river of cor- poreal nature; save a few among them, namely the intellect, the heart, and the senses that were subordinate to them.
So they crossed the valley of the false idol and its darkness, and the spirit breathed certitude into them, and they said, “How many a small company have overcome a large com- pany by God’s Leave! And God is with the patient.” And when they went forth against Goliath, namely the evil-enjoining soul, and his hosts, they said, “Our Lord, pour patience upon us, the patience of the gnostics, make firm our steps in the registry of the righteous, and help us against the disbelieving people.” And they routed them, by God’s Leave, and the David of the intellect slew the sensory passion of the Goliath of the soul and took hold of its reins, and so was made sover- eign of his corporeal kingdom by the secret of the spiritual heaven. Then the heart ruled the hosts of the limbs and the senses, and attained knowledge of the secret of its essence through its essence.
