Siyaha: Sufi travel which leads to the ‘science of within’ (ilm batin)
Rihla: Also means ‘to travel’ in Islam which leads to the ‘science of appearance (ilm zahir)
Safar: Likewise Sufi travel applied to the kind of travel that is ‘authorised’ by need e.g. Pilgrimage
The first, siyaha, can be used as a synonym for fasting: “the one who travels for the sake of worshipping God does not supply himself with food, exactly as the one who fasts”
(all from paper, “Crossing the Desert: Siyaha and Safar as Key Concepts in Early Sufi Literature and Life,” by Arin Salamah Qudsi, Journal of Sufi Studies, Haifa University, in academia.edu)
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Truth is a pathless land – early Sufis travelled because this was the way to ‘see,’ to open up their inner eyes and ears, their inner world, but they travelled also to show trust in God by ‘not taking provisions for their journey;’ thus opening their hearts to God, trusting in Him that he would show them, as promised in the Qur‘an, ‘signs on the horizons and in themselves.’ The Prophet it Pis claimed by some, had said, “Seek ye knowledge even as far as China” (although this is contested). What is important here is that these early Sufis (prior to 10th century) were following a tradition that pre-dated Islam by hundreds if not thousands of years. Wandering in ‘the Wilderness’ was often spoken of in relation to many of the Old Testament prophets and sages and certainly, by the time it was taken up by the ‘Desert Fathers’ of the early Christian era it had become a well-trodden path. Solitude was something very familiar likewise to the Hindu saints, sages, and saddhus, as indeed it still is today (likewise in Buddhism) by many of those who chose to step out on the path of mystical unfoldment – away from the hurly-burly of everyday life. The reason for the later negative turn against such travelling in much of the Islamic world and even within Sufi circles after the tenth century therefore requires some explanation. Arin Salamah Qudsi’s paper addresses this by showing that such travelling – seemingly without purpose or direction with the possibility of neglecting one’s duties under Islamic law towards one’s fellow Muslims [possible neglect of prayer; neglect of communal prayer; etc] – was, potentially at least, antithetical to the whole point of the Islamic enterprise with all the ongoing, everyday roles and responsibilities incumbent on ‘believers’ that that entailed. It was just these routine involvements in everyday life that represented the ‘straight path’ the believer was to be guided on by the Sharia [that ‘well-trodden path that wild animals take to the waterhole’]. It was this stability of the settled life that constituted the ‘ummah’ [community of believers] who collectively attempted to follow both the way of the Prophet (the Sunnah) and the path laid out for the benefit of all in the Qur‘an itself. Again, it was this kind of vagabond ‘life-style’ with no set goals that could be easily enunciated, represented by those that sought solitude away from the their ‘fellow-man’ that was the target of disparagement (and ultimately censure) of the Islamic ‘authorities’. Thus it was this ‘Way’ of setting out on a journey into the ‘wilderness’ without laying up provisions for the journey, or – indeed – without any clear ‘destination’ in mind, in order to discover/uncover this ‘other realm’ or inner world fell into disrepute and then disuse. Thus ‘siyaha’ – this journeying to find God as practiced by the early Sufis, gradually was transformed into the far more respectable ‘safar’/ ‘rihla’ where journeying for a fixed purpose, pilgrimage for instance (where ritual religious duties would still be observed or were subject to ‘special dispensations’) became far more common. As for the Sufis, Arin suggests settled communities always had existed – in parallel – with those individuals and groups that roamed the deserts, thus it was no major change for them to accommodate to this more settled way of life where only ‘authorised’ travel became the normal. These former groupings simply became more ‘institutionalised,’ even to the point of accepting patronage from outside their ‘hermitages’ to survive.
When we first met with our Sufi teacher, Pir Hidayat Inayat-Khan, we turned up in our mobile home (which was actually a converted truck which we had made into our home away from home including a timbered half-door and a chimney sticking out of the roof for our pot-belly stove!). It was a ‘gypsy-wagon’ with a motor in which we both lived and travelled for a number of years. I know that Hidayat saw us as gypsies for he told me as much at a later meeting! Later again he commended me on having become ‘a gentleman!’ I’m not sure that he was totally approving of our (then) ‘lifestyle’! I have none-the-less always remained a ‘traveller,’ though these days it tends to manifest itself more on the inner plains than on the outer. However, I have not, nor would I (personally) ever decry the times spent ‘on the road’ wherever and whenever that occurred for I feel a deep sense of purpose is served in so doing. Like these early Sufis and the ‘desert fathers’, and the more recent context of Henry Thoreau’s ‘woods’ sojourn (plus countless others before and since), much was opened up for me through this ‘wandering in the desert’ – which later would become far more this worldly when living and working amongst tribal groups in the Australian Outback – and the harvest was/is more than worth the difficulties all such journeying brings with it.
I admire those who can travel the inward plains whilst staying by their cosy firesides, but for me in order to dislodge the tendency to stagnation – particularly when younger – always required (to use an Australian slang term) much ‘Knocking about in the Bush!’
Tracks in a Pathless Land 