Faqr is poverty, and the faqīr (in Persian, dervīsh) is the poor man: the usual name for the Sufi in the generations after the first ascetics. It is the subject of the Kashf al-Maḥjūb’s second chapter, and almost every later chapter returns to it. The tradition insists, again and again, that the poverty it has in mind is not a matter of what a person owns.
Al-Hujwīrī starts from the saying of the Prophet that poverty is a distinction:
The Prophet said: “Poverty is glorious to those who are worthy of it.” Its glory consists in this, that the poor man’s body is divinely preserved from base and sinful acts, and his heart from evil and contaminating thoughts, because his outward parts are absorbed in (contemplation of) the manifest blessings of God, while his inward parts are protected by invisible grace
He says that God “has exalted Poverty and has made it a special distinction of the poor, who have renounced all things external and internal, and have turned entirely to the Causer.” The word internal is the important one. Nicholson’s summary of the Sufi doctrine is plainer than any single line from the sources:
“True poverty is not merely lack of wealth, but lack of desire for wealth: the empty heart as well as the empty hand.”
And he quotes the definition: “To be severed entirely from both the present life and the future life, and to want nothing besides the Lord of the present life and the future life--that is to be truly poor.” The poor man who wants Paradise is not yet poor.
The most surprising passage in al-Hujwīrī’s chapter is one that refuses to rank poverty above wealth. He quotes Qushayrī’s remark that people have argued over the two and picked sides, and gives his own reading:
Poverty is the separation of the heart from all but God, and wealth is the preoccupation of the heart with that which does not admit of being qualified. When the heart is cleared (of all except God), poverty is not better than wealth nor is wealth better than poverty.
Wealth, on this account, goes wrong through forgetfulness and poverty through covetousness. The test is where the heart rests, not what the hand holds. Nicholson reports the other side of it too: God “endows His saints with an outward show of wealth and worldliness in order to hide them from the profane.”
A later saying, quoted in Chapter XI, gives the doctrine its philosophical edge: “The most beneficial poverty is that which you regard as honourable, and with which you are well pleased.” Al-Hujwīrī explains:
Poverty is the non-existence of secondary causes, whereas wealth is the existence of secondary causes. Poverty detached from a secondary cause is with God, and wealth attached to a secondary cause is with itself.
In the same chapter he tells a story that carries the whole teaching. A dervish meets a king, who offers him a boon. “I will not ask a boon from one of my slaves,” says the dervish. “How is that?” asks the king. “I have two slaves who are thy masters: covetousness and expectation.” (Chapter II)
The tradition sometimes uses faqr as a veiled word for something else. Al-Hujwīrī says that the Sufi masters, wishing the doctrine of divine love to remain hidden, gave it other names: “or they used the word ‘poverty’ (faqr) to denote the renunciation of the lover’s personal will in his affirmation of the Beloved’s will, and they called the lover ‘poor’ (faqír).” (Chapter XIX) Poverty in this sense is the practical face of passing away: the self gives up its own wanting. It is also the root meaning of the patched frock and the disciple who wears it (Khirqa and Murīd), and the natural companion of renunciation and trust in God.
The passages above are quoted from complete public-domain translations, all of which are free to read here in full.
Read the Kashf al-MaḥjūbRead The Mystics of Islam