Ḥāl and Maqām

A maqām is a station: a place on the path you reach by your own effort and are obliged to hold. A ḥāl is a state: something that arrives from God without warning, which you can neither summon when it is absent nor keep when it leaves. Nearly every technical term in Sufi writing is sorted into one category or the other, which is why the pair is worth understanding before reading much further.

Al-Hujwīrī sets out the distinction in a passage he admits is a digression — “I must discuss this matter here, although it does not belong to the present chapter” — because without it the rest of his book cannot be read. On stations:

“‘Station’ (maqám) denotes anyone’s ‘standing’ in the Way of God, and his fulfilment of the obligations appertaining to that ‘station’ and his keeping it until he comprehends its perfection so far as lies in a man’s power. It is not permissible that he should quit his ‘station’ without fulfilling the obligations thereof.”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

The order is not decorative. Repentance (tawbat) comes first, then conversion (inābat), then renunciation (zuhd), then trust in God (tawakkul). “It is not permissible,” he writes, “that anyone should pretend to conversion without repentance, or to renunciation without conversion, or to trust in God without renunciation.” Stations are cumulative and they are work.

States are the opposite in every respect:

“‘State’ (ḥál), on the other hand, is something that descends from God into a man’s heart, without his being able to repel it when it comes, or to attract it when it goes, by his own effort.”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

Then the formula that the whole distinction reduces to, and the reason this pair is quotable at all:

“‘Station’ belongs to the category of acts, ‘state’ to the category of gifts. Hence the man that has a ‘station’ stands by his own self-mortification, whereas the man that has a ‘state’ is dead to ‘self’ and stands by a ‘state’ which God creates in him.”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

Suhrawardī, writing about a century and a half later in the manual that became the standard handbook of the orders, defines the state in almost the same terms: “hal signifieth a hidden event that, from the upper world, sometimes descendeth upon the heart of the holy traveller and goeth and cometh, until the divine attraction draweth him from the lowest to the loftiest stage.” (Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter VI)

Where the authorities disagreed

Whether a state can last was an open question, and al-Hujwīrī reports the argument rather than settling it. Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī held that a state may be permanent, reasoning that love and longing are states, and that if they could not last then a lover would not be a lover — “until a man’s ‘state’ becomes his attribute (ṣifat) the name of that ‘state’ is not properly applied to him.” Against him stands one of the most quoted lines in Sufi literature:

“‘States’ are like flashes of lightning: their permanence is merely a suggestion of the lower soul (nafs).”

— Junayd, quoted in Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

The stakes were practical, not merely definitional. Whether satisfaction (riḍā) is a station or a state divided two schools: the people of Khurāsān counted it among the states, the people of ʿIrāq among the stations, holding it to be the furthest reach of trust in God. Al-Hujwīrī notes drily that “the controversy between them has gone on to the present day.” (Chapter XIV)

The line between saint and prophet

The pair also does load-bearing theological work. Al-Hujwīrī uses it to mark the difference between sainthood and prophecy in a single sentence: “the fleeting state (ḥál) of the saint is the permanent station (maqám) of the prophet; and that which to the saints is a station (maqám) is to the prophets a veil (ḥijáb).” Prophets are “constantly exempt from the attributes of humanity, while the saints are so only temporarily.” (Chapter XIV)

In a later chapter he assigns each prophet a station of his own: Adam’s was repentance, Noah’s renunciation, Abraham’s resignation, Moses’ contrition, David’s sorrow, Jesus’ hope, John the Baptist’s fear. Each “drew something from other sources by which they abode, but each of them returned at last to his original station.” (Chapter XXIV)

Why you cannot ask about it

One consequence follows from the definition and is easy to miss. If a state is a gift rather than an achievement, its possessor has nothing to report. Al-Hujwīrī: “The tongue of the possessor of ḥál is silent concerning his ḥál, but his actions proclaim the reality of his ḥál.” He quotes a spiritual director who put it more bluntly still — “To ask about ḥál is absurd” — because ḥál is “the annihilation of speech.” (Chapter XXIV)

Suhrawardī draws the practical rule for conduct: on a matter “that is neither his makam nor his hal, he should not speak.” (Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter IV)

The related pair qabḍ and basṭ — contraction and expansion — are both states in this scheme, as are love, longing, and fear. Repentance, renunciation, and trust are stations. Reading with the distinction in hand, a great deal of otherwise obscure Sufi vocabulary sorts itself.