ʿIlm and Maʿrifat

Sufi writing distinguishes two kinds of knowing, and a great deal depends on keeping them apart. ʿIlm is knowledge in the ordinary sense: something learned, taught, transmitted, argued about. Maʿrifat — usually rendered “gnosis” — is knowledge of God, and the whole point of the term is that it does not arrive the same way.

Al-Hujwīrī opens his book with knowledge, and quotes a threefold division that sets up everything after it:

“Muḥammad b. Faḍl al-Balkhí says: ‘Knowledge is of three kinds — from God, with God, and of God.’ Knowledge of God is the science of Gnosis (ʿilm-i maʿrifat), whereby He is known to all His prophets and saints. It cannot be acquired by ordinary means, but is the result of Divine guidance and information. Knowledge from God is the science of the Sacred Law (ʿilm-i sharíʿat), which He has commanded and made obligatory upon us.”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter I

The distinction is not a ranking of prestige. The science of the Law is obligatory; gnosis is not something one can be commanded to obtain, because it is not in the recipient's gift.

The argument with the Muʿtazilites

Whether gnosis is a function of the intellect was contested, and al-Hujwīrī reports the dispute before taking a side:

“There is a great difference of opinion touching the gnosis and right cognition of God. The Muʿtazilites assert that gnosis is intellectual and that only a reasonable person (ʿáqil) can possibly have it. This doctrine is disproved by the fact that madmen, within Islam, are deemed to have gnosis, and that children, who are not reasonable, are deemed to have faith.”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XV

The counter-example is doing real work. If gnosis required reason, then those without the full use of reason would be outside faith altogether — a conclusion the tradition was unwilling to accept. Gnosis is therefore placed first among the veils to be lifted, before unification itself.

Suhrawardī: gnosis and the self

Suhrawardī defines maʿrifat as a kind of resolution — “the recognizing of the abridged ʿulum (knowledge) in detail” — and then makes the claim that connects this pair to the rest of the vocabulary:

“The maʿrifat of God is dependent upon and bound up with the maʿrifat of the nafs.”

— Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter VI

Knowledge of God is not available except through knowledge of the self — which is why the discipline of the nafs is not preliminary to the path but identical with it.

Al-Ghazali builds an entire book on the same premise. The Alchemy of Happiness opens not with God but with self-knowledge, on the ground that it is “the key to the knowledge of God.” (Chapter I)

What gnosis does to the knower

Because maʿrifat is received rather than achieved, it is not a possession its holder can display. Al-Hujwīrī quotes Dhu ʾl-Nūn on the Sufi whose knowing shows only in conduct: “he says nothing which he is not, and when he is silent his conduct explains his state.” (Chapter III)

Margaret Smith, surveying the same material in her study of Rabiʿa, places gnosis alongside love and vision as the culmination of the path rather than as a preliminary stage, and notes how completely it reorganises the earlier stations — satisfaction, longing and fellowship are all folded into it. (Rabiʿa the Mystic, Chapter X)

The practical consequence, and the reason the pair matters for reading: when a Sufi text says a thing is “known,” it is worth asking which knowing is meant. Much of the apparent extravagance in these writers is the language of maʿrifat being read as though it were a claim in ʿilm.