Shaykh, Pīr and Murshid

A shaykh (in Persian, pīr; in Arabic, also murshid) is a spiritual director: the person to whom a disciple, a murīd, entrusts the work of the path. The titles overlap, but Suhrawardī’s glossary in the Awārif al-Maʿārif separates them: “Pir — the founder of a religious order. shaikh — chief of a convent. khalifa — deputy shaikh. nakib, murshid — spiritual guide, the shaikh. murid — disciple.” (Introduction)

Why the path needs one

Nicholson states the general rule in his chapter on the Path:

If he follows the general rule, he will take a director (Sheykh, Pīr, Murshid), i.e. a holy man of ripe experience and profound knowledge, whose least word is absolute law to his disciples. A ‘seeker’ who attempts to traverse the ‘Path’ without assistance receives little sympathy. Of such a one it is said that ‘his guide is Satan,’ and he is likened to a tree that for want of the gardener’s care brings forth ‘none or bitter fruit.’

— Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, Chapter I

Al-Hujwīrī, at the start of the Kashf, makes the same point by listing the people to avoid. The third class on his list is “the ignorant pretenders to Ṣúfiism,” who are “they who have never associated with a spiritual director (pír), nor learned discipline from a shaykh, but without any experience have thrown themselves among the people, and have donned a blue mantle (kabúdí), and have trodden the path of unrestraint.” (Chapter I)

What the discipline looks like

The best-known description of what a director asks is al-Hujwīrī’s, quoted by Nicholson:

“When a novice joins them, with the purpose of renouncing the world, they subject him to spiritual discipline for the space of three years. If he fulfil the requirements of this discipline, well and good; otherwise, they declare that he cannot be admitted to the ‘Path.’ The first year is devoted to service of the people, the second year to service of God, and the third year to watching over his own heart.”

— al-Hujwīrī, quoted in Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, Chapter I

Nicholson’s illustration is Junayd’s treatment of the young Shiblī, who came asking for “the pearl of divine knowledge.” Junayd refused to sell it or give it, saying that Shiblī must “cast yourself headlong, like me, into this ocean, in order that you may win the pearl by waiting patiently,” and set him to sell sulphur, then to beg for a year, then to go back to the province where he had once governed and ask pardon of everyone he had wronged. After a further year of service:

“What think you of yourself now?” Shiblī replied: “I deem myself the meanest of God’s creatures.” “Now,” said the master, “your faith is firm.”

— Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, Chapter I

The patched frock is the outward seal of this process, and the glossary treats it separately (Khirqa and Murīd). Al-Hujwīrī warns what happens when the order is reversed. He recalls travelling with his own shaykh, who saw some men in patched frocks holding out their skirts at a barn for wheat, and said of them that their directors “were greedy to gather disciples, and they themselves are greedy to collect worldly goods.” (Chapter IV)

What the teacher owes

Suhrawardī’s chapter on being a shaikh is a list of obligations that run the other way. It begins with the director’s purpose: “The shaikh’s purpose is to cleanse, from the rust of lust and of nature, the murid’s heart, so that in it, by attractions and inclinations, may be reflected the rays of the beauty of unity and the glory of eternity.” (Chapter IV) Before he accepts anyone, he must examine himself:

First he should seek out of himself that the cause be not the desire of precedence, the desire of being a shaikh, the desire of being followed — wherein are born the lusts of sons of Adam

— Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter IV

He should be slow to take on disciples, discerning of capacity, and unmoved by wealth. Suhrawardī: “Who acquireth not knowledge of the different kinds of capacity, and discrimination as to the forms of understanding, hath no true power over the murid,” and “The shaikh must show no greed for the property, or for the service, of the murid.” In his introduction he sketches the disciple’s side of the arrangement as a series of effacements: first in the shaikh, then in the Pir (the founder of the order, long deceased) in an “effacement in the Pir,” and finally an “effacement in the Prophet.” (Introduction)

The sources thus describe a relationship of authority with limits built in. The teacher’s authority is real, but it is explicitly unselfish and tested, and the disciple’s obedience is a training in the surrender described in Fanā and Baqā. For the chain of holy men behind a teacher, see Walī and Awliyāʾ.