Thread by @TasiuAl

THE EXCELLENCE AND DISTINCTIONS OF SHEIKH TIJANI R.A
الفضل والكرامات لشيخ التجانى رضي الله عنه
اعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

وصلى الله على النبي الكريم وعلى آله وصحبه وأولياءه أجمعين.

#Maulud
#SheikhTijani

Today, we join everyone to celebrate a hidden treasure of Allah, a honourable gnostic, the seal of auliyāu, the pole of Sufism, Maulana Abul Abbas Sheikh Ahmad At-tijaniy R.A

It is of much importance we do this kind of remembrance to ourselves because it was said:

فبذكر الصالحين تتنزل الرحمة
With the remembrance of the pious mercy pours
A lot of us would want to hear the Distinctions (miracles) that Allah endowed our blessed sheikh with and I know we are waiting to hear he turns stones to gold, or raise the dead or even caused one to die.

But all of these are not of interest to sheikh Tijjani R.A.

In fact I heard from whom I have total in his sayings, that Sheikh tijjani said:

" الكرامة إمتثال الأمر واجتناب النهي من حيث يرضى (الله) لا من حيث ترضى"

Distinction (miracles) is the ability to abide by the commandments of Allah and staying clear of the prohibitions, where it suits Allah, not where it suits you.

Others would narrates the word (كرامة) here to be (التصوف) but there is no contradiction to that because,

Tassawwuf itself is a Karāmah. As an Ārif would say:
ايها المعرض عنا
إن إعراضك منا
Oh you running away from us, you running means nothing.
لو اردناك جعلنا
كل ما فيك يردنا
If we had wish we make, whatever is in you to seek for us.

If this shows anything, it means that Sheikh consider other (خوارق العادات) to be more of distraction other than a desirable distinction.

But still, its is something that even when one tries to flee from it, it chases on. In as much as you are a waliyy fleeing from (الخوارق)

becomes almost impossible.

So I would be touching some of the obvious Distinctions of Sheikh here in sha Allah.

A poet would say:
كرامة شيخنا كالشمس فى السماء
ومن اعظمها رؤية سيد الوجود

يرى الرسول فى الظاهر والباطن حقا
ولا تغرر بما فوقك علم لا عناد

The distinction of our sheikh is as obvious as the sun in the sky,

Among the greatest of them all is seeing the prophet SAW .

He (Sheikh) sees the prophet manifestly and spiritually, don't be confused with what is more than your knowledge without argument and criticism

Whatever you read here today that is above your knowledge shouldn't be a problem, you are cool to be submissive and accept it.

It is said:
إذا لم تر الهلال فسلم
لأناس راوه بالأبصار
If you couldn't sight the crescent accept it was sighted by people who saw it eyesnaked

In 1196/1784 Shaykh Ahmad Tijani was graced by the much anticipated fath al-kabir, or grand illumination/enlightenment. While residing in the desert oasis town of Abi Samghun, he saw the Prophet Muhammad “waking, not dreaming.” To understand the extraordinary nature of the

new tariqa that had been unveiled, special emphasis must be given to the Prophet’s words to Tijani as they are recorded in the Jawahir al-Ma’ani:

And when he, God’s blessing and peace be upon him, initiated him in this Tariqa Ahmadiyya and [this] mode of life (sira)

Mustafuwiyya Nabuwiyya (of the chosen Prophet), and Allah illuminated [al-Tijani] at his hands, may God’s blessing and peace be upon him, he [the Prophet] informed him that he was his educator (murabbi) and guarantor (kafil), and that nothing arrives from God except by his hands

and at his mediation, may God’s blessing and peace be upon him. And he said to him, “You are not indebted for any favor from the shaykhs of the Path, for I am your means (wasita) and your support in the [spiritual] realization, so leave the entirety of what you have taken from

all the tariqas.” And he said to him, “Hold to this tariqa without retreat (khalwa) or withdrawal from the people until arrives the station that is promised you, and you will attain your state without constriction, difficulty or excessive effort.

And leave [or stop seeking from, itrak] the assembly of the saints.”
From this time on the Shaykh reportedly began having regular visionary contact with the Prophet and his companions began hearing “from him what we had not heard before in regard to the sciences and the secrets.”

The time from 1196/1784 until his 1213/1798 arrival in Fes was marked by an increase in his following and the solidification of this new Tariqa Ahmadiyya Muhammadiyya as a distinctive order, with the completion of the order’s wird in 1200/1787, and the sense among his followers

that their shaykh, due to his knowledge and miracles (which he ordered them to keep hidden), was of an unparalleled spiritual station.

In order to understand how it was that Shaykh Ahmad Tijani could have established a whole new Sufi order more or less on the basis of visionary

experience (even if many of its elements resonated with the Khalwati, Shadhili and Qadiri traditions into which he had been previously initiated), it is important to examine the context of dreaming and visionary experience in pre-Modern Islamic history, and specifically the role

of the dream or vision of the Prophet Muhammad. Even if modernist Islam seems to have inherited the Orientalist disdain for subjects such as visions and dreams, which writers such as Grunebaum would have us believe evidence the superstitious nature of the traditional Muslim mind

, they nonetheless played a significant part in the shaping of Islamic identity and history. In her discussion of Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s Kitab al-Manam (Book of Dreams), Leah Kinberg attests to the “great prestige that dreams had in the classical period of Islam.”

While all dreams were of course not of value, the true dream was thought to be an expression of an unseen reality. The Prophet once said, “Nothing is left of Prophethood but glad tidings.” On being asked, “What are glad tidings?” he replied, “True dreams (ru’yas, visions).”

In traditional formulations such as that of al-Nabulsi, the dreamer’s soul (ruh) was thought to stretch out to “see through the light of God’s illumination what the archangel of dreams reveals to it. It then withdraws to return to the nafs, like the sun when it gets covered

by a cloud.” It logically followed that the more purified the dreamer’s nafs or ego, the more clearly he could perceive and remember the unseen world of his dream. And since the true dream provided access to an unseen world that actually existed, a truly purified individual might

have the veils lifted from his sight such that he would witness the hidden while in a waking state. Al-Ghazali maintained that after the seeker’s purification of his heart and complete absorption in God, “there begin the revelations and visions. The mystics in their waking state

now behold angels and the spirits of the Prophets; they hear these speaking to them and are instructed by them.” The same is emphasized by Ibn ‘Arabi, “The person who undergoes unveiling sees while he is awake what the dreamer sees while he is asleep,” and, according to Chittick,

it is rarely clear in Ibn ‘Arabi’s accounts whether his visions happen during sleep or wakefulness. The same might be said of Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, who also believed that visionary experience was a mark of distinction. For the truthful person, he said, the vision might go so far

as to indicate his own end or destiny, in other words, what sort of fate had been written for him. The Jawahir al-Ma’ani reports in this regard that the Shaykh never had a vision but it came to pass. Thus he reported a dream from his youth where the throne for a great kingdom

was erected for him to sit on, and when he sat he noticed himself in possession of a great many soldiers at his command. The Jawahir likewise reports Shaykh Tijani’s visions of the famous twelfth-century mystic Abu Madyan, who predicted for him the attainment of Qutbaniyya

(The highest level of sainthood), as well as of the Prophet Moses, who spoke to him of God’s greatest name.
But the best sort of vision that might be hoped for by the pious Muslim, and what primarily concerns us in the case of Shaykh Tijani, is the vision of the Prophet Muhammad

There are a variety of Hadith attesting to the validity of seeing the Prophet in a dream. One says “Seeing me in a dream is like seeing me in reality, because Satan can't take my image
We are not so much concerned here with the theological arguments with such visionary experience

even if many in the Muslim world today might prefer more material or “rational” contact with their tradition.

A paper prepared in 2002 by the Tijani zawiya of Heliopolis, Cairo, states that the passage of the prophets from this world does not mean that they have died;

they are alive in the barzakh, or between worlds. According to the paper, one Hadith reports that the Prophet said God prohibited the earth from eating the bodies of the prophets. Just as the Prophet Muhammad saw Moses standing in prayer in his grave and Jesus

circumambulating the Kaba, so too can the righteous servants of God see the Prophet after his passing from this world. As for a person taking knowledge from the waking vision of the Prophet, this is but a manifestation of God’s ability to instill knowledge directly to His servant

as in the Qur’an, “Fear Allah and He will teach you.”
The vision of the Prophet occupied a central position in Islamic history from an early date. An early Muslim scholar, Ibn Sirin (d. 728), devoted an entire chapter of his book on dreams, Tafsir al-Ahlam al-Kabir, to seeing the

Prophet in a dream. The Kitab al-Manam of Baghdad’s Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d.281/892) contains some forty-seven accounts of dreams of the Prophet
The famous Sufi poet Abd al-Rahman al-Jami (d.1492) even wrote a poem that would induce the dream of the Prophet. Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti’s

(d. 1505) book, Tanweer al-Halak fi imkan ru’yat al-nabiyy wal-malak (The Enlightment of the Darkness in the Possibility of Seeing the Prophet and the Angels), not only discusses the dream of the Prophet but elucidates the possibility of sitting with the Prophet in a waking state

The book entitled, History of the Uwaysis (c. 1600) of Khirghizia’s (Central Asia) Ahmad Uzgen, contains many references to the dream and vision of the Prophet.

Visionary experience dealing with the Prophet has served a variety of functions, from deciding theological or legal

issues, to endorsing a particular scholar or his work, to investiture of political authority, to knowledge of future events or just commentary on a contemporary situation. The tendency of the Prophet to appear to pious Muslims in times of difficulty is affirmed by Goldziher in

his study of the dream of the Prophet in Islamic history:

It is no uncommon thing in Islamic literature to find both theological doubts and questions of practical controversy solved by the decision of the Prophet, who appears in a dream

decisions which extend as well to isolated cases affecting individuals, as to matters affecting the interests of the community at large.

#maulud
#SheikhTijani

Finally, just as you accept, the sighting of crescent and begin Ramadan fast and also end your Ramadan fast with people's information if sighting the moon without sighting it firsthand, that is the same logic to reacting to issues concerning that Auliyāullah.

We would stop here in sha Allah.

Let's recite 11 salātul fatihi to the colossal sheikh we celebrate today as a gift from us to him.

وصلى الله على النبي الكريم ودسبحان ربك رب العزة عما يصفون وسلام على المرسلين والحمد لله رب العالمين

I won't forget to mention that part of this thread was culled from a paper submitted on a conference by
Adeniran Taiwo Ojudan, Nigeria, 2012.

May Allah bless him for the research work. Amin.

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