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Abul Hasan al-Kharqani ق
Abul Hasan Ali ibn Jafar al-Kharqani was the Arch-Intercessor of his time
and unique in his station. He was the focus of attention of his people and
an ocean of knowledge from which saints still receive waves of light and
spiritual knowledge.
 Mayest
Thou deign to be sweetness
and let life be bitter!
If Thou art content, what matter that men be angry.
Let everything between me and Thee be cultivated,
Between the worlds and me let all be desert!
If Thy love be assured, all is then easy,
For everything on earth is but earth.
—Anonymous
Abul Hasan Ali ibn Jafar al-Kharqani proved a deep well of knowledge for
his followers and supporters. He emptied himself of everything except
God’s Oneness, refusing for himself all titles and aspirations. He would
not be known as a follower of any science, even a spiritual science, and
he said:
I am not a hermit. I am not an ascetic. I am not a speaker. I am not a
Sufi. O God, You are One, and I am one in Your Oneness.
Of knowledge and practice he said:
Scholars and servants in the lower world are numerous but they don’t
benefit you unless you are engaged in the satisfaction of God’s desire and
from morning to night are occupied with the deeds that God accepts.
About being a Sufi he said:
The Sufi is not the one who is always carrying the prayer rug, nor the one
who is wearing patched clothes, nor the one who keeps certain customs and
appearances, but the Sufi is the one to whom everyone’s focus is drawn,
although he is hiding himself.
The Sufi is the one who in the daylight does not need the sun, in the
night does not need the moon. The essence of Sufism is absolute
nonexistence that has no need of existence because there is no existence
besides God’s existence.
He was asked about truthfulness. He said:
Truthfulness is to speak your conscience.
Of the heart he said:
What is the best thing? The heart that is always in remembrance of God
(dhikr Allah).
The best of hearts is the heart that contains nothing but the Presence of
God, Almighty and Exalted.
Today it will have been forty years that God has been looking in my heart
and has seen nothing except Himself. I have had nothing in my heart except
God for forty years. While my ego is asking for cold water and a drink of
milk, I have not allowed it that for forty years in order to control
myself.
The vision with the eyes of the head does not bring happiness, but the
vision with the eyes of the heart and the secret that God gives to the
soul will bring out that happiness.
Of Bayazid he said:
When Abu Yazid said, “I want not to want” that is exactly the wanting that
is real desire.
He was asked, “Who is the appropriate person to speak about annihilation
and subsistence?” He answered:
That is knowledge for the one who is as one suspended by a silk thread
from the heavens to the earth when a big cyclone comes and takes all
trees, houses, and mountains and throws them in the ocean until it fills
the ocean. If that cyclone is unable to move the one who is hanging by the
silk thread, then he is the one who can speak on annihilation and
subsistence.
Once Sultan Mahmud al-Ghazni visited Abul Hasan and asked his opinion of
Bayazid al-Bistami. He said, “Whoever follows Bayazid is going to be
guided. Whoever saw him and felt love towards him in his heart will reach
a happy ending.” At that Sultan Mahmud said, “How is that possible when
Abu Jahl saw the Prophet 
and he was unable to reach a happy ending but rather ended up in misery?”
He
answered, “It is because Abu Jahl did not see the Prophet
but he saw Muhammad ibn
Abd Allah . And if he saw
the Messenger of God he
would have moved out of misery into happiness. As
God said, “You see them looking at you but without clear vision. (7:198)”
He
continued with the saying already quoted, “The vision with the eyes of the
head...”
Others of his sayings:
Ask for difficulties in order for tears to appear because God loves those
who cry (referring to the advice of the Prophet
to cry much).
In whatever way you ask God for anything, still the Quran is the best way.
Do not ask God except through the Quran.
The inheritor of the Prophet
is the one who follows
his footsteps and never puts black marks in his Book of Deeds.
Grandshaykh Abul Hasan al-Kharqani died on Tuesday, 10th of Muharram in
425 AH/1033 CE. He was buried in Kharqan, a village of the city of Bistam
in Iran. He passed on the secret of the Golden Chain to Abu Ali al-Fadl
ibn Muhammad al-Farmadi at-Tusi.
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