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letter affirmed this belief.
It contained the long story
of the mullah’s life, and
was
full of details about
the mullah’s past, his
childhood,
his
falling
in love and his old age.
Evidently, Mullah Hajar
had formed every letter of
everywordwiththeutmost
conviction. After years
of hesitation, deep in his
soul, he had come round to
the view that he ought to
reveal everything, to keep
nothing hidden. Every line
of the letter gave off great
awareness of fatherhood.
He wrote of how he had
once been a lover; every
part of it exuded the
strong scent of death, and
a colour particular to the
ishraq
3
, the illumination,
3 Ishraq, often translated as ‘il-
lumination’, is a key term in Sufism.
The A to Z of Sufism explains it as ‘a
way of describing how God works
in the hearts of the spirituality
at the end of life. Mullah
Hajar appeared to have
had great difficulty getting
to the point of his story,
and to his final words. It
was, however, clear that in
some places the mullah’s
concern was that of a man
who wanted not to hurt
his own son, but to reveal
to him a secret in a calm
and composed manner, a
secret that could change
his life and make him
a completely different
person.
Mullah Hajar used the
language of someone who
had loved words in the
1930s and ’40s, someone
who had pondered the
secret of rhetoric. In the
rhetoric of that time, he
advanced, and the name given to a
school of Persian Muslim philosophy
associated with Shihab-ad-Din Ya-
hya Ah-Shurawardi “Maqtul”.’ (John
Renard, The A to Z to Sufism, p.
165, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow
Press, 2005.)