| EXCERPTS FROM KASHF-AL MAHJUB |
| Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi Al Hujwary |
| Trans. Reynold A. Nicholson |
| Poverty has a high rank in the way of the Truth and the poor are extremely esteemed, as God hath said, �(Give alms) unto the poor, who are kept fighting in God�s cause and cannot go to and fro on the earth; whom the ignorant deem rich forasmuch as they refrain (from begging)� (Qur'an, 2:273) And again, �Their sides are lifted from their beds while they call on their Lord in fear and hope.� (Qur'an, 32:16) God has exalted poverty and has made it a special distinction of the poor, who have renounced all things external and internal, and have turned entirely to the Causer; whose poverty has become their pride, so that they lamented its going and rejoiced at its coming, and embraced it and deemed all else contemptible. The Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) chose poverty and said, �O God, make me live lowly and die lowly and rise from the dead amongst lowly!� |
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| Discourse on the Poverty |
| The friends of God live by means of His secret bounties. Worldly wealth holds them back from the path of quietism (rida). Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) has said, �Poverty is glorious to those who are worthy of it.� Its glory is celebrated in the fact that the poor man�s body is divinely preserved from base and sinful acts, and his heart from evil and contaminating thoughts, because his outward parts are absorbed in (contemplation of) the manifest blessings of God, while his inward parts are protected by invisible grace, so that his body is spiritual (ruhani) and his heart divine (rabbani). No relation subsists between him and mankind: this world and th next weigh less than a gnat�s wing in the scales of his poverty. |
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| (Pages 261-266) |
| Shibli has said, �Poverty is the sea of trouble, and all troubles for His sake are glorious.�
Trouble is changed into glory, and their glory into a spiritual state (waqt), and their spiritual state into Love, and their Love into contemplation, so that finally the brain of the aspirant becomes wholly a centre of vision through the predominance of his imagination: he sees without eye, and hears without ear. However, some prefer wealth over poverty: God has commanded us to be patient in poverty and thankful for prosperity. He has made thankfulness the means of increasing our prosperity; and prosperity is essentially better than adversity. |
| Every man is �poor� even though he may be a prince. Essentially the wealth of Solomon and the poverty of Solomon are one. God said to Job (Yunus [pbuh]) in the extremity of his patience, and likewise to Solomon in the plentitude of his dominion: �Good servant that thou art!� (Qur'an: 38:29; 44) When God�s pleasure accomplished, it made no difference between the poverty and the wealth of Solomon. |
| Both poverty and wealth are Divine gifts: wealth is corrupted by forgetfulness, poverty by covetousness. |
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