Best 4 quotes of Annemarie Schimmel on MyQuotes

Attar knew—like Sana'i and Rumi—that this constant movement is not peculiar to the human soul; it goes through the whole created world (U 63). Endless periods of development are necessary before the one beautiful flower, the one Perfect Man, can come into existence—periods marked by the death and annihilation of hundreds of thousands of lower existences, which, in turn, may one day reach the state from which their upward movement can start (cf. MT 234), for Everyone's journey is toward his perfection— Everyone's proximity is according to his "state." (MT 232)

Every limb [of my body] sees him, even if he be absent from me, in every delicate, clear, joyous essence, In the tune of the melodious lute and flute when they blend together in trilling strains, And in luxurious pasturage of gazelles in the coolness of twilight and in the first rays of dawning, And in misty rains falling from a cloud on a carpet woven of flowers, And where the breeze sweeps her train, guiding to me most fragrant attar at sweet dawn, And when I kiss the lip of the cup, sipping the clear wine in pleasure and joy. I knew no estrangement from my homeland when he was with me: My mind was undisturbed where we were— That place was my home while my beloved was present; where the sloping dune appeared, that was my halting- place. (Ibn al-Fārid)

The metaphors that Sumnun the Lover used to express the ineffable experience of this love, of which he was only a fragile vessel, are not taken from the vocabulary of worldly love. Rather, they are perfectly chaste, lucid, almost immaterial: "I have separated my heart from this world— My heart and Thou are not separate. And when slumber closes my eyes, I find Thee between the eye and the lid." (A 10:310)

The sheikh of the Khalvati order in Istanbul, Sünbül Efendi, in looking for a successor, sent his disciples forth to get flowers to adorn the convent. All of them returned with large bunches of lovely flowers; only one of them—Merkez Efendi—came back with a small, withered plant. When asked why he did not bring anything worthy of his master, he answered: "I found all the flowers busy recollecting the Lord—how could I interrupt this constant prayer of theirs? I looked, and lo, one flower had finished its recollection. That one I brought." It was he who became the successor of Sünbül Efendi, and one of the cemeteries along the Byzantine wall of Istanbul still bears his name.