Table Of ContentSPIRITUAL PATH,
SPIRITUAL REALITY
SPIRITUAL PATH,
SPIRITUAL REALITY
Selected Writings
of Shaykh Yusuf of Macassar
EDITORS
YOUSUF DADOO
AND
AUWAIS RAFUDEEN
First published 2023
by Routledge
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Print edition not for sale in Africa
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032433929 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032433936 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003367086 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003367086
Typeset in Times New Roman
by UNISA Press, South Africa
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors viii
Foreword ix
1 Introduction: The worldview of Shaykh Yusuf 1
Auwais Rafudeen
Translations
2 Providential gift: A breeze from Ceylon (Al Nafḥat al-Ṣaylānīyyah fi 23
l-Minḥat al- Raḥmānīyyah)
Yousuf Dadoo
3 The essence of secrets (Zubdat al-Asrār) 46
Suleman Dangor
4 Consolation for the eyes (Qurrat al-‘Ayn) 70
Yousuf Dadoo
5 Conditions of the verified gnostic (Shurūṭ al-‘Ārif al-Muḥaqqiq) 81
Suleman Dangor
6 The crown of secrets regarding gnostic realisation (Tāj al-Asrār fī taḥqīq 87
Mashārib al-‘Ārifīn)
Suleman Dangor
7 A gift regarding the virtues of remembrance (Tuḥfat al-Amr fī Faḍīlat al- 97
Dhikr)
Suleman Dangor
8 The goals of the spiritual wayfarers (Maṭālib al-Sālikīn) 101
Suleman Dangor
9 The secret of secrets (Sirr al-Asrār) 106
Suleman Dangor
10 The gift of goodness to the people of innermost secrets (Tuḥfat al-Abrār 120
li Ahl al-Asrār)
Ebrahiem Moos
11 The method of remembering God (Kayfīyyat al-Dhikr) 124
Ebrahiem Moos
12 A saving bequest (Waṣīyyah Munjīyyah) 126
Ebrahiem Moos
v
CONTENTS
13 The sequence of remembering God (Tartīb al-Dhikr) 131
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
14 The essential, indispensable existence (Wājib al-Wujūd) 141
Yousuf Dadoo
15 The specification of remembering God (Ikhtiṣāṣ al-Dhikr) 144
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
16 The meaning of existence (Ma‘nā al-Wujūd) 147
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
17 The meaning of the phrase “There is no god but God” (Ma‘nā Qaul 155
Lā ilāha illa llāh)
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
18 Twenty attributes (Ishrīn Ṣifah) 157
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
19 The reality of the soul (Ḥaqīqat al-Rūh̟) 162
Yousuf Dadoo and Auwais Rafudeen
20 The permanent archetypes (Al ‘Ayān al-Thābitah) 166
Muhammad Jaami and Auwais Rafudeen
Transcription of the Arabic originals 169
Nadia Sabah
Bibliography 233
Auwais Rafudeen, Muzdalifah Sahib and Yousuf Dadoo
Index 242
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This translation of selected writings of Shaykh Yusuf would not have been possible without
the support of the following people:
• The members of the Shaykh Yusuf Project team, both those directly involved in
these translations and transcriptions as well all those who provided the essential
support behind the scenes;
• Mawlana Ahmad Mukadam of Pretoria, who suggested the project and provided
invaluable leadership and guidance at all of its stages;
• Ms Muzdalifah Sahib, a descendant of Shaykh Yusuf, crucially provided the source
texts for this translation;
• The Muslim Education Institute Trust, together with al-Ghazali College, provided
the critical backing for the project. In this regard we would like to particularly
mention Mr Haroon Kalla, Mr Abdul Kader Kurtha and Mr Haroon Aziz for support
that went beyond the simply financial;
• Ms Nasreen Cassim helped considerably with crucial typing services;
• Mogamat Kamedien provided important bibliographical input, while Mufti Usman
Solehri and Mufti Abdul Hafeez Maturidi of Darul Uloom Pretoria helped scour the
sources for the less well known hadiths; and
• Professor Ismail Jaffer, chairperson of the Department of Religious Studies and
Arabic also provided support for the project at crucial stages. Our colleagues in this
department took a great interest in our project and for this we thank them.
We would also like to acknowledge the kind and efficient service provided by the Unisa
Press personnel which deserves special recognition. In this regard, we would like to make
particular mention of Mr Jack Chokwe, Ms Sharon Boshoff, Ms Thea Bester-Swanepoel,
Ms Monica Martins-Schuld and Ms Catherine Sehlodimela. Last, and certainly not least,
we would like to thank Ms Shakira Hoosain for her superb and expeditious copyediting
of this book. The language editing process would have been much poorer without her
meticulous oversight.
We would like to express our deepest appreciation to all of the above as well as to all
others who assisted and encouraged us with this project. The texts and images were sourced
from Leiden University Libraries’ Special Collections and we acknowledge the Library’s
role in preserving Shaykh Yusuf’s manuscripts. In particular, we would like to thank Dr
Arnoud Vrolijk, Curator of Oriental Manuscripts and Rare Books, Special Collections,
Leiden University Libraries, for his kind permission in this regard. The Special Collection
shelf mark for the images used is Or. 7025.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the warm generosity of Mr Shafiq Morton whose
superb photograph of Shaykh Yusuf's resting place in Cape Town adorns the cover .
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Yousuf Dadoo is Emeritus Professor at the University of South Africa (Unisa). He has
taught Arabic and Islamic Studies and has led the respective departments at Unisa for 29
years. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 publications and supervised more
than 30 masters and doctoral students.
Suleman Dangor is Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he
has taught Islamic Studies for 34 years. He has published widely on Islam in South Africa
and is especially known for his breakthrough research on the life and work of Shaykh
Yusuf.
Muhammad Jaami received his training in classical Islamic Sciences in his homeland of
Nigeria. He is currently an Imām and teacher of Islamic Sciences in Pretoria.
Ebrahim Moos is a lecturer in Arabic at the University of Cape Town. He has received
training in the traditional Islamic Sciences in Syria, Egypt and in Cape Town where
he is also a community Imām. He has also completed postgraduate research on Arabic
manuscripts in West Africa.
Auwais Rafudeen is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies and
Arabic at Unisa where he specialises in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He has published on
various aspects of Islam in South Africa.
Muzdalifah Sahib is a descendant of Shaykh Yusuf. She teaches at the State University
of Makassar, Indonesia. She has made seminal scholarly interventions regarding the life
and legacy of her famous forebearer.
Nadia Sabah is originally from Jordan. She is based in Pretoria and teaches Arabic.
viii
FOREWORD
Historical and spiritual continuity is one more casualty inside and outside the house of
Islam. The traditional stability of religions in general has increasingly come under strain
in our fast-changing world and the hyper-politicization of faith systems. We are globally
witnessing a move to the religious right and the rise of nationalist chauvinism. This new
faith-power nexus tends to displace preceding religious histories and spirituality.
One way of recovering such lost origins is via literary archaeology. This book is one
such attempt at finding and restoring an authentic, lived spiritual history. In this case it is
the history of South African Islam and its founding persons, places and things. Specifically,
it finds and translates the texts of one whom many would see as the father of Islam in South
Africa.
Biography and theology can combine to give us a clear insight into the type of history
and spirituality that was generated by the coming of Shaykh Yusuf to the Cape and that
was to leave a definitive impression on South Africa’s history and its Muslim community in
particular, from the 17th century to the present. Regarding the present, though, and as these
lines are being written, we are witnessing the vigorous establishment and institutionalisation
of more puritan forms of Islam at the Cape, in South Africa generally, and in the world as
a whole. Perhaps this translation and re-introduction of these texts authored by the pre-
eminent pioneer of Islam in South Africa, can remind those who lean towards puritanism
of the undiluted Sūnnī - Ṣūfī foundations of the religion in this country.
A vital contribution of this work then is to place into context and perspective the
aberration of puritanism and “militant” Islam, whose adherents have reduced a rich and
complex world religion to an instrument for narrow purposes, therefore helping to generate
the phenomenon of Islamophobia.
Shaykh Yusuf al-Maqassari is clearly an unapologetic Sūnnī - Ṣūfī believer, activist and
practitioner of a balanced Islam with an authentic history and spirituality. It is authentic
because it is sourced in the pure teachings of the Holy Prophet, the Salutations and Peace
of Allāh be upon him, and passed down through generations of pious Islamic scholars and
saints. Perhaps we should not exchange our old, proven lamps for new, more artificial ones!
In reality, it will be exchanging authenticity for its poor imitation, no matter how attractive
the latter may appear to be:
There will arise among you a people whose prayer will make your prayer look insignificant,
whose fasting will make your fasting look insignificant, and whose deeds will make your
deeds look insignificant. They will recite the Qur’an but it won’t pass beyond their throats (it
will not affect the heart and soul) and they will pass out of Islam like an arrow passes out of
a game animal… (Bukhari, Report No. 5058).
While Shaykh Yusuf, following Shaykh Muḥīyuddīn ibn ‘Arabī, is faithful to the philosophy
of Waḥdat al Wujūd (namely, the realisation that only Allāh is Necessarily Existent, all else
is His Fiat), he does not resort to fatalism. He is fully conscious that activism is itself part
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