496 Notice of the Tenets held by [Nov. 



posed that they in some degree did from the reputation which this 

 fanatic generally acquired. The aim of the whole to serve his object of 

 establishing a claim to a high mission, and attracting followers, is very 

 obvious; but the familiarity with which his alleged intercourse with 

 the Deity is spoken of would, to our notions, indicate rather a near ap- 

 proach to irreverence than the excess of devotional awe, which is 

 inculcated throughout this treatise. The names which occur of the 

 three £ufi schools, the Kadiria, the Chishtia, and Nakshbandia, have 

 been already explained. 



" Let it be known," says Mohammed Ismael, i( that all the perfec- 

 tions of the Tariq inabuwat were implanted from his birth in the nature 

 of this holy man, as evidenced by the delight which he took in the ex- 

 ercises of piety, and practice of virtue from his childhood. At length, 

 when he was admitted into the society of the venerated Shekh Abddl 

 Aziz, (who received him as a disciple into the Nakshbandia school,) by 

 the propitious effects and influence* of the enlightened spirit of his in- 

 structor, the concealed excellencies of his nature developed themselves in 

 a rapid succession of wonders. Of these, the first was that he saw the 

 Prophet himself in a dream, who fed him with three dates in succession, 

 which circumstance he knew to be true by the effect which he found to 

 be remaining (on his palate, it is to be supposed) when he awoke. 

 This was the commencement of his progress in the Tariq i nabuwat. 

 A further eminent advance in it was gained by him from the follow- 

 ing event : In another dream, he saw the sainted Ali and the holy 

 daughter of the Prophet, Fatima — when the former bathed him with 

 his own sacred hands, and washed him carefully, as parents wash their 

 children, and the latter clothed him in garments of exceeding richness. 

 On this the favour and acceptance, which had been set apart for him 

 from eternity, became directly visible, and he was taken under the 



he founded his claim as the head of a new school and sect. The genealogical tree 

 of his religious family, a copy of which, like other religious teachers, he consigned 

 to each of his disciples, contains statements of his communications with the Deity 

 and with the spirits of saints, similar to those of the passage here translated. It 

 gives also the names of the different Pirs of each religious stock in which he pro- 

 fessed initiation, up to their respective founders : his claims heing thus of two 

 kinds, one of direct communication from the spirits of the several saints, the other 

 of initiation in the ordinary mode. 



* The words are " Barakat i tawajjuhat." " Tawajjuh" is used in the passage 

 in a technical Sufi meaning, implying the devotion by a teacher of all the contem- 

 plative powers of his mind to the object of communicating his own illuminations 

 to his disciple, which it is supposed that he has the faculty of doing. 



