Divine Exhalation: On Breath and the Shadhili Hadra

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. 

We created man out of dried clay, formed from dark mud. The jinn We created before, from the fire of scorching wind. Your Lord said to the angels, ‘I will create a mortal out of dried clay, formed from dark mud. When I have fashioned him and breathed My spirit into him, bow down before him,’ and the angels all did so. But not Iblis: he refused to bow down like the others. God said, ‘Iblis, why did you not bow down like the others?’ and he answered, ‘I will not bow to a mortal You created from dried clay, formed from dark mud.’ (Al-Hijr: 26–33)

Humankind is intrinsically and intimately linked to God through a Divine Exhalation. This is found in God’s description of the creation of Adam (peace be upon him), the first of prophetic- and humankind, as we see in the verses above. The Adamic man, in physical essence, is comprised of Earthly materiality. It was only when God Himself breathed His Own Spirit into this clay mould did the Adamic figure come to its essence. Unlike the Earthly mud that forms the body of Adamic man, the Adamic soul is of transcendental origin. Its essence is the very Ruh of God, the Divine Spirit itself. Like a flute that is unplayed, the Adamic man is dormant, only becoming Divine Sound when Allah’s Ruh flows through his lungs.  

In the Qur’an, the word for breath is nafas. This word is rooted to the term nafs, meaning the ego or the self – the self that desires and commands the soul to evil. Both are comprised of the trilateral root nun-fa-sin, signifying a relationship between the breath and the ego in the Islamic worldview. This relationship is also found in the becoming-sound event of the Adamic flute in the Qur’anic verse above. As the Adamic man is made to inhale the Divine Spirit, becoming actualised as humankind, Iblis emerges as the prideful, arrogant, jealous disobeyer. The would-be leader of jinn-kind stood upright, refusing God’s command, unimpressed by Adamic corporeality. He questions God, perhaps wanting to be creation par excellence, the one God asks the angelic- and djinn-kind to prostate to instead. But God has other plans. And so, Iblis conjures up a plan of his own. The Qur’an tells us that at that moment Iblis promised God he will lead all Adamic kind astray, saying, 

‘… I will lure mankind on earth and put them in the wrong, all except Your devoted servants. (15:41) 

The Qur’an does not explain why Iblis had set himself on this path. Perhaps it was to prove to God that Adamic kind is unworthy of His Divine pedestalling, of His Divine Ruh. No matter how beautiful the music that Adam and his descendants may play, they are all still merely flutes of brittle composition when compared to his own fiery makeup. God was unperturbed. He replied, 

‘[Devotion] is a straight path to Me: you will have no power over My servants, only over the ones who go astray and follow you.’ (15:42) 

As I reflect on the idea of Cosmic Breath – Joe Namy’s sound installation currently on show at Ibraaz – I am drawn to the Qur’anic verses above. I am also reminded of the Sufis from the Shadhili order, with whom I spent a considerable amount of time with what would eventually become the main topic of my PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Cambridge.1 Over the course of four years, I observed them in their gatherings so I could understand what breath meant to them and how the sound of breath they produced heightened their spiritual states.  

For the Shadhilis, breath is also linked to the ego. In their spiritual practice, breathing is a method to tame the self that commands us to do evil (nafs al-ammarah). Breath is an instrument of self-purification through self-effacement. The breath I speak of here is not of the regular kind but one that is exaggerated, almost forceful. They exert this breath in a specific spiritual exercise they practice called the hadra.  

The hadra is part of the Shadhili gatherings of remembrance (majlis ad-dhikr) that occur on Thursday evenings, an auspicious night in Islam. To remember God is a foundational paradigm in Islamic theology. The Islamic view of ontology describes the human being ‘as one of forgetfulness’.2 Scholars also bring to attention that the Arabic word for ‘human’, insan, is derived from the word nisyan, which means ‘forgetfulness’. Unlike their Christian brethren who consider human nature to be rooted in sin, the condition of the Muslim soul is spiritual amnesia. The Malaysian philosopher of Islam Naquib Al-Attas, citing the Qur’an scholar ‘Abdullah Ibn Abbas, reiterates that the human being is called insan ‘because, having covenanted with God, he forgot (nasiya)’.3 Thus the human has forgotten God, and to worship God, or to be in a mindset of worship to God, is to first have Remembrance of God (Dhikrullah). As God says in the Qu’ran: 

‘Remember me, and I will remember you.’ (2:152) 

Dhikr can take many forms: from the repetition of simple supplication formulas, to quiet contemplation, to walking in nature while reflecting on the marvels of God’s creations. Dhikr can take place on any day and time: the objective being to create a God-consciousness (taqwa) in the Muslim. On top of these, those who have taken an oath to walk the Path of the Sufi typically engage in more elaborate forms of dhikr. Some of these practices can go on for hours and, in some instances, days.   

A typical Thursday night dhikr in a Shahdili zawiya (lodge) begins with the recitation of the Qur’an, followed by the recitation of mystical poems (qasidah) that set the stage for the hadra. The hadra has been described as a sacred dance.4 In this dance, Sufi adepts stand in a circle with hands clasped together, while moving rhythmically in unison to the qasidah. 

Engulfed in the dhikr soundscape, the participants would chant Ha on downbeats in a manner that is almost growl-like. The laboured breathing that conjoins the participants to the dhikr soundworld helps them to achieve an immersive experience, one where they are drawn out of themselves towards a total Remembrance of God. As one of the adepts explained to me: ‘The physical action of having to breathe in and throw everything out makes me feel like I’m demolishing everything about me: my ego, my thoughts, my physical being.’ 

The sound of this breath-chant is not actually pleasant. Neither is it meant to be. The sole purpose of it is to enact an intense Remembrance of God and to quieten the ego. As such, it can sound (and feel) intense – both for the listener and the participant.  

The purpose of the hadra is to ‘forget one’s individuality in the collective sea of spirits making dhikr in unison’.5 To forget oneself in the sea of spirits, to drown in it, is a known characteristic of the Shadhili hadra. It relates to the experience of immersing oneself in the Remembrance of God, described by Sufi sages as being in an ‘ocean without shore’. This metaphor refers to being immersed in the Remembrance of God without respite, until the point where one forgets one’s own desires. 

The Ha as an individual alphabet has no lexical meaning in the Arabic language. As a sound, it is a ‘glottal fricative sound’ that the Sufis regard as one of utmost importance when pronouncing the name of God.6 According to the Sufi mystic Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah Al-Iskandari, ‘the proper pronunciation of the letter ha [is] a necessary requirement of the invocation of Allah’ and if someone invokes God’s name, Allah, but does so in a way that they do not ‘pronounce the ha at the end properly as it ought to be, then he has not really invoked the Name at all’.7 In this way, the Ha can be regarded as the sound that qualifies the invocation of God’s name, Allah. 

The Ha as a fricative sound also encapsulates another aspect of its significance in the hadra: it is the sound of breathing, the sound mark between life and death. This symbolism is not lost amongst the Shadhilis because living and dying is directly incorporated into the meaning of the practice. As it was explained to me by one of the Shadhilis: 

Normally the beginner murid (student) would recite La illa ha illlah – there is no God but Allah. Then they progress to reciting just Allah, just remembering Him. And then the Sufis progress to Hu, which stands for He. By saying He, we forget all otherness. That is the point of that dhikr. And then there is the Ha, just the Ha. That is all that is left, the breath. The breath of mankind is what connects the soul to the physical self. Our breathing is evidence that we are living, that we are alive. In death, the Ha is the last sound we make.   

Throughout the lifecycle of Adamic kind, a countless number of Has are exhaled until at last, the Children of Adam exhale a Ha that passes their soul on from one life to the next. When I asked for further explanation of the sound of the Ha in the hadra, the Shadhili Sufis relayed to me that the purpose of participating in the hadra is to ‘culminate in a feeling of self-effacement and fana’ (annihilation). We want to bring about the ego’s death continually before we reach our death. To die before you die. We want to achieve fana’ before the fana’ al-akhbar (the greatest annihilation), which is your actual death.’ To die before you die, I learned, is a maxim expressed by the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) that the Shadhili take to mean ‘to know that you do not exist before you leave existence. Only Allah has true existence. Realise this before you leave existence.’  

For Sufis on the Shadhili path, the hadra reminds them that every breath, every exhaled Ha, is a preparation for the final exhale that Adamic kind will make before they return to their Lord. Adamic kind lives on borrowed time and borrowed breath, and with every inhale they take, they are always one exhale closer to their end, when their breath will be reunited with the Divine Ruh. As the Qur’an tells us,  

'every soul will taste death' (21:35).

Every Adamic flute will play a final note that will be an opening to the next world where all will face the Great Flute Maker. With every breath in between, Adamic kind reckons with the Devil who made a vow to God over his petty disapproval of the first Adamic breath. With every Ha in the hadra, the Shadhili Sufi takes a stance against the Devil, breath by breath, before their souls are separated from their Earthen bodies. While they are among the living, their egos are contested by the devil. Aware of their own susceptibility to the Devil’s Whispers, they breathe loudly to drown themselves in the sound of Remembrance before they float once more in the Ocean of Souls at the greatest annihilation. In this constant Struggle, every breath in the hadra is a step on God’s Straight Path. Every breath is Divine. Every breath is Cosmic.