Looking beyond the Obvious

UNDER the biographical note of Qazi Abu Yusuf (738-798), noted historian Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (1002-1077) in his book Tarikhe-Baghdad (History of Baghdad) writes a first-person account of Abu Yusuf: My father Abraham ibn Habib died. My mother put me to serve a washerman. I would often skip going to the washerman and went to attend the academic discourse of Imam Abu Hanifa (699-767).

I studied Hadith and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) there. Whenever mother came to know about my discursions, she would grab my hands and pulled me to the washerman. When this became frequent, my mother was greatly aggrieved.

She met Imam Abu Hanifa and said, “You are the sole reason my son is getting spoilt. He is an orphan boy. He doesn’t possess anything. I make my ends meet by working on a spinning wheel. I wish my son could learn something practical so that he might earn his bread and butter.” Imam Abu Hanifa said to my mother, “The knowledge he is acquiring will earn him pistachio faloodah (porridge)." My mother went back saying, “It seems that old age has diminished your intellect.”

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The profound truths are discerned by a person who surpasses visible phenomena. Distant objects can be seen only when our gaze is diverted from the objects near and apparent.

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Imam Abu Yusuf says, “Imam Abu Hanifa helped me financially and I continued to learn from teaching classes. I became so well-grounded in Islamic jurisprudence that the Abbasid government appointed me to the position of Qazi. Now I began to sit in the company of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (763-809). I would partake of food with him. One day, I was offered pistachio porridge. Harun alRashid asked me to eat it. I asked: O leader of the faithful, what is it? He replied, “This is a pistachio porridge.” Upon hearing this, I started laughing. The Caliph asked, “Why do you laugh?” I related to him my story from beginning to end.

The story surprised Harun al-Rashid greatly. He said, "I swear by the life I possess, knowledge elevates a person and benefits him in this world and in the Hereafter. May God bless Abu Hanifa, he could see with the eyes of his intellect those things that others failed to see with the eyes on their heads."

God has blessed human beings with two beautiful eyes with which they see all things. However, man sees only external things with the help of these eyes. To see things which are hidden and internal, man needs another set of eyes. This is the eye of reason or intellect. Looking at things using just the eyes on one’s head is akin to looking at the lid of a machine without understanding the parts of the machine.

Such a superficial vision is just fractionally better than not seeing. The old woman could only see his boy to be a good apprentice to the washerman in the future because she used only her physical eyes. The same young man was seen by another person who possessed the eyes of the intellect as one who would counsel kings.

How can one attain this eye of the intellect? The answer is very simple. To develop this eye, a person needs to rise above the superficial observation. The facts lie behind the visible phenomena. Therefore, the profound truths are discerned by a person who surpasses visible phenomena. Distant objects can be seen only when our gaze is diverted from the objects near and apparent. Similarly, profound truths are seen when we rise above the superficialities. The one who is lost in the visible form of the objects cannot look at their inner value.