He had been a wool-carder — hallaj means carder of cotton, the occupation of his father — before he became the most controversial mystic in the history of Islam. He had studied under the great Sufi masters. He had made the pilgrimage to Mecca three times. He had spent years in solitary retreat.
And then he began to walk through the streets of Baghdad saying what he had experienced rather than what was acceptable to say about what he had experienced.
Ana'l Haqq. I am the Truth. Al-Haqq is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam. He was saying: I am God.
The theologians' reading: this is the most extreme blasphemy available. A human being claiming to be God is the assertion of the small against the infinite, the created claiming to be the creator. It is the sin of pride in its absolute form.
The mystics' reading: this is the most precise theological statement available. Al-Hallaj has arrived at the recognition that the Upanishads called Tat Tvam Asi — that thou art — that the individual consciousness and the universal Consciousness are not ultimately separate. He is not saying the small self is God. He is saying that what he discovered he was, beneath all the accumulated constructions of selfhood, was the Truth that the word God points at. He could not say this without the language he had, and the language he had was I am the Truth.
The Abbasid caliphate executed him in 922 CE after eleven years of imprisonment. The execution was elaborate — flogging, mutilation, crucifixion, beheading, the body burned and the ashes thrown in the Tigris.
He went through all of it laughing.
His student Shibli threw a rose at him from the crowd as he was being flogged. Al-Hallaj winced. His companions were astonished — he had endured the flogging without flinching but the rose made him wince? He said: they do not know what they do. But Shibli knows. And the blow from the friend who knows is more painful than the blow from the enemy who does not. His last prayer on the gallows, recorded by his son: And these thy servants who are gathered to slay me, in zeal for thy religion and in desire to win thy favour — forgive them, O Lord, and have mercy upon them. For verily if thou hadst revealed to them what thou hast revealed to me, they would not have done what they have done. He was not performing forgiveness. He was being accurate: if they knew what he knew, they would not be doing what they were doing. The execution was a misunderstanding. He forgave the misunderstanding.
His ashes were thrown in the river. His words were not thrown in the river. Every major Sufi poet after him — Rumi, Hafiz, Attar — returned to the cry. The tradition carried it forward because it was true, because it described something that the mystics who came after him had also encountered and for which Al-Hallaj's cry was the only available language.
Ana'l Haqq. I am the Truth. Not the small self with its particular history and specific needs and accumulated grievances. The awareness that was present before the first thought and will be present after the last. That. That is the Truth. That is what he was saying.
The execution could not reach it.