Abu al-Abbas al-Shaqqani framed the whole Sufi path in terms of fana (the annihilation of the self in God), but voiced this doctrine in a deliberately obscure, tightly-knotted idiom (ebarat-e moghlaq) that was uniquely his own. Hujwiri, who counted him a close companion and one of his own teachers, records that a group of unlearned followers imitated this idiom and took up his shathiyat (ecstatic, paradoxical utterances) without grasping their meaning. His warning is that imitation (taqlid) is already blameworthy at the level of meaning, and far more so at the level of bare expression: borrowing a master's words is no substitute for attaining his state. Hujwiri adds that, for all his cryptic language, al-Shaqqani venerated the sacred Law (shari'a) more than anyone he had met, showing that inward annihilation and outward observance were not in conflict.