Original content

English translation

But the condition of the patched frocks (muraqqa'at) is that one make them for lightness and freedom; and since there is an original garment, wherever it tears one places a patch upon it. And the shaykhs — may God have mercy on them and be pleased with them — hold two opinions on this:

One group says: In sewing the patch, observing order is not a condition. One should draw the thread from wherever the needle brings out its head, and take no excessive pains in it.

Another group says: In sewing the patch, order and straightness are a condition, as is observing the quilting (tazrib) and taking pains over its straightness; for this practice is the practice of poverty (faqr), and the soundness of the practice is proof of the soundness of its origin.

And I, who am Ali ibn Uthman al-Jullabi — may God grant me success — asked the Shaykh of Shaykhs, Abu'l-Qasim al-Gurgani — may God be pleased with him — in Tus: 'What is the least a dervish must have so that he becomes worthy of the name of poverty?' He said: 'Three things are required, less than which will not suffice: one, that he know how to sew a patch straight; second, that he know how to hear a word straight; and third, that he know how to set a foot straight upon the ground.'

A group of the dervishes who were present with me when he said this — when we returned to the lodge, in each one's head a notion appeared, and they said: 'Poverty is just this.' Most of them hastened to sew patches well and set foot upon the ground, and each imagined: 'We know how to hear the words of the Path.' And because my heart's face was turned toward that master, I did not wish his words to fall to the ground. I said: 'Come, let each of us say something concerning this saying.' Each stated his own conception. When my turn came, I said: 'The straight patch is that which is sewn for poverty, not for adornment; for if you sew the patch for poverty, even if you sew it crookedly it is straight. And to hear a word straight is to hear it with [spiritual] state, not with egotism, and to deal with it in earnest, not in jest, and to comprehend it by living it, not by intellect. And the straight foot is that which is set upon the ground in ecstasy (wajd), not in play and by mere custom.' This very saying was reported to that master. He said: 'Ali has hit the mark; may God mend him.'

So the purpose of wearing the patched frock for this group is the lightening of the world's burden and sincerity of poverty toward God, the Exalted.

And it is related in sound traditions that Jesus son of Mary — peace be upon him — had a patched frock in which he was taken up to heaven. And one of the shaykhs said: I saw him in a dream wearing that woolen patched frock, and from every patch a light was gleaming. I said: 'O Messiah, what are these lights upon this garment of yours?' He said: 'These are the lights of my necessity; for every patch of it I have sewn out of a need. God — mighty and majestic — has turned every affliction He brought to my abasement into a light.'

And I also saw an old man of the People of Blame (Malamatiyya) in Transoxiana who would neither eat nor wear anything in which a person had a portion of pleasure. He ate things that people threw away, such as rotten greens, bitter gourd, spoiled carrots and the like; and he made his clothing from rags he gathered from the road and washed, and from them made a patched frock.

And I heard that in Marw al-Rud there was an old man of the later ones, of the masters of meanings, strong in [spiritual] state and of good conduct; from the many unaffected patches upon his prayer-rug and cap, the scorpion would breed its young in them.

And my shaykh — may God be pleased with him — for fifty-six years kept a single garment upon which he would place unaffected patches.

And in the tales of the Iraqis I found that there were two dervishes: one a man of contemplation (mushahada) and the other a man of struggle (mujahada). The one never in his life wore anything but those patches that had become a frock in the audition (samaʿ) of the dervishes; and this one who was the man of struggle never wore anything but those patches that had become a frock in a state of seeking forgiveness when a sin had been committed — so that their outward conformed to their inward, and this is the preserving of [spiritual] state.

And Shaykh Muhammad ibn Khafif — may God be pleased with him — for twenty years wore a coarse woolen garment, and every year kept four forty-day retreats, and in each forty days composed a treatise on the subtleties of the sciences of realities. In his time there was an old man among the verifiers of the scholars of the Path, who dwelt at Park in Fars; they called him Muhammad Zakariyya. He never wore a patched frock. They asked Shaykh Muhammad: 'What is the condition of the patched frock, and to whom is keeping it permitted?' He said: 'The condition of the patched frock is that which Muhammad Zakariyya fulfills within a white shirt, and keeping it is permitted to him.'