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His saying, the Exalted: 'O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you (183/al-Baqara).' And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: 'Fasting is Mine, and I reward for it.' Fasting is Mine, and I am most worthy to reward it; because it is a secret act of worship that has no connection with outward appearance, and no one other than God has any share in it, and its reward is infinite. And they have said: 'The creatures' entry into Paradise is by [God's] mercy, their rank by worship, and their eternal abiding by the reward of fasting; because God said: I reward for it.' Junayd said, may God be pleased with him: 'Fasting is half of the Path (tariqa). To keep the fast is half of the mystic path.' And I have seen among the shaykhs those who kept a continuous fast, and I have seen those who fasted only during the month of Ramadan. The former was for seeking reward, and the latter for abandoning [one's own] choice and [avoiding] hypocrisy. And I saw those who fasted such that no one knew of it, and when food was brought before them they ate; and this is more in accordance with the Sunna. And it has come from Aisha and Hafsa, may God be pleased with them: When the Prophet came in to them, they said: 'We have hidden for you some hays [a sweet dish].' He, peace be upon him, said: 'Indeed I intended to fast, but bring it near; I will fast a fast in its place.' And I saw that they kept the White Days (ayyam al-bid) and the blessed tenth-days, and they kept [the fasts of] Rajab, Sha'ban, and the month of Ramadan; and I saw that they kept the fast of David, God's blessings upon him, of which the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: 'the best of fasts,' and that was fasting one day and breaking the fast one day. Once I came in to Shaykh Ahmad Najjar, God's mercy upon him, and a tray of sweets was placed before him and he was eating; he gestured to me [to eat]. I, by the habit of my youth, said: 'I am fasting.' He said: 'Why?' I said: 'In conformity with such-and-such a person.' He said: 'Conformity of a creature to a creature is not proper.' I resolved to break my fast. He said: 'O young man, you dissociate yourself from conformity with him, so do not conform with me either; for I too am a creature, and these two are one and the same.' And the reality of fasting is abstinence (imsak), and the whole Path is contained within it, and the lowest degree in fasting is hunger. 'And hunger is God's food on earth.' And hunger is praised in all tongues among people, both by the Law and by reason. So the obligation of fasting is one month upon the sane, adult, Muslim, healthy, resident person, and its beginning is from the sighting of the crescent of Ramadan, or the completion of the month of Sha'ban; and for each day a sound intention and a truthful condition are required. But abstinence has conditions: just as you keep the throat from food and drink, you must keep the eye from gazing at the forbidden and at lust, the ear from listening to idle amusement and backbiting, the tongue from speaking vanity and harm, and the body from following the world and from disobedience. Then this is fasting in reality; as the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said: 'When you fast, let your hearing, your sight, your tongue, and your hand fast'; and his saying, peace be upon him: 'Many a faster has nothing from his fasting but hunger and thirst.' Many a faster, in the supposition of fasting, has [only] been hungry and thirsty. And I, who am Ali ibn Uthman al-Jullabi, saw the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in a dream. I said: 'O Messenger of God, counsel me.' He said: 'Restrain your senses.' To restrain one's senses is the whole of spiritual struggle (mujahada); because the acquisition of the totality of knowledge comes through these five gates: one is seeing, another hearing, the third tasting, the fourth smelling, the fifth touching. And these five senses are the commanders of the army of knowledge and reason. Four of them have a specific location, and one is spread throughout the whole body. The eye is the seat of sight, and that is the seeing of being and color; the ear is the seat of hearing, and that is the hearing of report and sound; the palate is the seat of taste, and that is tasting; the nose is the seat of smell, and that is smelling. Touch has no [single] specific location, for it is spread throughout all the limbs, and it is the knowing of softness and roughness, heat and cold. And there is nothing among the sciences that becomes known to man except that its acquisition is through these five gates—save the self-evident and the inspiration of God, the Exalted, and in that no defect is possible. And in each gate of the five senses there is purity and turbidity; just as reason, knowledge, and the spirit have passage and scope in it, so too the carnal soul (nafs) and desire (hawa) have scope; for this instrument is shared between obedience and disobedience, felicity and wretchedness. So the guardianship of God in hearing and sight is the seeing and hearing of good, and that of the nafs is the hearing of falsehood and the gaze of lust; and in touch, taste, and smell [the guardianship of God] is conformity to the [divine] command and following it, while that of the nafs is opposition to the command of the Law. So the faster must fetter all these senses from disobedience, that he may be a [true] faster. And fasting from food and drink is the work of children and old women. Fasting must be from [wrong] refuge, drink, and escape; as God, the Exalted, said: 'And We did not make them bodies that did not eat food (8/al-Anbiya),' and He also said, majestic is His majesty: 'Did you then think that We created you in vain (115/al-Mu'minun)?' We made the natural [being] in need of food, and We did not create the creatures for play. So abstinence must be from idle amusement and the forbidden, not from eating the lawful. I marvel at one who says 'I keep a voluntary fast' and abandons the obligatory; for not committing sin is obligatory, and keeping a continuous fast is [merely] Sunna. So we take refuge in God from hardness of heart. And when someone has protection (isma) from sin, all his states are fasting. For Sahl ibn Abdullah al-Tustari, may God be pleased with him, was fasting on the day he was born of his mother, and was fasting on the day he departed [this world]. They said: 'How can this be?' He said: 'On the day of his birth it was morning-time, and until the evening prayer he drank no milk; and when he departed the world he was fasting.' And this narration is related by Abu Talha al-Maliki, may God be pleased with him. But concerning the continuous fast (sawm al-wisal) a prohibition has come from the Prophet, peace be upon him; for when he practiced wisal, the Companions also conformed with him. He said: 'Do not practice wisal. Indeed I am not like any of you; I pass the night with my Lord, He feeds me and gives me drink.' [That is:] 'I am not like you; every night food and drink are brought to me from God the Exalted.' So the masters of spiritual struggle said: 'This prohibition is [one of] compassion, not [one of] legal prohibition,' and a group said: 'To practice wisal is contrary to the Sunna.' But in reality wisal is itself impossible; because when the day passes, the night is not [a time of] fasting, and since the contract of fasting is not tied to the night, there is no wisal. And it is related of Sahl ibn Abdullah that he ate food once every fifteen days, and when it was the month of Ramadan he ate nothing until the Eid, and every night he performed four hundred rak'as of prayer. Now this is beyond the possibility of human endurance and cannot be done except by divine drink (mashrab), and that is a [divine] support that becomes the very substance of his nourishment. For one, nourishment is the food of the world, and for another it is the support of the Lord. And it is confirmed of Shaykh Abu Nasr al-Sarraj, the Peacock of the Poor, author of the Luma', that he came to Baghdad in the month of Ramadan. In the Shuniziyya mosque they gave him a room for seclusion and entrusted to him the leading of the dervishes. Until the Eid he led our companions in prayer and in the Tarawih completed the Qur'an five times. Every night the servant placed a loaf of bread in the door of his room. When the day of Eid came, he, may God be pleased with him, departed; the servant looked, and all thirty loaves were in their place. And Ali ibn Bakkar relates: 'I saw Hafs al-Massisi in the month of Ramadan eat nothing except on the fifteenth day.' And it is related of Ibrahim ibn Adham that from the beginning to the end of the month of Ramadan he ate nothing—and it was the month of Tammuz [midsummer]—each day he reaped wheat as a hired laborer, and whatever he received he gave to the dervishes, and all night until morning he prayed. They watched him: he neither ate nor slept. And it comes from Shaykh Abu Abdullah ibn Khafif, God's mercy upon him, that when he departed the world he had kept forty successive forty-day retreats (chilla). And I saw an old man who kept two forty-day retreats every year. And the scholar Abu Muhammad al-Bathaghari—when he departed the world I was present there—it had been eighty days that he had eaten nothing, and not one of his prayers was missed from the congregation. There was a dervish among the later ones who had eaten nothing for eighty days, and not one of his prayers was missed from the congregation. In Merv there were two elders: one named Mas'ud, and one Shaykh Abu Ali Siyah. He said: Mas'ud sent to him someone [saying]: ...