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Gnostic Chants of North Africa
by Prof. Ephraim Weinherz,
Coordinator of the Harvard Commission on the Wadi al-'Irfan Texts
During the first weeks after the discovery of the ruins at Wadi al-'Irfan
in southern Morocco in January, 2000, it became clear that the texts
found there were of far-reaching significance. To say the least, the
mere juxtaposition of scriptures in Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin,
and Greek was most surprising especially for a dervish monastic
library in such a remote region.
In the months following the archeological excavations by Prof. Hafiz
Abdul Wajid and his team, studies of photocopies of these texts by
specialists from all over the world have established beyond any
reasonable doubt that the Wadi al-'Irfan materials, though not as
old, are at least as startling in their implications as those of the
Dead Sea, or the Nag Hammadi sites. But I am happy to be able to
point out that this Moroccan discovery has been spared the fate of
the previous two: years indeed, decades of concealment from the
general public by misguided authorities who allowed themselves to be
swayed by a mixture of scholarly territorialism and religious
politics. My esteemed colleague, Prof. Wajid, is to be congratulated
for swiftly making photocopies of all the Wadi al-'Irfan material
available to scholars worldwide. This was proof not only of the
extraordinary professional skill of his archeological team, but of
his own courage as well. Exactly as in the case of the Nag Hammadi
and Dead Sea discoveries, certain powerful influences would have
preferred that this material be restricted only to a tiny scholarly
elite for an indeterminate period but Dr. Wajid was bold and
resourceful in his refusal to bow to such influences. Over the
course of the last year, beginning with our work at Harvard,
numerous translations and commentaries have become publicly
available. Recently, several Internet sites have appeared where
these may be consulted and downloaded in multilingual versions.
We now know that this community housed at least 300 persons in a
location which in those days was a large, verdant, and flourishing
agricultural oasis, before climatic changes and shifting sands
reduced it to barren and almost featureless desert. Who were the
original custodians of this remote library, this singular treasury
of scriptures, hymns and poems in all the liturgical languages of
the Middle East and Europe? Before attempting to answer this
difficult question, let us consider the general nature and dating of
these texts.
Most of them are chants, many with musical notations of one kind or
another. All of them are based on various canonical, as well as
non-canonical, writings from the Judaic, Christian and Islamic
traditions. The oldest of the manuscripts the Hebrew scroll and
Aramaic fragments date from the first century of the Common Era.
This is very old indeed, especially when we consider that the Hebrew
scroll may have been copied from older versions, perhaps reaching
back to Old Testament times. A few Latin and Greek chant manuscripts
date from the 8th century, which make them the oldest originals yet
discovered of their type. The remaining majority (a total of
fourteen codices and thirty-seven fragments and letters) are more
recent no older than the 10th to 12th centuries, C.E., with a
small group of the latter (mostly correspondence) of even later
date. Yet these also point to much older originals, reaching in some
cases back to the middle of the first century, C.E.
It is unlikely that the site was established before the 10th
century, and the overall evidence enables us to confidently place
the inhabitants of Wadi al-'Irfan in the period of the Western
Ummayad dynasty. Several pieces of correspondence in Arabic
referring to the court of Caliph Abd er-Rahman of Cordoba prove that
they had links to al-Andaluz. But even without this evidence, the
multi-cultural, polyglot, ecumenical spirit of the texts would
suggest such a link. Where else in the medieval world was there such
a high degree of confluence of the three great Abrahamic religious
currents, in an atmosphere of tolerance and lively exchange? No
outside confirmations of this important link between Cordoba and
Wadi al-'Irfan have yet come to light, at least as far as we know.
But the hypothesis of Cordoba as the origin and cultural matrix of
this ecumenical desert community certainly imposes itself, at least
for the present. Assuming this to be the case (as most specialists
provisionally do), we may begin to formulate some notions of who
these people were, based on the evidence of the texts themselves.
They were certainly a group composed of many different ethnic and
racial origins, and their religious beliefs and practices reflected
an intermingling of the streams of the three great Abrahamic
religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This of course evokes
the atmosphere of mutual tolerance and freedom of religion which
prevailed in Cordoba. But unlike the intermingling of the streams in
Andalucia, where the three religions remained very distinct from
each other, it is certain that at Wadi al-'Irfan they were blended
together into what amounts to a common liturgical practice.
Perhaps just as unusual was the presence of women in the community.
Though no one disputes the overwhelming evidence for this, there is
at present considerable scholarly disagreement as to their relative
numbers, as well as their role and status. Hypotheses vary widely:
from that of very small numbers of women whose roles were restricted
to those of servants and/or wives of sheikhs; to the other extreme,
which interprets certain evidence as indicating large numbers of
women, and their full and equal participation in ritual (even as
officiants) and their co-habitation on an equal basis with the men
something which would have been outlandish in any social context of
that era (though, as its proponents point out, no more outlandish
than the explicit content of many of the texts themselves). Pending
fuller studies and greater scholarly consensus, it would be prudent
to avoid both extremes for now, and simply note that women played an
important role here, though we cannot yet specify exactly what it
was.
What we do know is that this was a kind of pan-Abrahamic religious
community who lived, studied, prayed and chanted together in Arabic,
Hebrew, Latin, Greek and to some extent in Aramaic. Besides these
major languages, there also appear brief passages in a surprising
variety of vernacular tongues, ranging from Spanish dialect to
Provençal and even Gaelic, as well as Berber and other African
vernaculars as far-flung as Yoruba, which indicates important
commerce with sub-Saharan peoples.
This was an astonishingly cosmopolitan desert retreat, indeed, and
one must wonder whether there were others like it. It is hard to see
how such a phenomenon could have arisen in this remote place without
substantial ongoing support from Andalucian civilization, probably
through the medium of travelling dervish brotherhoods. Various
documents leave no doubt that the inhabitants of Wadi al-'Irfan
formally regarded themselves as pious Muslims. Can this be taken at
face-value, or was it simply an adaptation to the social climate of
the Maghreb? As far as one can judge, they were quite sincere in
this profession of faith, though of course they also professed to be
Jews and Christians. Certainly this was a branch of Islam of an
ecumenism without parallel in any other time or place as far as we
know. Is it possible that other such centers existed? A Celtic cross
inscribed with the opening words of the Qur'an has been found there,
and this is an almost perfect duplicate of another famous cross of
this type from 9th-century Ireland. The nature of the connection
between the two (and surely there must be one) is a question for
future research.
Leaving aside any theological problems for now, how were these
people able to construct a liturgy which made sense, given so many
different languages? From the evidence of the three hundred or so
chants themselves, it would seem that this variety of tongues was
something which they not only allowed, but positively welcomed and
savored. As well as monolingual chants in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek,
Latin, and Arabic, there are many chants which combine these
liturgical languages in almost every possible permutation.
With the exception of the older texts, which employ a hitherto
unknown musical notation, the majority of the chants employ a
European system of neumes similar to that of St.-Galle (with staff
notes appearing in later editions), which is most often associated
with so-called "Gregorian" chant. However, preliminary findings by
musicologists who are still examining these manuscripts (the
earliest of which predate all existing European chant manuscripts)
show differences as well as strong similarities with Gregorian
chant. Dr. Marie-Madeleine Masihi, chief musical consultant on our
Harvard committee, assures us that the "eastern" flavor of these
variants, as compared to most Carolingian and Roman chants, is not
really eastern at all, but an indication that the Latin Wadi al-'Irfan
chants are actually closer to the original, unknown source of the
chant which later came to be known as "Gregorian" (mostly because of
religious politics of the Carolingian era). It is important to note
that even the Arabic chants, as well as many of those in Hebrew,
Aramaic, and Greek, were written in this Western European notatation.
This is highly significant, for it indicates something far beyond a
mere mixing of traditions. It means that this was a concerted,
cooperative effort to construct a new pan-Abrahamic liturgy yet
one which preserved very ancient elements, some of which had been
neglected or suppressed by mainstream traditions. The use of
European notation is primarily a reflection of its flexibility and
practicality. It does not indicate any dominant influence of
European music or texts per se. Besides, as Dr. Masihi points out,
European music had not yet begun its concentration on vertical
harmony and polyphony, so that the notion of "Western" vs. "Eastern"
music had no meaning in this era.
The Content of the Chants and Hymns
This brings us to the most controversial aspect of the Wadi al-'Irfan
texts: the presence of heterodox material, often inserted into known
scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. This material is very
frequently of a nature which would surely have been regarded as
heretical by the vast majority of Jews and Christians of that era
or of today, for that matter. The Islamic texts, however, are by
contrast essentially in accord with both the Qur'an and the Hadith.
Some might interpret this as a sign of caution with regard to the
reigning religious and political climate in which this community
existed. But it could also simply reflect the relatively solid
scriptural consensus of this youngest branch of Abrahamic religion,
whether or not one accepts Islamic claims that the Qur'an has never
been edited since it was uttered by the Prophet Mohammed, and that
Judaic and Christian scriptures have been extensively altered and
corrupted. In any case, the nature of the apocrypha leaves no doubt
whatsoever that we are dealing, not with a heresy concocted in the
10th century, but with an older tradition which is directly
descended from the ferment of gnostic writings and sects in the
Eastern Mediterranean in the centuries just before and after the
time of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the most striking confirmation of this is a group of chants
and hymns in the original Greek, taken from the Gospel of Thomas.
Although brief, they are many times longer and more complete than
the Oxyrhynchus fragments, and provide an invaluable comparison with
the later Coptic version of the text from Nag Hammadi. In spite of
the 8th-century, C.E., dating of these manuscripts, there is no
serious doubt as to their authenticity. It is thought that the full
Greek copy of the Thomas Gospel from which they are extracted dates
back to the middle part of the first century, and there is some hope
that it may yet be found in further excavations of the ruins.
Even more heterodox, and highly significant for comparative
religious studies, is the singular Hebrew version of the Shiri ha-Shirim,
or Song of Songs. The later Latin version is mostly a translation of
the Hebrew, dating from the 12th century C.E., with some surprising
interpolations in Yoruba dialect. At first glance this association
of Hebrew and Yoruba seems odd, to say the least. Yet mythographers
have found it especially exciting in the light of the recent
archaeological discovery by Dr. Patrick Darling (spring, 1999; see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/607382.stm or search:
Nigeria + pyramids) of vast earthenwork pyramids in Nigeria, and the
associated legend of the Queen of Sheba as of West African origin,
identified with the ancient Yoruba Queen, Bilikisu Sungbo. But our
Hebrew scroll is much older, contemporary with some of the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Each of these chants (the Latin version longer, and with
different music) interposes passages from the Book of Kings, which
yields a highly heretical reading of the Old Testament. If we are to
take these texts and commentaries at face-value, then they would be
nothing less than a survival of lost, pre-Deuteronomist editions of
the Bible. Certainly this chant's fervent praise of Solomon for his
generosity in allowing the foreign gods of his wives to be
worshipped in the Temple, is totally at odds with the canonical
Bible. But it could also be a later gnostic reaction, entirely in
keeping with the date of the scroll, as well as with the tolerant
ecumenism of its stewards in Wadi al-'Irfan. Be this as it may, the
impressive age of this Hebrew version at least shows that such
opposition has an ancient lineage, though obviously forced
underground over the centuries, to the point of virtual extinction
from the historical record.
In sum, the men and women of Wadi al-'Irfan formed a vigorous,
international community of gnostics who, in spite of their physical
isolation, were part of a vast and secret network which embraced the
entire Mediterranean, including parts of northern Europe and
sub-Saharan Africa. (I deliberately refrain from using the
capitalized term Gnostic, a problematic word at best, which
typically implies adherence to certain metaphysical doctrines which
are absent here.) That they were connected with Sufi orders is
certain. Indeed, it might not be too far-fetched to see them as
being a survival of some original gnostic impulse which later became
known as the Sufi way, or tasawwuf, under the protection of Islam.
Far from being an insular, alienated group of refugees from
orthodoxy, these were a highly resourceful, skilled, and educated
people who were not only able to maintain a thriving community, and
practice their heterodox religion in peace for centuries, but were
politically adept enough to obtain continuous protection from
Islamic authorities, despite several upheavals of regimes. There is
no evidence for their harboring armies or garrisons of any sort.
Apparently they were revered and protected by all neighboring
nomads, even those who were at war with each other.
How is it, then, that the mystics of Wadi al-'Irfan left so little
trace in the historical record? This question demands a much longer
discussion than is possible in the notes to a record album. But now
I shall allow the artists who have created this recording to answer
this question in their own way. Their way of answering it involves
speculations and risks which a scholar cannot afford to take yet
it is often these artistic risk-takers, historically accurate or
not, who suggest new directions for research.
A Note on the Making of this Recording
by Yusuf Malamati, Musical Consultant for the Credo project.
We wish to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Weinherz and Dr.
Masihi for their open-mindedness and support in making these texts
available to artists as well as scholars, as well as for their
patience and help in deciphering the complex and often cryptic
musical notations. We are also extremely grateful to Dr. Wajid for
allowing us to tour the site of Wadi al-'Irfan, a visit which had a
wonderful suprise in store for us.
Of course no one can ever really know how to interpret an ancient
music whose living practice and transmission from master to disciple
has been lost. Therefore one is faced with the choice between a
cautious, dry, museum-like approach; or a bolder and riskier one
where one hopes to be guided by creative inspiration in a kind of
artistic communion with this lost civilization. Rather than trying
to reproduce the past, we seek to become contemporary vehicles of
the spirit and soul of this past.
In choosing the latter course, we stumbled upon a very unexpected
source of help in the Wadi al-'Irfan region itself. While camped as
guests of the Masmudi, we shared our project in a very open way with
them and other tribal peoples with whom we came in contact. We were
astonished at the response: they solemnly proposed to help us
interpret this music. At first we did not take this seriously, but
we soon changed our minds. Even though ignorant of the content of
the texts, or of any facts regarding the ancient gnostics and their
beliefs, it turned out that these people have an old body of
legends, proverbs, and musical traditions regarding Wadi al-'Irfan,
which they consider to be a holy site. To our amazement, some of
their songs (very special ones which they normally never share with
outsiders) showed distinct musical echoes of the very chants we had
been working on! Furthermore, the proverbs and legends contained
much useful material and food for thought.
Who would have suspected it? Right under the noses of a team of
international experts excavating and puzzling excitedly over the
ruins of Wadi al-'Irfan, were living a people (a few of their young
men even worked as laborers on the project) whose oral traditions
would provide an unexpected piece of the puzzle.
But there is no space here to go into further detail. On behalf of
everyone who worked so hard on this creative research, I want to
express our deepest thanks to the many clans of the Masmudi, for
their generous aid and hospitality. As to the mystery of how it is
that the gnostics of Wadi al-'Irfan appeared and disappeared,
seemingly leaving no traces on history, I would like to close by
offering a Masmudi proverb in answer to this: "Wadi al-'Irfan is not
a dry river, but an invisible one. Its source is in your heart."
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[Those who are knowledgeable about Middle-Eastern religions may
already have suspected that the above essay is fictional. But notice
the effect on yourself as you were reading it. Did you perhaps feel
that it could be true, or even "should" be true, perhaps in spite of
your justifiable skepticism? That feeling of openness, of suspending
one's most deeply-held notions of "history", is the key to the
nature of writings (like those of Borges, Gurdjieff, or Idries
Shah) which explore the boundary between fiction and "faction". Holy
scriptures also fall into this category. It is a category which
typically scandalizes the modern, rationalist mind, which demands a
dualistic separation between fiction and faction. Such a mind places
the label of "fraud" upon the editors/scribes of gospels, upon the
likes of Castaneda, Shah, Gurdjieff, and perhaps upon the author of
the above essay as well. In doing so, this kind of thinking entirely
misses the point. It is a mind-set which is capable of being playful
only on officially approved playgrounds.
A final note: when we presented this essay to several Arab friends,
they were convinced that something like Wadi al-Irfan did exist, in
spite of being told it was a fiction. One sufi friend from Morocco
even said he had heard a legend which specified its location! Also, the pyramids in Africa and the
legend of the Nigerian Queen Sheba are very much a part of the
consensus-reality --- curiously, this was only made public after
this essay and the version of Solomon on the CD had already been
written. Indeed, life imitates art.]
[© 2000, Joseph Rowe] |
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Scripture page 1
Scripture page 2
Credo CD Notes
Bibliography |
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