For many Muslim authorities, knowledge of the human heart is the key to knowledge of God, the macrocosm, and the
microcosm. As the rational soul in its full perfection, the heart is the goal of creation. Made in God's image, it embraces
all of reality. Only through the human heart can true equilibrium between God and the cosmos be established.
In the Koran and the Hadith
The Koran employs the term qalb (heart) 132 times, while employing near synonyms on several occasions. The root
meaning of the word is to overturn, return, go back and forth, change, fluctuate, undergo transformation. The Koran
uses a number of verbal forms from the same root in this meaning. It uses the term heart itself in a variety of senses, all
of which point to the heart's centrality in the human being. Taken together, the various Koranic uses of the term suggest
that the word's etymological senseturning, overturning, changingis not far in the background, since the heart is the locus
of good and evil, right and wrong. Both the people of faith and the unbelievers have hearts. But to provide a thorough
survey of the Koranic use of the term would take up far too much space. Instead I will attempt to classify the major
senses of the term, providing a small number of examples. In almost every case, hadiths confirm what is found in the
Koran.
Broadly speaking, the Koran pictures the heart as the locus of that which makes a human being human, the center of the
human personality. And since human beings ate intimately tied to God, this center of the person is the place where they
meet God. This meeting has both a cognitive and a moral dimension.
Since the heart is the true center of the person, God pays special attention to it and less attention to the actual deeds that
people do. "There is no fault in you if you make mistakes, but only in what your hearts premeditate" (33:5). "God will
not take you to task for a slip in your oaths; but He will take you to task for what your hearts have earned; and God is
Forgiving, Clement" (2:225; cf. 2:118, 8:70). A hadith tells us that, ''God looks not at your bodies OF your forms, but
He looks at your hearts." 1
Since the heart is the place where God looks, it is the key to hypocrisy, certainly the worst character trait in Muslim
eyes. "God knows what is in your hearts" (33:51). "The hypocrites are afraid, lest a sum should be sent down against
them, telling thee what is in their hearts" (9:64; cf. 3:154, 3:167, 9:64, 48:11).
The heart is the place where God reveals Himself to human beings. His presence is felt in the heart, and revelation
comes down into the hearts of the prophets. "Know that God comes in [yahul] between a man and his heart, and that to
Him you shall be mustered" (8:24). "[Gabriel] it was who brought [the Koran] down upon thy heart by the leave of God, confirming what was
before it, and for a guidance and a good tidings to those who have faith" (2:97). "It is a sending down by the Lord of the
worlds, brought down by the Faithful Spirit upon thy heart" (26:192-94). "His heart [fu'ad] lies not of what he saw;
what, will you dispute with him what he sees? And he saw him another time" (53:11-13). According to the hadith
authority Muslim, these verses refer to the Prophet's seeing Gabriel with the heart on two occasions. 2 According to Ibn
'Abbas, they mean that the Prophet saw God.3 Sufi authors frequently cite the hadith qudsi, "My heavens and My earth
embrace Me not, but the heart of My gentle and meek servant with faith does encompass Me.''
The heart is a place of vision, understanding, and remembrance (dhikr). "Upon the Day when the first blast shivers,...
hearts upon that day shall be athrob, and their eyes [i.e., the eyes of the hearts] shall be humbled" (79:8). "What, have
they not journeyed in the land? Have they no hearts to use intelligence or ears to hear with? It is not the eyes that are
blind, but blind are the hearts within the breasts" (22:46). "Surely We have laid coverings upon their hearts lest they
understand it, and in their ears heaviness" (18:57). "What, do they not ponder the Koran? Or is it that there are locks
upon their hearts?" (47:24). "Surely in that there is a reminder to him who has a heart, or will give ear while he is a
witness" (50:37). "Obey not him whose heart We have made forgetful of Our remembrance so that he follows his own
caprice, and his affair has become all excess" (18:28). "Whenever a new Remembrance comes to them from their Lord,
they listen to it in sport, their hearts neglectful" (21:2). "We have created for Gehenna many jinn and men; they have
hearts, but understand [fiqh] not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; they have ears, but hear not
with them. They are like cattle; no, they are even more misguided. Thosethey are the forgetful" (7:179). "Their valor is
great, among themselves; you think of them as a host, but their hearts are scattered. That is because they are people who
have no intelligence" (59:14). The Prophet said, "Verily God brings hearts to life through the light of wisdom."4 In
Bukhari, Iman 13 is called "The chapter on the words of the Prophet, 'I am the most knowledgeable of God among you'
and that knowledge [ma'rifa] is the act of the heart, because of God's words, 'But He will take you to task for what your
hearts have earned' [2:225]."
Faith grows up in the heart, while guidance turns the heart in the right direction. By the same token, the heart is the
place of doubt, denial, unbelief, and swerving from the right path. It is where Satan directs his attention, trying to instill
misguidance. "You do not have faith; rather say, 'We submit,' for faith has not yet entered your hearts" (49:14). "No
affliction befalls, except it be by the leave of God. Whosoever has faith in God, He will guide his heart. And God has
knowledge of everything" (64:11). "ThoseHe has written faith upon their hearts, and He has confirmed them with a
Spirit from Himself" (58:22). "And We increased them in guidance, and We strengthened their hearts" (18:13-14). "It is
He who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the believers, that they might add faith to their faith" (48:4). "And those
who do not believe in the world to come, their hearts deny, and they have waxed proud" (16:22). "Our Lord, make not
our hearts to swerve after that Thou hast guided us; and give us mercy from Thee" (3:8). "Those whose hearts are filled
with doubt, so that in their doubt they go this way and that" (9:45). The Prophet said, "Surely Satan flows in people like
blood, so I fear that he will throw evil into your hearts."5 He also said, "When the call to prayer is made, Satan turns
away while breaking wind. When it is finished, he comes forward, and when the second call is made, he turns away.
When the call is finished, he comes forward in order to pass between a man and his heart. He says to him, 'Remember
such and such' until he does not know if he has prayed three cycles or four."6
Through the heart the Koran can be grasped and unity achieved. The Prophet
said, "When it [the Koran] falls into the heart and becomes firmly rooted there, it gives benefit." 7 He said, "This Koran
is God's banquet, so take from it what you can, for I know of nothing smaller than a house within which is naught of the
Book of God. The heart that has naught of the Book of God within it is a ruin, just as a house that has no occupants is a
ruin."8 Another hadith tells us that ''A branch of the heart of the son of Adam lies in every stream bed. If someone
allows his heart to follow all the stream beds, God will not care in which stream bed He destroys him. But if someone
trusts in God, He will save him from branching."9
Koranic verses locate such virtues as purity, piety, confirmation, softness, expansion, peace, love, and repentance in the
heart. However, these virtues are not inherent to the heart. They must be put there by God. If God does not purify the
heart, it will be sick, sinful, evil, hard, harsh, full of hate, anxious, and so on. "Those are they whose hearts God desired
not to purify; for them is degradation in this world ..." (5:41). In the Koran, Abraham prays, "Degrade me not upon the
day when they are raised up, the day when neither wealth nor sons shall profit except for him who comes to God with a
faultless heart" (26:87-89). One of the Prophet's supplications reads, "O God, wash away from me my offenses with the
water of snow and hail, purify offenses from my heart as Thou purifiest dirt from white cloth, and remove me far from
offenses as Thou hast removed the east from the west."10 The Prophet was asked, "Who is the most excellent of
people?" He replied, "Every one whose heart is swept and whose tongue is truthful." They said, "We recognize the one
whose tongue is truthful, but whose heart is swept?" He said, "He is the godfearing and pure, who has no sin, no
wrongdoing, no rancor, and no envy."11 "Whosoever venerates the offerings made to Godthat is of the godfearing of
the hearts" (22:32). "Those are they whose hearts God has tested for godfearing; they shall have forgiveness and a
mighty wage" (49:3). "Remember God's blessing upon you when you were enemies, and He brought your hearts
together, so that by His blessing you became brothers" (3:103). "But God has made you love faith, decking it out fair in
your hearts, and He has made detestable to you unbelief and ungodliness and disobedience" (49:7). "It was by some
mercy of God that thou wast gentle to them; hadst thou been harsh and hard of heart, they would have scattered from
about thee" (3:159). "And We set in the hearts of those who followed him tenderness and mercy" (57:27). "Whosoever
fears the All-merciful in the Unseen, and comes with a penitent heart ..." (50:33). "Those who have faith, their hearts
being at peace in God's remembrancein God's remembrance are at peace the hearts of those who have faith and do
righteous deeds" (13:28).
Sickness (marad) is the most common negative attribute that the Koran attributes to the heart (e.g., 2:10, 8:49, 9:125,
47:20, 47:29, 74:31). "What, is their sickness in their hearts, or are they in doubt, or do they fear that God may be unjust
toward them?" (24:50). "When the hypocrites, and those in whose hearts is sickness,... "(33:12; cf. 33:60). "And conceal
not the testimony; whoso conceals it, his heart is sinful" (2:283). Other negative qualities include rage and fierceness.
"And He will remove the rage within their hearts; and God turns toward whomsoever He will" (9:15). "When the
unbelievers set in their hearts fierceness, the fierceness of pagandom ..." (48:26).
The heart should be soft and receptive to the divine guidance, light, and love. But the hearts of the wrongdoers are hard
and harsh. "God has sent down the fairest discourse as a Book,... whereat shiver the skins of those who fear their Lord;
then their skins and their hearts soften to the remembrance of God" (39:23). "Then your hearts became hardened
thereafter and are like stones, or even yet harder" (2:74). "So for their breaking the covenant We cursed them and made
their hearts hard" (5:13). "Is he whose breast God has opened unto submission (al-islam), so that he follows a light from
his Lord ...? But woe to those whose hearts are hardened against the remembrance of God! They are in manifest error" (39:22). "Is it not time that the hearts of those who have faith should be humbled to the Remembrance of God and
the Truth which He has sent down, and that they should not be as those to whom the Book was given aforetime, and the
term seemed over long to them, so that their hearts have become hard, and many of them are ungodly?" (57:16).
These passages from the Koran and the Hadith and many more like them show that the heart has no fixed nature.
However, there are normative qualities that the heart should have, and any heart that does not have them is faced with
the danger of deviation, misguidance, and wretchedness. Several hadiths point to the instability of the heart, its ability to
accept any quality whatsoever. The heart, in keeping with its root meaning, never stands still. In many supplications
recorded by Bukhari (Qadar 14 etc.) the Prophet calls to God with the words, "O He who makes hearts fluctuate [ya
muqallib al-qulub]!" He also said the following: "The heart of the child of Adam is between two fingers of the
Invincible. When He wants to make it fluctuate [taqlib], He makes it fluctuate." So he often used to say, "O He who
makes hearts turn about [musarrif al-qulub]! 12 ''The heart is like a feather in a desert of the earth. The wind blows it to
one side and the other."13 One of the Prophet's wives reported that he used to pray with the words, "O He who makes
hearts fluctuate, fix my heart in Thy religion!" She asked him about that, and he replied, "O Umm Salama, there is no
child of Adam whose heart does not lie between two of God's fingers. Whomsoever He wants, He makes to go straight,
and whomsoever He wants, He makes to swerve."14
Between Spirit and Soul
It would be possible to cite numerous references, especially from poetry, showing how the later tradition reflects the
picture of the heart provided by the Koran and the Hadith.15 Instead I will turn back to our authors to illustrate how
they bring out the pivotal importance of the heart for the human being. They illustrate clearly that they followed the
Koranic description of the heart as an indefinable reality that assumes a wide variety of qualities. But they were
concerned primarily with bringing out the normative qualities that the heart should possess and showing how human
perfection depends upon actualizing these qualities. For our authors, the heart is the divine form within us that must be
brought from potentiality to actuality. Through perfection, it comes to manifest both hands of God. And its growth from
imperfection to perfection can easily be understood as the play of relationships set up by a series of yin/yang qualities.
From the perspective of the engendering command, God has created the heart as it is, perhaps dominated by guidance,
perhaps by misguidance. But from the perspective of the prescriptive command, the heart is called upon to assume a
whole series of positive qualities, such as guidance, faith, intelligence, understanding, light, certainty, and so on. In
actual fact, the heart is caught between the two sideslight and darkness, spirit and body. It may be dominated by the
"soul that commands to evil," in which case it is predominantly dark. It may stand in the middle between spirit and soul,
in which case light and darkness are contending. When light gains the upper hand, the soul "blames" itself for not
conforming wholly to the spirit. Only in the greatest of human beings, the prophets and the friends of God, has the soul
attained to "peace" with God, such that light is in total ascendence. Only in them can we speak truly of the heart. Other
people, though human from a certain point of view, have not attained to the fullness of human nature. They are not, to
use the common expression, "Possessors of Hearts" (ashab al-qulub).
One of the most detailed early discussions of the nature of the heart is given by Abu Talib al-Makki in Qut al-qulub
(Food of the hearts), a work that has been extremely influential in the Sufi intellectual tradition. Ghazali, for example,
made thorough use of it in writing his great Ihya'. As the title suggests, this long work is concerned with the perfection of the heart throughout. Especially interesting for our
purposes is chapter 30, a thirty-two page section that deals with "Mention of the different kinds of incoming thoughts
experienced by the People of the Hearts; the attribute of heart; and comparing the heart to lights and substances."
"Incoming thoughts" (khawatir) are all the thoughts that occur to the mind (or rather, to the heart). They arc "incoming"
because they come from someplace. The Sufi psychologists employ this ten precisely to set up a relationship between
the thought in the heart and its source. In general, they discern four sources for all thoughts: God, the angels, the soul,
and the satans. To know where one's thoughts come from in any given instance is a fundamental prerequisite for putting
them into action or avoiding what they suggest. In keeping with the usual format of such works, most of what Makki
has to say is quoted from earlier authorities. I quote a few short passages to give his evaluation of certain important
qualities of the heart.
The heart is the locus for the remembrance of God (dhikr), just as it is the place where caprice (hawa) appears and turns
the individual this way and that.
God says, "The godfearing, when a visitation of Satan touches them, remember, and then they see" [7:201].
Hence He reports that the clarity of hearts is remembrance, through which the heart sees. He also reports that
the door to remembrance is godfearing, through which the servant remembers. Thus godfearing is the door to
the next world, just as caprice is the door to this world. God commanded remembrance and reported that it is
the key to godfearing, since it is the cause of protecting oneself, which is avoidance and renunciation. For He
says, "Remember what is in it; haply you will be godfearing" [2:63]. He reports that He made the Explication
manifest for the sake of godfearing through His words, "So God explicates His signs to people; haply they
will he godfearing" [2:187].
God says, "O human being! What has deceived you as to your generous Lord, who created you, and
proportioned you, and balanced you?" [82:6]. He says, "We created the human being in the most beautiful
stature" [95:4]. He says, "And of everything We created a pair" [51:49]. Included in this proportioning,
balancing, pairing, and stature are the outward instruments [adah] and the inward motives [gharad]. These are
the bodily senses and the heart. The instruments of the body are the outward attributes, while the motives of
the heart are the inward meanings. God has balanced them through His wisdom, proportioned them according
to His will, and given them a proper and firm stature with His making and handiwork.
The first inward meanings are the soul and the spirit. These are two places for the encounter of the enemy and
the angel, who are two persons who inspire with wickedness and godfearing.
Among these meanings are two motives firmly placed in two placesintellect and capricederiving from two
decrees in the will of the Decreer. These two decrees are giving success and misleading.
Among them are two lights that shine in the heart by the specification of the mercy of Him who gives mercy.
These are knowledge and faith.
These are the instruments, the unseen senses and meanings, and the tools of the heart.
In the midst of all these instruments, the heart is like the king, while these are his soldiers that discharge their
duty to him. Or the heart is like a polished mirror, while these tools become manifest around it and are seen
within it....
In short, the incoming thoughts are six. They limit and detract from the heart. Beyond them are the treasuries
of the Unseen and the Dominion of Power. They are God's ready soldiers possessing manifest authority from
Him.
The heart is one of the treasuries of the Dominion. God, who makes it fluctuate, has in accordance with His
will placed within it some of the subtle realities of the realms of desire and fear and irradiate it with some of
the lights of tremendousness and invincibility....
(by Sachiko Murata)
