"Seek knowledge as far as China"
OP - October 14, 2010, 05:14 AM
This is supposed to be a hadith of Muhammad and has often been used to ridicule his limited grasp of geography. Be that as it may, it cannot be doubted that the sentiment is praiseworthy - knowledge should be searched for everywhere.
However, the saying also has a different and far more subtle interpretation according to Idries Shah. He argues that many words used by sufis are actually coded technical terms that hide within themselves, using a quite mathematical system of reference, their true meaning.
He describes this system as the abjad system and the idea is that every arabic letter has an equivalent numerical value. To discover the true meaning of a term you translate the word into it's numerical value and then find the digital root of every unit.
For instance, the word sufi, is spelt with the letters s = 90, w = 6, f = 80, y = 10. This totals 186. To split this into its digital roots then we are left with 100, 80 and 6 which are the letters Q, F, W. These letters can form the root of many words but the word that is hidden within sufi is the technical term FUQ, which means "above, transcending" - and thus sufism is shown to be the "transcendent philosophy".
To return to the saying above then we can attempt, with Mr. Shah, a similar decoding attempt. China, in arabic is spelt with the following letters: S = 90, Y = 10, N = 50 which totals 150 and because it has no single unit can only be split into 2 letters, Q and N. This can form the word qann which means to scrutinise or observe with utmost concentration. Thus, this saying now reads as "seek knowledge even unto the depths of meditation."
According to Idries Shah, this method was widely employed by many sufis to hide their true thoughts from the zealots of their time. Another example is that the term "a thousand and one nights" is actually a coded version of "the prototype record", so that within those persian stories of fantasy and adventure is hidden record of man's own journey into himself.
I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of people here on this system of coding, and perhaps even the arabic speakers can tell us whether it actually works.
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
Topic: "Seek knowledge as far as China"