THE chant of Anal-Haq, Anal-Haq (I’m the Truth) was his very own. He kept repeating it, and the people thought either he had gone mad or was committing blasphemy. “He should be hanged,” demanded the outrageous people and scholars, for ‘Anal-Haq’ was only for the Almighty. The matter went to Khalifa Muqtader Billah (295-320 AH), who sent him to jail to give him a chance to redress himself. His disciples and contemporary sheikhs asked him to stop uttering the chant, but he didn’t. Finally, his execution was ordered.
On 18 Dhu al-Qa’dah 309 AH, Mansur was taken out to the execution place where the entire city had gathered to witness his execution. The executioner was ordered to flog him one thousand times before the final chop. Till the last stroke, unbelievably, he remained steadfast without crying or wincing. Then came the time for beheading, and it was decided that before beheading his limbs would be cut off.
The anxiety of the crowed surged as Mansur went toward the gallows, repeating the chant. Someone in the crowd asked him what was the definition of Ishq, or the ‘true love’. “You will see it now,” he retorted, moving happily towards the gallows. Again someone asked him why he was so happy? “Nothing could be more delightful than this moment when I’m going to my beloved,” came the reply. The executioner first lopped off his hands, then feet. When he raised his sword to behead him, Mansur prayed loudly: “O Allah! Bless these people as you have blessed me.” His body was cut into pieces.
The moment his head fell, the place reverberated with the sound of his characteristic chant, Anal-Haq, Anal-Haq which was apparently coming from his chopped limbs. As the sound would not stop, the people decided to burn the body. Sheikh Fariduddin Attar writes in Tazkaratul Aulia that as soon as his ashes were thrown into River Tigris (Dajlah), it flooded and started flowing over the embankments. The flooding of the river without any rain shocked the people and the way the water surged, it was obvious that it would drown Baghdad. Suddenly a man from the crowd shouted: “Yes, soon you will see Baghdad drowned. It is the divine revenge for my Sheikh’s murder.”
This shocked Hamad bin Abbas, the senior most minister of the caliph who was present there to supervise the execution. He called the man and asked him why he had said so. “My Sheikh did mention that he would be killed and his body would be burnt to ashes and thrown into the river. The river would then overflow and drown Baghdad if his mantle was not thrown into it. Hamad ordered him to rush and bring the sheikh’s mantle. The moment his mantle was thrown into the water, it started receding. Everyone stood there spellbound and amazed.
Hussain Mansur Hallaj was born in Baiza, a small city of Faris (Iran) in 244 AH. He was popularly known by the name of his father who had converted to Islam and had migrated to Iraq. Hallaj means the wool-carder. It was his trade or that of his family. Nothing is known about his preliminary education, but he left his home at the age of 16 in search of ‘truth’. He went to several contemporary saints for acquiring spiritual knowledge, but none could pacify his restless heart.
His extraordinary feats became a problem for him. He would tell people about their future and what they had in their minds and hearts. People alleged that he was planning to overthrow Muqtader Billah, and become the caliph himself. When this news reached Hamad bin Abbas, the minister of the caliph who himself had designs on the rule, he became deadly against Mansur and started planning to get rid of him.
Sheikh Mansur was arrested in 301 AH. The Shariah Court ordered his death, but the caliph was hesitant. During this period, two unusual events took place. In the prison, Mansur was chained and locked up in a separate room. One night he came out of his room to see other prisoners. They got shocked to see him out of his cell. “Do you want to be free?,” he asked them. “How could you do that when you are not free yourself,” the prisoners wondered. “Leave it to me. I cannot free myself because I’m the prisoner of Allah.”
Saying this Mansur pointed at their chains, and they were all free. Then he pointed at the back wall of the prison and an opening appeared there. They invited him to go with them, but he refused, and said, “My freedom is only through the gallows.”
After all the prisoners had left, he returned to his room. The next day when the prison guards found that all the 300 prisoners had escaped even though the locks were intact, they asked Mansur about it. He admitted that he had freed them. The minister exploited this event and secured the endorsement from the caliph to the court’s verdict.
A similar event took place when Hazrat Abdullah bin Hafeef, another saint of the time, came to see him in the prison. He said: “When the time came for prayers, his chains just dropped on their own. He did the ablution and got offered his prayers. Then I asked him why he couldn’t free himself? At this, he said: ‘I am not in prison and not afraid of my destiny.’ He asked me to close my eyes and have a wish. When I opened my eyes back again, I found myself in Nishapur (Iran), at the place I wanted to visit, with Mansur beside me. ‘Now what else do you want?’ He asked. Take me back, I said, and soon after, we were back in the prison.”
During this period, Mansur’s absence from the prison was noted. This statement of this renowned saint, as quoted in several books, appears to be authentic and shows the spiritual powers of Sheikh Mansur Hallaj.
There was a lot of controversy about him. Some people bluntly called him a blasphemer or a magician. Some, however, felt that he was lost in the love of Allah and had reached a very high level of spiritualism, which was not easy to comprehend. His chant of Anal Haq was either misunderstood or overplayed to confuse the Muslim minds. Hazrat Ali Hajveri in his book Kashaful-Mahjoob (The Revelation of the Veiled), authoritatively defends Mansur Hallaj on the grounds that things done or said by the sufis are not to be interpreted by ordinary mortals.
