ABSTRACT
Death (al-mawt) is generally defined, in the famous classical dictionaries of Islam, as: “an existential attribute created by God for a living being as the opposite of life” (hayāt).1 This is of course the definition of natural death and is originally derived from the verses of the Qur’an, some of which will be reviewed later in this article.2 The same dictionaries also record other types of deaths and afford for each one a separate definition. Among them the mystical notion of death appears to take up the most considerable space right after the natural death, though the accounts that have been suggested there for the understanding of the former are, relatively speaking, more profound and subtle than those that have been supplied for the understanding of the latter. This has to do with the distinct position of the Sufis who have approached death from a moral perspective and conceived it as something spiritual and not simply as a natural phenomenon. In their somewhat allegorical discourse on this subject two types of opinions have been persistently stated for their understanding of death: firstly, death is viewed by the Sufis as a cause or a veil that hinders “the illuminations of [God’s] disclosures and unveilings.”3 Secondly, it is regarded as a means or a way of “curbing or suppressing the lustful desires of the carnal soul,” in which case one who accomplishes this difficult task would attain to the spiritual reality of death and become truly alive.4
