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The Rawshaniyya - Islam’s Illuminati, and Bayazid Ansari - the Dark Elder
By Kamal S. (Revisions: June 2003, June 3 2006, August 2 2009)
At the close of the 18th century, and the dawn of the first few decades of the 19th century, Western Europe was rocked by a series of attempted revolts fomented by a number of covert socialist underground movements.
These movements were closely tied together and coordinated through the thoughts and actions of a small group of intellectuals, belonging to an organization known to its members as The Perfectibilists. Theirs was a revolutionary faith, a religion of sorts, whose tenants are increasingly becoming known to historical scrutiny. They were part of a stream of thought that literally created the political and social world we now inhabit, in the west.
This group was also known as the Bavarian Illuminati.
Few know that similar matters were afoot in the east, within that time period..
Long a mainstay of paranoid conspiracy theorists, this group has lately been the subject of good academic historical analysis (a good survey is Congressional Historian, James Billington’s “Fire in the Minds of Men” - Terry Melanson’s “The Perfectibilists” is also a good survey. Billington’s work has more academic rigor than Melanson’s, but both are valuable books)
Writer Idries Shah Naqshbandi, under the pen name Arkan Darual, mentions the Illuminati, in his seminal work on the subject, Secret Societies.
Shah’s treatment of The Illuminati depicted a revolutionary, Left Wing, proto-Communist league, that emerged in Bavaria’s University scene and rapidly spread, covertly within Europe’s Freemason Lodges. Within a few years, due both to the connections of an aristocratic member, Barron Franz F. Knigge, and the organizational genius of the founders, this group decidedly marked the thought of Western Civilizations enlightenment period. Through infiltrating and subverting practically every single Masonic lodge on the European continent (and some suggest, in the American colonies themselves) the movement acquired Europe’s scientific and political brightest minds.
Their clandestine aims were: the destruction of the established powers of Church and Monarchy, and the construction of what they saw as an enlightened secular and Socialist Republics. As the society was marked by a gradated series of initiations, much like the Ismaili Assassin cult that terrorized medieval Islamdom, each initiate under its pyramid like structure of hierarchical control was strictly on a “need to know basis” regarding the aims and disposition of the larger organization. The ostensible head of the organization was a former professor of cannon law, named Adam Weishaupt. Much unverifiable ink has been spilt over the centuries regarding Dr. Weishaupt and his organization, but the essence of what is verifiable and known to history is expressed here.
Now this is “old hat”, much hyperbole has reached paper about the Illuminati’s demise, what is known is that while being harshly suppressed by Bavaria’s Government, many of the movement’s ideas lived on. It’s concept of a revolutionary socialism expressed in esoteric symbolism likely inspired the fomenters of France’s revolution, and bounced around in French utopian, occult, and socialist circles for decades prior to the formation of the original Communist league, and their manifesto’s later articulation by Marx & Engels.
Indeed some argue that it is to Bavaria’s Illuminati and their charismatic secretive leader, Dr. Adam Weishaupt, that we owe the current political divisions of the West’s classical Liberal tradition; Right Wing and Left Wing. Hard evidence for this is scant, which is understandable when dealing with a covert secret society undergoing government suppression and experiencing defection of its key members..
The Illuminati were more than a political society. Some documentary evidence suggests that the Illuminati possessed certain esoteric doctrines, and while they were political revolutionaries devoted to overthrowing Monarchy, an end to private ownership of property, and the utter destruction of the Church, they also grew up in the bosom of Masonic and Rosicrucian speculations, and had complex symbolic initiatory systems.
The evidence indicating esoteric spiritualist doctrines of an pseudo-initiatory held by the group is scattered, and woefully incomplete, given their clandestine nature, and over two centuries of suppression. Still enough exists to suggest something to all but the most skeptical of readers.
What few people know, is that Europe’s Illuminati were preceded by little more than a century, by another group, a similar clandestine society, with somewhat similar doctrines, bearing a name that literally translated means “Illuminati”.
This group are known to Western scholars as The Roshanites. And instead of the West, they found their home in the distant East of the Himalayas. Who they were, and what their significance was, is our chief concern.
The Roshaniyya:
In the middle of the 16th century a mysterious Order emerged, from among the Pashtun (Pathan) tribes in the Himalaya Mountains, in Khurasan’s easternmost provinces , which we know today as Afghanistan. These regions were then part of the Mughal State, and for over 80 years, from 1560 to 1638, the Mughal Empire battled this mysterious secret society, which rapidly spread among Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes.
This Order, known to English literature as the Roshanites, called themselves the Rawshaniyya (or Roshaniyya) which literally means “The Illuminated.”
Who and What were the Roshaniyya, and what was their significance ?
An obscure, mostly self-taught, Sufi and preacher named Bayazid Ansari (1525-1581) began preaching a doctrine of enlightenment to Pashtun tribesmen. Who began to call him “Pir-i Rawshan”, (or Rokhan, or Roshan, depending on the dialect) which literally means “Elder of Light”, or “Illuminated Elder”. His growing detractors and opponents labeled him Pir-i Tarik (The Dark Elder) ( 1).
His sect, or cult, originated in Kabul and spread to areas of Kashmir. Known works of his includes the books, “Khayr al-Bayan”, “Maksud al- Muminin”, “Surat-i Tawhid”, “Fakhr”, “Hal-Nama” and a few more. Khair al-Bayan is now lost to historians, but a few pages survive, in Pashtu, Persian, and Arabic. It was his autobiography and exposition of his mystic philosophy. These books were all rigorously opposed by the area’s Hanafi, Sunni Scholars and clergy.
What survives of his theology and doctrine is thoroughly heretical by Sunni Muslim standards, some suggest that there was some influence of Ismaili (Assassin) esoteric doctrine. Some of Ansari’s doctrines resembled Ismaili speculations in vogue in Kandahar, but there appears to be no direct link between the Ismailis and the Roshaniyya.
Little direct is known, however Order initiates undertook an oath severing all personal allegiance except to the Roshanite Order. The initiate agreed to bind himself to silence and unshaken loyalty concerning the Order, and to regard all of humanity unable to identify themselves by their secret sign to be their lawful prey.
And what was this secret sign ? Reportedly a Roshanite has to pass a hand over his forehead, with his palm inward. The countersign given was to hold the ear with the fingers, and support the elbow in one’s other cupped hand.
One major teaching of the group was that there was no after-life of the kind generally believed in by orthodox Muslims. There was no Heaven nor Hell, no post mortem reward, punishment, or resurrection. Rather the spirit existed in some sort of state of an utterly different order from earthly life. Those spirits who belonged to this illuminated order could enjoy themselves, and even possess earthly powers, acting through the still living earthly members of the order. Indeed a spirit could, if an initiate, continue to be very powerful in this world after death.
Members were taught to gain power, sever all allegiances outside of the Order itself, and prey on those who could not identify themselves by the covert signs of the Order.
Idries Shah (though somewhat of a problematic source) was the first English language writers to not only seriously treat this now obscure cult, but to suggest that the Rawshaniyya may have had links with prototypes of the Order that later emerged in 18th century European History as the above mentioned Illuminati of Bavaria.
The late William Cooper in his “Behold a Pale Horse” touches this theme lightly, from Idries Shah, who also points out that an earlier group preceding the Illuminati, Spain’s Alumbrados (well known to students of speculative esoterica) also shared some similarities. Some speculate that the seeds of Weishaupt’s Illuminati may have been inspired by this distant sect in the high Himalayas, or at least have been influenced, in part, by them. Some would go as far as to suggest that the same individual was behind all three. Reliable documentary evidence for this is almost non-existent, but there is a clear pattern that these orders all followed.
In many ways the movement itself, in a sense, represented a flowering of Pashtun nationalism. While the Pashtun Afghans inhabited the region for thousands of years, they were but one of many related Indo-Aryan nations and ethnic groups in Khorasan. They had no real literature in their language, and possessed only an inchoate sense of national status. The writings of Ansari were deliberately put in Pashtu, and not Persian (Dari).
These teachings were presented in highly persuasive and powerful poetic verse, and without a doubt were the first real examples of modern Pashtu literature. Shaykh Ansari’s writings influenced even the style of the polemics of his bitterest enemies, his own opponents were forced to write in his mode in their polemics against him, and he influenced such seminal literary figures as Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689), who helped ignite a seventeenth century revival and renaissance in Pashtu letters.
Pashtu prose and poetry not only flowered due to Ansari’s movement, but his writings formally introduced themes of esoteric mysticism into Pashtu literature. Ansari even devised the very alphabet of the Pashtu language.
By Kamal S. (Revisions: June 2003, June 3 2006, August 2 2009)
At the close of the 18th century, and the dawn of the first few decades of the 19th century, Western Europe was rocked by a series of attempted revolts fomented by a number of covert socialist underground movements.
These movements were closely tied together and coordinated through the thoughts and actions of a small group of intellectuals, belonging to an organization known to its members as The Perfectibilists. Theirs was a revolutionary faith, a religion of sorts, whose tenants are increasingly becoming known to historical scrutiny. They were part of a stream of thought that literally created the political and social world we now inhabit, in the west.
This group was also known as the Bavarian Illuminati.
Few know that similar matters were afoot in the east, within that time period..
Long a mainstay of paranoid conspiracy theorists, this group has lately been the subject of good academic historical analysis (a good survey is Congressional Historian, James Billington’s “Fire in the Minds of Men” - Terry Melanson’s “The Perfectibilists” is also a good survey. Billington’s work has more academic rigor than Melanson’s, but both are valuable books)
Writer Idries Shah Naqshbandi, under the pen name Arkan Darual, mentions the Illuminati, in his seminal work on the subject, Secret Societies.
Shah’s treatment of The Illuminati depicted a revolutionary, Left Wing, proto-Communist league, that emerged in Bavaria’s University scene and rapidly spread, covertly within Europe’s Freemason Lodges. Within a few years, due both to the connections of an aristocratic member, Barron Franz F. Knigge, and the organizational genius of the founders, this group decidedly marked the thought of Western Civilizations enlightenment period. Through infiltrating and subverting practically every single Masonic lodge on the European continent (and some suggest, in the American colonies themselves) the movement acquired Europe’s scientific and political brightest minds.
Their clandestine aims were: the destruction of the established powers of Church and Monarchy, and the construction of what they saw as an enlightened secular and Socialist Republics. As the society was marked by a gradated series of initiations, much like the Ismaili Assassin cult that terrorized medieval Islamdom, each initiate under its pyramid like structure of hierarchical control was strictly on a “need to know basis” regarding the aims and disposition of the larger organization. The ostensible head of the organization was a former professor of cannon law, named Adam Weishaupt. Much unverifiable ink has been spilt over the centuries regarding Dr. Weishaupt and his organization, but the essence of what is verifiable and known to history is expressed here.
Now this is “old hat”, much hyperbole has reached paper about the Illuminati’s demise, what is known is that while being harshly suppressed by Bavaria’s Government, many of the movement’s ideas lived on. It’s concept of a revolutionary socialism expressed in esoteric symbolism likely inspired the fomenters of France’s revolution, and bounced around in French utopian, occult, and socialist circles for decades prior to the formation of the original Communist league, and their manifesto’s later articulation by Marx & Engels.
Indeed some argue that it is to Bavaria’s Illuminati and their charismatic secretive leader, Dr. Adam Weishaupt, that we owe the current political divisions of the West’s classical Liberal tradition; Right Wing and Left Wing. Hard evidence for this is scant, which is understandable when dealing with a covert secret society undergoing government suppression and experiencing defection of its key members..
The Illuminati were more than a political society. Some documentary evidence suggests that the Illuminati possessed certain esoteric doctrines, and while they were political revolutionaries devoted to overthrowing Monarchy, an end to private ownership of property, and the utter destruction of the Church, they also grew up in the bosom of Masonic and Rosicrucian speculations, and had complex symbolic initiatory systems.
The evidence indicating esoteric spiritualist doctrines of an pseudo-initiatory held by the group is scattered, and woefully incomplete, given their clandestine nature, and over two centuries of suppression. Still enough exists to suggest something to all but the most skeptical of readers.
What few people know, is that Europe’s Illuminati were preceded by little more than a century, by another group, a similar clandestine society, with somewhat similar doctrines, bearing a name that literally translated means “Illuminati”.
This group are known to Western scholars as The Roshanites. And instead of the West, they found their home in the distant East of the Himalayas. Who they were, and what their significance was, is our chief concern.
The Roshaniyya:
In the middle of the 16th century a mysterious Order emerged, from among the Pashtun (Pathan) tribes in the Himalaya Mountains, in Khurasan’s easternmost provinces , which we know today as Afghanistan. These regions were then part of the Mughal State, and for over 80 years, from 1560 to 1638, the Mughal Empire battled this mysterious secret society, which rapidly spread among Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes.
This Order, known to English literature as the Roshanites, called themselves the Rawshaniyya (or Roshaniyya) which literally means “The Illuminated.”
Who and What were the Roshaniyya, and what was their significance ?
An obscure, mostly self-taught, Sufi and preacher named Bayazid Ansari (1525-1581) began preaching a doctrine of enlightenment to Pashtun tribesmen. Who began to call him “Pir-i Rawshan”, (or Rokhan, or Roshan, depending on the dialect) which literally means “Elder of Light”, or “Illuminated Elder”. His growing detractors and opponents labeled him Pir-i Tarik (The Dark Elder) ( 1).
His sect, or cult, originated in Kabul and spread to areas of Kashmir. Known works of his includes the books, “Khayr al-Bayan”, “Maksud al- Muminin”, “Surat-i Tawhid”, “Fakhr”, “Hal-Nama” and a few more. Khair al-Bayan is now lost to historians, but a few pages survive, in Pashtu, Persian, and Arabic. It was his autobiography and exposition of his mystic philosophy. These books were all rigorously opposed by the area’s Hanafi, Sunni Scholars and clergy.
What survives of his theology and doctrine is thoroughly heretical by Sunni Muslim standards, some suggest that there was some influence of Ismaili (Assassin) esoteric doctrine. Some of Ansari’s doctrines resembled Ismaili speculations in vogue in Kandahar, but there appears to be no direct link between the Ismailis and the Roshaniyya.
Little direct is known, however Order initiates undertook an oath severing all personal allegiance except to the Roshanite Order. The initiate agreed to bind himself to silence and unshaken loyalty concerning the Order, and to regard all of humanity unable to identify themselves by their secret sign to be their lawful prey.
And what was this secret sign ? Reportedly a Roshanite has to pass a hand over his forehead, with his palm inward. The countersign given was to hold the ear with the fingers, and support the elbow in one’s other cupped hand.
One major teaching of the group was that there was no after-life of the kind generally believed in by orthodox Muslims. There was no Heaven nor Hell, no post mortem reward, punishment, or resurrection. Rather the spirit existed in some sort of state of an utterly different order from earthly life. Those spirits who belonged to this illuminated order could enjoy themselves, and even possess earthly powers, acting through the still living earthly members of the order. Indeed a spirit could, if an initiate, continue to be very powerful in this world after death.
Members were taught to gain power, sever all allegiances outside of the Order itself, and prey on those who could not identify themselves by the covert signs of the Order.
Idries Shah (though somewhat of a problematic source) was the first English language writers to not only seriously treat this now obscure cult, but to suggest that the Rawshaniyya may have had links with prototypes of the Order that later emerged in 18th century European History as the above mentioned Illuminati of Bavaria.
The late William Cooper in his “Behold a Pale Horse” touches this theme lightly, from Idries Shah, who also points out that an earlier group preceding the Illuminati, Spain’s Alumbrados (well known to students of speculative esoterica) also shared some similarities. Some speculate that the seeds of Weishaupt’s Illuminati may have been inspired by this distant sect in the high Himalayas, or at least have been influenced, in part, by them. Some would go as far as to suggest that the same individual was behind all three. Reliable documentary evidence for this is almost non-existent, but there is a clear pattern that these orders all followed.
In many ways the movement itself, in a sense, represented a flowering of Pashtun nationalism. While the Pashtun Afghans inhabited the region for thousands of years, they were but one of many related Indo-Aryan nations and ethnic groups in Khorasan. They had no real literature in their language, and possessed only an inchoate sense of national status. The writings of Ansari were deliberately put in Pashtu, and not Persian (Dari).
These teachings were presented in highly persuasive and powerful poetic verse, and without a doubt were the first real examples of modern Pashtu literature. Shaykh Ansari’s writings influenced even the style of the polemics of his bitterest enemies, his own opponents were forced to write in his mode in their polemics against him, and he influenced such seminal literary figures as Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689), who helped ignite a seventeenth century revival and renaissance in Pashtu letters.
Pashtu prose and poetry not only flowered due to Ansari’s movement, but his writings formally introduced themes of esoteric mysticism into Pashtu literature. Ansari even devised the very alphabet of the Pashtu language.
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