Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Robert R. Bianchi, Guests of God: 

Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2004); David Long, The Hajj 

Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Pilgrimage to 

Makkah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 

1979); F. E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to 

Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 

University Press, 1994); Michael Wolfe, The Hadj: An 

American’s Pilgrimage to Mecca (New York: Grove Press, 

1993).

hal

 

(Arabic: condition, state of being)

Religious experience is seen by many as a defin-

ing feature of religion itself. Scholars of religion 

hold different points of view as to whether it 

constitutes an extraordinary type of experience 

or whether it is conditioned by language, culture, 

and perception—in other words, by ordinary 

human existence in the world. In the comparative 

study of religions, a dual classification of religious 

experience has been proposed—theistic and non-

theistic. The first involves personal encounters 

with a god that are discontinuous with everyday 

lived experience, such as those attributed to 

m

oses

, Paul, m

Uhammad

, and Teresa of Avila. The 

second is based on impersonal encounters with a 

more abstract force or principle of order, such as 

those found in esoteric Hinduism and Buddhism. 

Some scholars make a differentiation between 

profoundly powerful external experiences and 

contemplative inward experiences.

Hal is a term the Sufis have used in their 

discourses to describe a kind of theistic, inward 

religious experience. They adapted it from the 

technical vocabulary of early Muslim scholars 

of Arabic language, medicine, and philosophy. 

Al-Muhasibi (d. 857) of Basra, a contemplative 

mystic, is thought to have been the first to have 

employed it in relation to mystical experience. 

The hal was understood as an inner state or spiri-

tual “encounter” that descends from God into the 

heart of the mystic. Most Sufi thinkers considered 

it to be a spontaneous state of grace, or “flash of 

lightning,” that was one of many possible states 

in the quest for higher consciousness, or intimate 

knowledge of God. Unlike the 

maqam

, or spiritual 

“station,” the hal could not be attained as a result 

of the Sufi’s own intentions or efforts. Although in 

theory it was discontinuous with everyday lived 

experience, the language Sufis used to describe 

the different kinds of states they experienced 

reflected the wider world in which they lived. 

Among the states they identified were those 

of “repentance,” “longing,” “love,” “intimacy,” 

“contraction,” “expansion,” “delight,” and even 

“terror.” The leading writers who contributed to 

the development of the idea of the spiritual state 

among Sufis were al-Sarraj of Tus (d. 988), al-

Hujwiri of Lahore (d. ca. 1072), al-Qushayri of