What Are Fana and Baqa? Passing Away and Subsistence in Sufism

Fana and baqa are the two terms by which Sufism describes the servant’s passing beyond their own attributes and subsisting through the attributes of God. In the dictionary fana means to perish and baqa means to remain and endure. As technical terms, fana is the erasure of the servant’s bad traits and of the claims of the nafs; baqa is the settling, in their place, of good traits and of steadiness in servanthood to God. This article covers the root of the two terms in the Quran, their use among the early Sufis and Junayd’s definition, the distinction between sukr and sahw, the limit of fana, the three degrees described in the manuals of the orders, and Imam Rabbani’s explanation of wahdat al-shuhud.

The Root in the Quran

Both terms are taken from verses 26 and 27 of Surah ar-Rahman: “Everyone upon the earth will perish, and there will remain the Face of your Lord, Owner of Majesty and Honor.” The word fan in the verse is from the root of fana, and the verb yabqa from the root of baqa. Surah al-Qasas 28:88 repeats the same meaning: “Everything will perish except His Face.” The commentators explain these verses as meaning that every created thing receives its existence from God at every moment. The Sufis apply the same verse to the servant’s own state: the servant comes to know that their existence and their attributes depend on God, not only as knowledge but as a lived state; this realization is called fana, and the return to servanthood that follows it is called baqa.

Surah al-Fajr 89:27-30 is also cited often in this connection: “O soul at peace, return to your Lord, well pleased and pleasing; enter among My servants, and enter My Garden.” The nafs al-mutma’inna addressed in the verse is the fourth of the seven stages of the nafs and the last stage named in the Quran (Nafs al-Mutma’inna). The Sufis point to two details in this verse. The soul is still being addressed, so there is a servant who is addressed. And the soul is told to “enter among My servants”, so the destination is servanthood.

The Early Sufis and Junayd’s Definition

One of the first to use the term fana was Abu Sa’id al-Kharraz (d. 277/890). For him fana is the servant’s passing beyond the sight of their own servanthood, and baqa is their subsisting through God’s self-disclosures. Junayd of Baghdad (d. 297/909) gave the teaching its final form; the later Sufi manuals call him sayyid al-ta’ifa, the master of the community. According to al-Qushayri’s report in the Risala, Junayd defined tawhid as “that God makes you die to yourself and makes you live through Him”. That is, the servant passes away from their own attributes and subsists through the attributes of God. In this definition there is no servant who turns into God; there is a servant so filled with God’s attributes that they can no longer see their own.

al-Sarraj (d. 378/988) explains fana and baqa together in the Kitab al-Luma’ and describes fana as the servant’s seeing their acts as coming not from themselves but from God. al-Hujwiri (d. c. 465/1072) stresses one point in particular in the Kashf al-Mahjub: fana is the passing away of attributes, not of the essence. The servant does not cease to exist in fana; what passes away is their bad attributes. al-Hujwiri counts those who take fana to be the annihilation of existence as having fallen into error.

Sukr and Sahw: Bayazid and Hallaj

At the center of Junayd’s teaching stands the distinction between sukr and sahw. Sukr means spiritual intoxication: the servant’s losing themselves in God’s nearness. Sahw means sobriety: the servant’s coming back to themselves after that state and returning to servanthood. Junayd accepts the state of sukr, but ranks sahw above it, because only in sahw can the servant carry out the rulings of the Sharia and guide others.

History offers two examples of this distinction. Bayazid Bistami (d. 261/874-75) is counted as the head of the people of sukr. The shathiyyat attributed to him, that is, utterances made in a state of ecstasy, are reported with caution in the sources; the most famous of them is “Subhani, ma a’zama sha’ni” (Glory be to me, how great is my majesty). The Sufi manuals treat this not as a statement of belief but as the expression of the state of a servant beside themselves, and they state that such utterances cannot be taken as a measure. Hallaj (d. 309/922) said “Ana al-Haqq” in public and was executed in Baghdad in 922. Junayd judged the utterances of Hallaj and Bayazid as words spoken in the state of sukr, and pointed to sahw as the measure. The later tradition adopted this judgment, while poets such as Attar remembered Hallaj as a martyr of love. In both cases the principle is the same: the state of fana is not a license for the speech of fana.

The Limit of Fana

When the Sufi scholars define fana they do not say that the distinction between the Creator and the created is lifted. The servant in the state of fana does not see their own existence, but that existence continues; indeed baqa follows this state, and the servant returns to servanthood. For this reason al-Qushayri, al-Hujwiri and al-Ghazali separate fana from the doctrines of hulul (God’s entering the servant) and ittihad (the servant’s union with God); the scholars of the Ahl al-Sunna rejected both.

Nor does fana lift the rulings of the Sharia. The Prophet, though in the highest station, prayed at night until his feet swelled, and when asked why, said, “Shall I not be a grateful servant?” (Bukhari, Tahajjud 6; Muslim, Munafiqin 81). The Sufi manuals take this as the measure: as the station rises, servanthood does not lessen but grows. Fana is the passing away of the servant’s bad traits, not of their person. In Yunus Emre’s line “Your love took me from myself; it is You I need, only You”, the one who speaks is still a servant, but their desire has changed.

The Three Degrees in the Manuals of the Orders

In the books written after the orders were founded, fana is described in three degrees: fana fi’l-shaykh, fana fi’l-rasul and fana fillah. The disciple first takes on the character of their shaykh, then of the Prophet, and in the end surrenders their own will to the will of God. This classification does not exist among the early Sufis; al-Sarraj and al-Qushayri describe fana and baqa as two terms. The purpose of the classification is to show that fana comes about not in an instant but within a training, and through the persons taken as models.

Imam Rabbani and Wahdat al-Shuhud

In Ibn Arabi’s doctrine of wahdat al-wujud, existence is one and belongs to God; the world is the self-disclosure of that existence and has no existence of its own. Imam Rabbani (d. 1034/1624) wrote in his Maktubat that this statement describes the seeker’s witnessing in the state of fana, not the real structure of existence. In that state the seeker sees nothing but God, yet the world has not ceased to exist; it is veiled from the seeker’s sight. Imam Rabbani called this wahdat al-shuhud (unity of witnessing) and ranked the station of baqa above fana, because only in baqa does the servant see both God and the world in their proper places and live the Sharia in full.

In the history of Sufism this explanation has been treated not as a clash of two doctrines but as two accounts of the same state. Wahdat al-wujud describes what is seen in the state of fana; wahdat al-shuhud reminds us that what is seen is a state, not the structure of existence. In both, the Creator and the created remain distinct.

Baqa and the Servant’s Life

Baqa is the return to servanthood after fana; the Sufi manuals call it baqa ba’d al-fana. The servant in this station prays, works, looks after their family and their neighbor; an observer sees nothing unusual in them. al-Qushayri and al-Hujwiri call this state tamkin (settledness) and istiqama (uprightness) and rank it above passing states (talwin). Junayd’s life is counted as the example: he earned his living by trade in Baghdad, taught in a single circle, and in the letters that have reached us spent his effort correcting misunderstandings rather than describing states of ecstasy. Most of the later chains of the orders pass through him.

The Sufi manuals describe fana not as an experience the seeker should aim at but as a state God gives to the servant He wills. The seeker’s work is preparation: dhikr, muraqaba, the training of the nafs and adherence to the Sharia. This preparation does not produce fana; it makes the servant fit for it. If fana does not come, the life of servanthood is still the same life, because what fana and baqa describe is the servant’s relation to God, and that relation continues whether the state comes or not. For this reason the Sufi manuals warn seekers who chase states: what is sought is God, not the state.

Sources

• Quran: Surah al-Qasas 28:88; Surah ar-Rahman 55:26-27; Surah al-Fajr 89:27-30
• Bukhari, Tahajjud 6; Muslim, Munafiqin 81
• al-Sarraj, Kitab al-Luma’ (d. 378/988), chapter on fana and baqa
• al-Qushayri, al-Risala al-Qushayriyya (438/1046), chapter on fana and baqa
• al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub (d. c. 465/1072)
• al-Ghazali, Ihya ulum al-din, vol. IV
• Imam Rabbani, Maktubat
• Mustafa Kara, “Fenâ”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 12, Istanbul 1995, pp. 333-335