Rules in Eating for Sufis: From Hazrat Ali Hajvairi’s Kashf ul Majoob

Men cannot dispense with nourishment, but moral virtue requires that they should not eat or drink in excess.

Hazrat Imam Shafi says: “He who thinks about that which goes into his belly is worth only that which comes out of it.”

Nothing is more hurtful to a novice in Sufism than eating too much.

I have read in the anecdotes that Hazrat Bayazid Bistami was asked why he praised hunger so highly. He answered: “Because if Pharaoh had been hungry he would not have said, ‘I am your Supreme Lord,’ and if Qaroon had been hungry he would not have been rebellious.”

Thalaba was praised by all so long as he was hungry, but when he ate his fill he displayed hypocrisy.

Sahl bin Abdullah (al-Tustari) said: “In my judgment, a belly full of wine is better than one full of lawful food.” On being asked the reason of this he said: “When a man’s belly is filled with wine, his intellect is stupefied and the flame of lust is quenched, and people are secure from his hand and tongue; but when his belly is filled with lawful food he desires foolishness, and his lust waxes great and his lower soul rises to seek her pleasures.”

The Shaykhs have said, describing the Sufis: “They eat like sick men (little), and sleep like shipwrecked men, and speak like one whose children have died.”

Inscription from Shrine of Ali Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh)