To Grieve or Not to Grieve: The Ambivalence of Ḥuzn in Early Sufism

The present paper traces the concept of ḥuzn — variably translated as “sadness,” “grief,” “sorrow,” or “affliction” — in the early development of Islamic thought. It begins with an examination of how the term is used in the Quran and the canonical hadith corpus, proceeds through the time period of the early renunciants and proto-Sufi and Sufi authors, and ends with the second half of the fifth/eleventh century. At first glance, the Quranic “do not grieve!” (lā taḥzan) seems to stand in stark contrast to early Sufi teachings on sadness, the latter being a necessary trade (ṣināʿa) of the wayfarer (sālik) and the noblest act of devotion (afḍal al-ʿibāda). The question then arises, what should the believer do? To grieve or not to grieve?