PRAYER BEADS
- THE TESBIH
It is
reported - but Allah knows best - that the Prophet Muhammad
- may peace be upon him - taught that Allah Almighty said,
"When I find out that a person remembers Me frequently, I
will look after his affairs, become his company, speak with
him, and become his intimate friend."
Islamic prayer beads for use in the Remembrance of God
are called by many names - the "subha" meaning "to exalt" is
the Arabic name, or the "mesbah" or the "mesbaha". The
Persian name is "Tasbih" with the Turkish variant "Tesbih"
the preferred form, simply because the use of the beads is
most common among Turkish Muslims and because the Turks have
produced the finest, most beautiful beads. Indeed, among the
Turks, tesbih-making was a fine craft up until 20th century
industrialisation. The most renowned of tesbih craftsmen was
Horozun Salih.
The usual Muslim Tesbih consists of 99 beads. These are
divided into three sets of 33 beads, each set divided by a
disk called a "nisane". The string is completed by a
hundredth elongated terminal bead technically called the
"imame". The 99 beads represent the revealed attributes of
God while the hundredth bead represents the Name of the
essence, Allah.
Other sets of beads consist of only 33 beads or of
eleven. In any case, the mathematics is essentially the
same: 3 x 11 = 33 x 3 = 99.
The use of prayer beads is frowned upon by Wahabiists and
fundamentalists. Consequently, their use has declined
markedly among Muslims in the modern era. The Wahabiists
argue that the Prophet of Islam - upon whom be peace - did
not use prayer beads, that they were introduced to Muslims
by Christians and that therefore they are haram
(forbidden) and an emblem of everything the Wahabis seek
to expunge from Islamic life.
This is a good example of how Wahabism is actually a form
of neo-Arabist ethnic cleansing. The prayer beads are
resented and opposed by Wahabis because they are an
"innovation" but at the same time the basis of the
resentment is that the beads are seen as Turkish. For
neo-Arabist Muslims they are a symbol of Turkish Islam. The
two things - innovation and Turkishness - are
interchangeable in Wahabism. The Wahabi ideology was formed
in opposition to Ottoman domination of the Arabs. Wahabi
puritanism seeks to eradicate all non-Arabic aspects of
Islam.
But contrary to Wahabi claims iit seems most likely that
the Muslims introduced Christians to the prayer beads during
the Crusades, not the other way around, and while the Hadith
literature contains no account of the Prophet using beads,
it does relate - but Allah knows best - that he counted
prayers with stones - of which a string of beads is merely
an extension, not an "innovation".
The traditional beads were made of a wide range of
materials: gold, silver, ivory, tortoiseshell,
mother-of-pearl, amber, ebony, rock crystal, elephant ivory,
walrus ivory, whale tooth, tortoiseshell, horn, camel bone,
pearls, coral, mother-of-pearl, snakewood, ebony, agalloch
wood, sandalwood, bloodwood, olive, rosewood,, tamarind,
tulip wood, satinwood, sugar maple, teak, olive stones, date
stones. Today, regrettably, most beads are made of some type
of hard plastic and the traditional string of silk has been
replaced with dyed nylon thread.
