Quote by Al-Niffari: “The wider the vision, the fewer the words.”

Those who have seen or understood the most are often the most reluctant to speak, because they know how inadequate language is to capture deep experience. Wisdom tends toward silence, while ignorance tends toward confident speech.

Al-Niffari lived during the Abbasid period when Islamic mysticism was developing its characteristic vocabulary and literary forms. The Mawaqif were written as direct addresses from God to the mystic, and their unusual, compressed style reflected the difficulty of translating mystical experience into ordinary language.

Arab Sufi mystic born in the early 10th century in Niffar, Mesopotamia, whose Mawaqif (Standings) and Mukhatbat (Addresses) are among the most intense and enigmatic mystical texts in Arabic literature. Little is known of his life, but his ecstatic prose influenced many later Sufi writers.