We created not the heavens, the earth, and all between them, merely in [idle] sport.

The subject of sadness in general is vast and historically there has been no consensus as to how it should be defined and, consequently, how it should be treated. Traditionally, physicians of the classical era drew a clear distinction between sadness that was associated with the loss of loved ones or with other painful circumstances; and sadness without a cause, and consequently offered different treatments for the two categories. Medieval Muslim thinkers such as Al-Kindī (800-870) and Balkhī (849-934) also followed their Greek and Roman predecessors, prescribing certain behavioural techniques to combat sadness that arose from environmental causes.

Contemporary psychiatry has been criticised for largely ignoring the distinction between these two different kinds of sadness, and for focusing more on symptoms than on context. According to some critics, classification according to symptoms can lead to the wrong diagnosis since it is possible on occasion for both categories of sadness to display similar symptoms.

As expressed in the Quranic verse above, nothing is created in futility, and therefore ultimately there must be a purpose for everything in existence. This book examines this idea further, arguing that since sadness is a universal condition, and bearing in mind that nothing exists without a reason, then ḥuzn must have a purpose too. The aim therefore is to carry out a contextual analysis of ḥuzn by researching Muslim literature on this concept and comparing it with Said Nursi's Quranic interpretation in order to arrive at an in-depth understanding of the narrative on ḥuzn, the perceived reasons for its existence and why and how, on a practical level, it is believed that it can be obviated.

The Objective

As early as the ninth century, Muslim thinkers such as Abῡ Zayd Aḥmad ibn Sahl Balkhī (850-934) made a clear distinction between ḥuzn (‘sadness or depression’) that was due to environmental factors and ḥuzn that occurred for no apparent reason. Their differentiation between these two categories bears a remarkable resemblance to modern definitions of reactive depression and endogenous depression. Balkhī's recommendation was that the latter should be treated both physically, with medication, and psycho-spiritually, with methods such as “music” and “pleasant conversation”, and that the former, attributable to the loss of loved ones or any possessions that one values, should be addressed not with medication but with strategies of behavioural change. Since the medieval Muslim thinkers believed that the actual events in people's lives were not the real cause of reactive depression, but that the problem was down to how they interpreted their particular experiences, they devised strategies and methods for retraining the mind in order to help individuals to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined. Both medieval and modern critics have pointed to the fact that reactive depression should not be classed under the same category as major depressive disorders. Horwitz and Wakefield criticize the fact that contemporary psychiatry has tended to ignore the distinction that used to be made between the two categories when it is still very much relevant today: