Residence and Spatiality: The Analysis of Beshr-e Hafi’s Life in Tazkirat al-Awliya

Considering space as an original matter and natural concept in ancient Greece thought in contrast to assuming it as something abstract, continued, quantitative, and measurable in modern thought has resulted in different concepts, conclusions, and formalizations. With the essence of space and the truth of residing diminishing in the sphere of modern thought, Martin Heidegger strived to focus on the concepts of being-in-the-world of Dasein, residence, inhabitance, and spatiality through visualizing space and considering space’s truth. In Heidegger’s words, we are ‘residents’; essentially-spatial Dasein, in a spatial world. The present study was an attempt to analyze and re-read Beshr-e Hafi’s narration in Tazkirat al-Awliya considering the essence and truth of space in Heidegger’s thought. Emphasizing on this important issue that Dasein’s existence is engaged in his conditionality, the present article deals with situational analysis of what happens in ‘one day’, ‘on the way’ for Beshr-e Hafi. It shows how Beshr-e Hafi’s decision and stance concerning a simple, ordinary incident makes that incident his own (owning event) and expands the options before him. After this event, Beshr-e Hafi is recalled by a divine message and he achieves safety and relief on the ‘path’ that is apparently a place for passing and moving on. He is there, inhabits there, and this residence paves the way for the quadripartite unity of the Geviert; the Fourfold of the heavens, world, mortals, and gods. Living and being of Beshr-e Hafi is realized on the way with becoming and transforming and he achieves serenity on the way to residence.