The Role of Abolghasem Qoshiri in approximating the different tarighat views on the guardians knowledge of his guardianship

The belief in the idea that the saints are unobservable to the eyes of the strangers is one of the few concepts the sufis have a consensus on. It is a widely accepted belief in Islamic mysticism and sufism that the saints hide beneath God’s covering and that no one will know about them except with God’s will. Evidence for this can be found in the Qodsian Hadith ‘The saints are under my dome, and no one can recognize them except for me”. Another issue over which there is much less of an agreement among epistemologists concerns whether the saint has awareness of being assigned authority by God. This has been a controversial issue among the Sufis, with two mains opposing camps standing up against each other. Both of the two camps have put forth their own respective reasons to support their opinions, which are difficult to accept or refute. This difficulty in the definitve acceptance or rejection of these two views has led to the formation of a third camp, attempting to take the middle approach so as to end a doctrinal dispute. The most prominent figure in the third group is Abolghasem Qashiri. The present study is an attempt to shed light on the most important issues and arguments related to this controversy.