Hijab حجاب

Hijab (حجاب, “veil”) is the Sufi technical term for whatever screens the Real from the perceiver. The crucial doctrinal move is to locate the veil not in the Real but in the perceiver: the divine is not hidden in itself but only relative to the modes of attention through which it is approached. Ghazali’s Mishkat al-Anwar develops this into the doctrine of the “veils of light and darkness,” in which the highest veils are the very modes of divine self-disclosure that the lower spiritual stations mistake for the Real itself.

The Akbarian use of hijab is continuous with Ghazali’s: every name through which the divine is addressed is also a veil that conceals the divine in its absolute register (ahadiyya). The Sufi path is therefore not the removal of veils to expose a hidden truth but the recognition that the veiling and the unveiling are the same divine act. The famous hadith “God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness” (variant attributions) is the paradigmatic Sufi reference and underwrites Ghazali’s treatise.

Etymology

From the Arabic root ḥ-j-b (ح-ج-ب), “to screen,” “to conceal,” “to make a barrier.” The common contemporary use of hijab for the woman’s headscarf derives from the same root but is a separate semantic domain; the Sufi technical use precedes and is independent of that contemporary sense. The Quranic hijab of 33:53 names a literal screen, and the Sufi metaphysical use builds outward from the screening function.

Cross-tradition resonance

The Christian apophatic tradition’s gnophos (divine darkness) performs an analogous screening function, though the Christian register foregrounds luminous excess (the divine is “veiled by its own light”) where the Sufi register foregrounds the perceiver’s limitation. The Kabbalistic kelippot (husks) name a related but distinct screening, located in the broken vessels of Lurianic cosmology rather than in the modes of contemplative attention.

Primary sources

• Mishkat al-Anwar: Ghazali’s treatise on the veils of light and darkness.
• Ibn Arabi, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya: hijab as the structural correlate of every divine name.
• Hadith of the seventy thousand veils: the controlling Sufi reference.

Scholarly literature

• Buchman, translation and introduction to Niche of Lights: the standard English Mishkat with apparatus.
• Landolt, “Ghazali and Religionswissenschaft”: the veils doctrine in comparative perspective.

Hekhal Editorial. "Hijab." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/hijab.

Hekhal Editorial. 2026. "Hijab." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/hijab.

Hekhal Editorial. "Hijab." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition, May 2, 2026, hekhal.org/lexicon/hijab.

Hekhal Editorial. (2026). Hijab. Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/hijab

@misc{hekhal-lexicon-hijab-2026,
  author       = {{Hekhal Editorial}},
  title        = {{Hijab}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {{Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition}},
  url          = {https://hekhal.org/lexicon/hijab},
  urldate      = {[date accessed]}
}