Bayazid Bastami cried out 'Glory be to me, how great is my majesty' in a state of ecstatic self-annihilation
In a moment of overwhelming absorption, Bayazid spoke words that sound blasphemous on their surface but were read by later Sufis as evidence that the self had briefly vanished.
Attar records this outburst - 'Subhani, ma a'zama sha'ni,' or 'Glory be to me, how great is my majesty' - as an example of shath, ecstatic speech uttered in a state so overwhelming that ordinary self-awareness collapses. Bayazid Bastami (d. 874), from Bastam in present-day Iran, is considered the archetypal figure of this intoxicated (sukr) strand of Sufism, in contrast to Junayd's sober school. Because the words appear to claim divinity for a mortal, later commentators worked to interpret shath carefully - not as literal theological claims but as speech occurring at the threshold where the servant's ego has momentarily annihilated and only the Divine seems to be speaking through the emptied vessel. The tradition preserved these utterances rather than suppressing them, treating them as evidence of extreme mystical states even while debating how they should be understood doctrinally.
Subhani, ma a'zama sha'ni - Glory be to me, how great is my majesty.
The term shath denotes theologically startling utterances made in ecstatic states, and their interpretation became a recurring problem for Sufi apologists defending the tradition against charges of heresy.
Tadhkirat al-Awliya
Written about in
- What Sufism says about wanting to be admired
Then there is the case that will not fit. Bayazid, the archetype of the intoxicated strand of Sufism, shouted words that sound like pure self-exaltation, and later commentators read them as shath, speech from a moment when the ego had vanished. The tradition preserved the outburst rather than suppressing it, and never produced a reliable way to tell that state from ordinary boasting.