VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT
RABI’A FROM NARRATIVE TO MYTH:
THE TROPICS OF IDENTITY
OF A MUSLIM WOMAN SAINT
ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT
ter verkrijging van de graad
Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
op gezag van de rector
magnificus prof.dr. F.A. van der Duyn Schouten, in het openbaar te verdedigen
ten overstaan van de
promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid
op donderdag 14 november 2013
om 11.45 uur in de aula van de
universiteit,
De Boelelaan 1105
door
Rkia Elaroui Cornell geboren te Sefrou, Morocco
promotoren: prof.dr. P.A. van Doorn-Harder
prof.dr. H.M. Vroom
To my dissertation advisors:
Prof. Dr. Pieternella A. Van
Doorn-Harder and
Prof. Dr. Hendrik M. Vroom.
Without you this work would never have been written.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: RABI’A,
THE “WOMAN WHO NEVER DIES” 1
The
Myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a Master Narrative
Key Premodern Sources and
Modern Works on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya The
Plan of This Work
1.
RABI’A THE TEACHER
30
Who Was the Historical
Rabi’a? Rabi’a in the Earliest Sources
Rabi’a the Teacher and the Culture of Adab
2.
RABI’A THE ASCETIC
63
Conceptualizing Asceticism in
Early Islam Terms of Early Islamic Asceticism
Schools and Traditions of
Women’s Asceticism in Basra The Asceticism of Rabi’a and Her Circle
3.
RABI’A THE LOVER
107
Rabi’a and the Poetics of Myth
Asceticism and Love Mysticism
in Early Islamic Basra Rabi’a the Muslim Diotima
Rabi’a the Love Poet
4.
RABI’A THE SUFI
152
The Lady Reconsidered: Can We
See the Real “Rabi’a the Sufi”? Locating
Rabi’a the Sufi: What Was a “Sufi” in Eighth-Century Islam? The Heart as a Metaphor in Early Islamic
Mysticism
Rabi’a the Knower
Rabi’a the Sufi and the Limits of the Real
5.
RABI’A THE ICON (I): THE SUFI IMAGE
190
Rabi’a Remembered: Myth,
Icon, and the “Reality Effect” From Visage
to Vita: ‘Attar’s Outline of the Rabi’a
Myth
Every Picture Tells A Story: ‘Attar’s
Emplotment of Rabi’a’s
Vita
Postscript: Where Is Rabi’a Buried?
6.
RABI’A THE ICON (II): THE SECULAR
IMAGE 228
Rabi’a the Existentialist
Rabi’a the Film Icon
Postscript: Rabi’a, the Phantom
of the Miniseries
CONCLUSION: REVISITING THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PROBLEM:
WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT RABI’A’S
LIFE AND LEGACY? 258
What Can We Say about the
Historical Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya? What
Can We Say about Rabi’a’s Legacy?
SUMMARY (SAMENVATTING) 277
BIBLIOGRAPHY 278
ABSTRACT
This work is a study of the Muslim
saint Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (ca. 717-801 CE), as she has
been depicted in Sufi and non-Sufi literature. Although evidence suggests
that a woman ascetic named Rabi’a
actually lived in Basra, Iraq, in the eighth century
CE, very little historical information can be established about
her. The great
majority of the Rabi’a
narratives consist of tropological constructs and fictional accounts
composed in the centuries
after her death. Thus, this study is primarily about historical and literary representation and the construction of myth. The subject of historical representation is discussed theoretically in the Introduction. Four main tropes or master
narratives are identified that define Rabi’a al-
‘Adawiyya as a Sufi saint: Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover, and
Rabi’a the Sufi. Each of these tropes
is discussed in detail in Chapters 1-4, tracing their development, major rhetorical themes,
and doctrinal meaning
in the Rabi’a narratives.
Chapters 5 and 6 discuss Rabi’a
the Icon, showing
how she has become a symbolic figure
in both Sufi and modern secular
representations. Chapter 5 discusses her portrayal by the
Persian Sufi Farid al-Din al-‘Attar
(d. 1220 CE), who composed
the first vita of
Rabi’a and provided the outline for all further
biographical narratives. Chapter
6 discusses secular versions of the Rabi’a
narrative, which use tropes derived
from modern philosophies such as
existentialism and feminism.
These tropes are also influential in the depiction
of Rabi’a’s story in cinematic film and television. The Conclusion reassesses the historiographical issues raised by the Rabi’a narratives with respect to the role of literary
theories and approaches in historical studies. This work draws on numerous
sources, both medieval
and modern, in Arabic, Persian, and European
languages. It discusses
the major schools
of representation of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in medieval Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Egypt and
takes the discussion up through modern scholarly writings
and cinematic depictions. Using these writings
and depictions as source materials, the work also provides a critical approach
to the historiographical and
literary study of sainthood.
INTRODUCTION
RABI’A, “THE WOMAN WHO NEVER DIES”
In October 1804 the Lewis
and Clark expedition, which was organized to explore and map
the lands along the Missouri
River in the American Midwest,
entered the area where the Cannonball River and the Heart River
join the Missouri
River in present-day North Dakota. They were following a map made by a member of the Mandan tribe, who was asked to locate the site of Mandan
villages and important landmarks.
The Mandans called
the region between the Heart and Cannonball Rivers
“Heart of the Land” because
it was the center of their
world and the heartland of their culture.
It was here that Lone Man, the first being, and
First Creator, the Coyote, brought
up mud from the Missouri
River and its tributaries to build
the Mandan villages.
South of the Cannonball River was the home of Old Woman
Who Never Dies. “Of all female
life on earth
I am the head,” she said. “Cold and blizzard
I subdue . . . I make whatever I plant to grow.”1
Old Woman Who Never Dies
originally came from a region far to
the south of the Mandan homeland. When she heard about the villages that Lone Man and Coyote had
created, she resolved to come north and make a female of each species
so that life could
continue. For the Mandan and related Hidatsa
peoples, Old Woman Who Never Dies
symbolized the female
power of rebirth
and regeneration; she was the spirit of vegetation and guaranteed the growth of agricultural crops. Her spirit also entered
the body of the Rocky Mountains to make sure that the rivers would
always flow. Her creative spirit
entered into the body
of the first woman to insure that females would always produce
children. Out of her
spirit, she created Woman Above
and the Holy Women of the Groves
of the Four Directions.
The
Holy Women were spirits of great power who acted as teachers
for chosen men.
In the sacred ceremonies of the Mandan
and related Hidatsa
peoples, both men and women performed special rituals for the Holy Women so that women would be respected. According to some legends, Old Woman Who Never Dies maintained her immortality by bathing in the
Missouri River and its tributaries; each time she bathed in the river
she came up younger,
until she came up as a young girl.2 According
to other legends, she still kept a home far to the south
of Mandan territory, where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
Here
she lived in a hut beside the sea and ate corn porridge with spoons made of clamshells.3 When I was a young girl growing up in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco, I
had no idea about the Mandan people or Old Woman Who Never Dies. However,
I did know something about holy people. I was born into a family that traced its origins to murabitin, holy people of the Moroccan countryside. My ancestors were the Banu Amghar, a family of Moroccan saints that created
one of the first ribats or
Sufi teaching centers
in rural Morocco. This ribat was
located near a spring called Tit-n-Fitr: “Spring
of Sustenance” in the
Tamazight language. Known today as Moulay Abdellah,
Ribat Tit-n-Fitr can still be seen on the
Atlantic coast of Morocco, several
kilometers south of the city of El Jedida. Many
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1 Carolyn Gilman,
Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide (Washington, D. C. and London: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 153
2 Virginia Bergman
Peters, Women of the Earth Lodges:
Tribal Life on the Plains
(Norman,
Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma
Press, 2000 reprint
of 1995 first
edition), 31-34
3 Alfred W. Bowers, Mandan Social
and Ceremonial Organization (Lincoln, Nebraska and London:
University of Nebraska Press,
2004 reprint of 1950 University of Chicago Press first edition), 197-205
legends are told about the holy men of the Banu Amghar, and even today, the festival
of Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad
Amghar (fl. 1133 CE) attracts
thousands of visitors
each year.4
Unlike most girls in rural Morocco
in the early 1960s, my father allowed
me to leave my native town for school,
first in the small city of Sefrou
near Fez and later in the regional capital of Meknès. At an early
age, I was taught the Qur’an because
Qur’anic learning was my
family’s tradition. Although
my father was a reformer
and an innovator, he took his
heritage seriously and tried to maintain the most important traditions of the family. During each vacation from school,
I would spend long periods
with him, sharing
what I had learned and listening
to the stories and teachings
that he related.
I developed a reputation for being
different from the other girls of my town. I read a lot, I kept to myself, and I did not think of
marriage as a goal. Because
I also had a serious
inclination toward religion, the other girls of
my town gave me a nickname that persisted throughout my childhood and adolescence:
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.”
Despite being compared to
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a child, it did not occur to me to write about her until I published
my book Early Sufi Women in
1999.5
After all, my nickname was not a compliment. For boys in particular, it meant that I was strange and that
summoning up the courage to get to know me was more trouble than it was worth. I only
thought of writing about Rabi’a
after I saw how she was depicted
by the Persian Sufi Abu ‘Abd
al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 1021 CE). Sulami portrayed Rabi’a very differently from most of the legends and hagiographic accounts
about her that I knew. Sulami’s Rabi’a
was not a dreamy
love-mystic. Instead, she was a tough-minded and clear-headed ascetic
and spiritual master. At turns both a rationalist and a mystic,
she was respected
by men for the depth and wisdom of her teachings. She even had male disciples. In addition, when I edited and translated Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women, I discovered something that Sulami had overlooked—
Rabi’a was not a unique figure in her time but instead
represented a tradition
of women’s spirituality that went back more than a century
before her. It was then that I resolved to write a book on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and found my chance to do so in the pursuit
of a
doctoral degree at the Free University of Amsterdam.
But what was I to say about Rabi’a?
How could I find a framework that would make sense of the numerous
and often contradictory narratives— both Sufi and non-Sufi— that led to the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as she is known in the Muslim
world today? What metaphor could sum up the different
versions of Rabi’a
from medieval to modern times? I
discovered a solution to this dilemma in 2004 on a visit
to St. Louis, Missouri during
the Bicentennial Celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition. At the St. Louis Gateway
Arch Bookstore, I bought
a copy of Carolyn Gilman’s
excellent coffee-table book, Lewis and
Clark: Across the Divide. This book introduced me to the legend of Old Woman Who Never Dies. I realized that a similar
metaphor could apply to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. With the possible exception of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, more than any other woman in
the history of Islam, Rabi’a
is the Woman Who Never
Dies.
I.
The Myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a Master
Narrative
4 For information on the Banu Amghar, see Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin,
Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1998), 32-62
5 Abu ‘Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulami, Early Sufi Women: Dhikr
an-niswa al-muta’abbidat as-sufiyyat,
edited
and translated with Introduction by Rkia E. Cornell (Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae,
1999)
Because Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is a figure of myth, she is not a normal subject
of history. In fact, she does not appear in most medieval histories
or biographical works in the Islamic world. Instead, she mostly appears
in hagiographic narratives and in Sufi doctrinal
works. As best as we can tell, her biography is largely— if not entirely— fictional. Her status as a subject of historical inquiry
is mainly a product of the twentieth century. Because of this, she upsets the normal distinction made in historiography between historical research and historical writing. Usually,
one researches and assesses historical documents and archival sources and then puts the conclusions of research into writing.6 However,
with Rabi’a, there are no sources to consult other than hagiographies and other literary
works, and these
are not historical documents
in the normal sense of the term. As she is known today, Rabi’a
is a figure of literature and all the information that is known about her comes through
literature.
Thus, to write about her one
must make use of literature and take literary forms of representation into account.
In the modern period,
scholars of Islamic Studies in both Europe and the Arab world have tried to de-mythologize the figure of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in order to write about her
historically. This has created two problems. First,
some writers make the mistake
of treating the literary
representations of Rabi’a uncritically as historical data or empirical
facts.7 Naïvely, they accept virtually everything that is written
about her. This is clearly
a mistake, because as we shall see in the chapters
below, not only is most of what is written about Rabi’a governed by tropes more than empirical
reality but key elements of her story, especially her vita or
life-story, can be shown to be fictional, even if they are represented as facts.
Second, in trying to avoid the naivety
of the previous group of writers,
others go too far in the opposite direction. By trying to treat Rabi’a
in a purely empirical manner,
they diminish her as a religious and cultural figure
by either dismissing her as a subject of history
altogether or by stripping away the levels
of figurative meaning
that have made her an important part of Islamic
cultural memory.8 As a figure of cultural
memory, Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya is not unlike
the Islamic mythical
figure of al-Khidr
(The Green One), who in Muslim folklore reappears in every age to guide
a new generation of seekers
with his wisdom.9 As Mircea Eliade has observed,
myths and stories
(including hagiographies and modern histories) often contain
the same tropes,
despite being expressed
in different idioms. Eliade believed that whenever
the figurative meaning
of an account of the past is paramount
(or as he put it, when “the essential precedes
existence”), one is in the realm of myth.10
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6 Frank Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference
in Historical Representation (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2012), 60
7 This approach
characterizes the great majority of works written
on Rabi’a in the modern
period,
including a vast amount of Internet
references that are too numerous
to count.
8 See for example, Julian Baldick, “The Legend of Rabi’a of Basra: Christian
Antecedents, Muslim
Counterparts,” Religion 19
(1990). Baldick’s view of the Rabi’a narratives as fictional is apparent in the title of this article. His concern is mainly to identify literary
topoi that he can compare with
Christian antecedents, without discussing their figural meaning or the role
that they play in the construction of the Rabi’a myth.
9 See Hugh Talat Halman,
Where the Two Seas Meet: The Qur’anic Story of al-Khidr
and Moses in
Sufi Commentaries as a Model of Spiritual
Guidance (Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae, 2013). Much
like the present work, this book examines the figure of al-Khidr both as a
mythical figure and as a product of literature.
10 Mircea Eliade,
Myth and Reality, Willard
R. Trask, trans.
(Long Grove, Illinois:
Waveland Press,
Inc., 1998 reprint of 1963 original), 92; Eliade struggles with the question
of the status of myth in
modernity throughout most of the second half of this work.
Following the example of Eliade, but also using
other theorists of myth and narrative
such as Roland Barthes, Hayden
White, and Aleksei
Fyodorovich Losev, this study examines the accounts, dicta, and stories that make up the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, both in terms of
their meaning and their form or structure. To paraphrase Barthes,
I imagine the narratives
that make up the Rabi’a
myth not as an apricot
but as an onion. If the “fruit”
is the narrative content and the “pit” is the factual
core, I do not consider
the core to be the essence of the
content, as with an apricot.
Rather, I look at the narratives that make up the Rabi’a myth as if
they were parts of an onion: a superimposed construction of skins, layers,
levels, and forms of
narrative with a “core” that can only be discerned
when a new plant (i.e.,
a new image of Rabi’a) sprouts
from the center.11 Since the invisible
core of an onion generates
new content, this metaphor
expresses a dialectical relationship between the formal construction of the Rabi’a narratives and her mythical
representation, as discussed
in the works of Barthes
and Losev, in particular.
When
a myth is viewed as a product
of narrative construction, it allows the student of sacred
biography or other
forms of myth to avoid
a major problem
of historicism. From the
point of view of historicism, the task of a study
on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya would be as follows:
(1) to examine the information on Rabi’a as it has appeared in premodern and modern
sources; and (2) to try to discern
what can be stated about the “real”
Rabi’a as she lived and practiced her faith. However,
as stated above,
there are no empirical source
materials that can tell
us conclusively what the “real” Rabi’a was like or how she practiced her faith. All we
know is what the figurative Rabi’a is represented as doing. There are a few accounts
of purported eyewitnesses, but until more evidence can be found it is virtually impossible to establish their veracity.
Thus, it is not possible
to address satisfactorily the historicist
dichotomy of fact versus fiction.12 In practical terms, there is no other recourse but to
examine the representations of Rabi’a in narratives and the interpretations of her identity
or mythical image. Under these circumstances, the issue of separating the “historical” Rabi’a from the “figurative” Rabi’a is not only practically impossible but also it is theoretically not as
crucial as it would be if a greater amount
of non-literary evidence
were available.
Thus, the literary turn that I take in this work (especially in Chapters 3, 5, and 6) is not
so much a theoretical position
as a pragmatic consideration; it does not mean, “anything goes.” As the saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Roland Barthes’ onion metaphor is appropriate for the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya because
it is nearly impossible to find a historical “pit” or core of empirical
truth in the many layers of Rabi’a narratives.
Although circumstantial evidence suggests that a well-known woman by the name of Rabi’a
lived in the region of Basra in southern Iraq in the eighth century
CE, little else can be
established according to empirical historical methods. However, this does not mean that one
cannot or should not conduct
a historical study of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya. It only means that it
must be done using different historiographical methods. As noted above,
the normal
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11
Roland Barthes, “Style and Its Image,” in idem, The Rustle of Language, Richard Howard
trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 99; for Barthes, an onion does not have
a core. However, as every cook knows,
the core of an onion
becomes visible only when a new onion
plant starts to sprout from it.
12 In historicism, a thing is defined by its history.
In a way, the present
work also attempts
to do this
for Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya by tracing the historical development of the Rabi’a myth through
her representation in hagiography, Sufi literature, non-Sufi literature, and
modern studies. However, historicism
also posits a kernel or “truth” of the thing that history reveals, like the pit
in Barthes’ apricot metaphor. Leopold
von Ranke (1795-1886) called this kernel of truth a “seed.”
The point of using Barthes’ onion metaphor is to express the fact that there is
no empirical “seed” out of which
to develop a normal historical study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. See Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference, 2.
dichotomy of fact-finding versus
history writing cannot
apply in this case. This forces the researcher to find a different way in which to study Rabi’a.
If one takes the position
with Hayden White, F. R. Ankersmit, and others that the term,
“history,” can include
literary genres of representation, then it is possible to conceive of a historical study of Rabi’a
as her image has been constructed over time through
different forms of literature.
As the title, Rabi’a from Narrative to Myth implies, this study is more concerned with how
Rabi’a is represented than with the alleged details
of her existence. What is most
important in this perspective is that she has been represented in multiple narrative
forms and multiple genres
of literature and modern media
for over 1200 years. Moreover,
she provides through these representations an exemplary image that has inspired countless
people in different times, places, and cultures. Just as Old Woman Who Never Dies becomes a young
girl again each time she bathes in the river,
so too the mythical image of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya becomes young and vital again by periodically “bathing” in narrative. Today, these narratives are popular among both Muslims and non-Muslims, and can be found in both Sufi and non- Sufi literature, in local traditions, songs, movies, and even a television miniseries.
The paradox of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya is that her name is known by nearly everyone
but the “real” Rabi’a is known by no one. In the term coined
by the Belgian sociologist of religion Pierre Delooz, she is a “constructed saint”—
a composite figure
of legends, dicta, literary narratives, poems, and hagiographic accounts
that have taken
on the aura of fact.13 Both the purported details
of Rabi’a’s life and the meaning of her sainthood depend on
representations that have varied according to differences of Sufi doctrine, literary convention,
and authorial intent. These representations consist of religious, literary, philosophical, and even
secular tropes that together make up the composite image of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, the quintessential woman saint of Islam. Like a mirage
in the desert, this image
remains forever on the horizon. It shifts and changes according
to whatever perspective one uses to view it. Just
as with a mirage, the further one is from the “real”
Rabi’a, the more one feels she sees her. Conversely, the closer one gets to the sources that provide the data of Rabi’a’s life and
teachings, the less one finds
objectivity or even consensus. Like a mirage, her image begins to dissolve whenever one views it at close range. However,
when viewed again
from greater distance and a different
perspective she reappears, clothed in yet another representation that defines her identity for a new generation of admirers.
In the field of Communications Studies, the myth of
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya would
be a master narrative: “a transhistorical narrative
that is deeply embedded in a particular culture.”14 Because
it stands for a master
narrative, the very name, “Rabi’a,” conjures up for Muslims an image based
on a variety of stories
and dicta that have been transmitted by both
Sufis and non-Sufis over the centuries. As we shall
see in Chapter 5, the association of a
mythical figure like Rabi’a with multiple layers
of meaning is not unlike what happens
with an icon in an Orthodox
Christian church. In an Orthodox
icon, a single image can evoke a
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13
Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et Canonisations (Liège, Belgium: Université de Liège Faculté
de Droit, 1969), 7-14
14 Jeffry R. Halverson, H. L. Goodall,
Jr., and Steven
R. Corman, Master Narratives of Islamic
Extremism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 14; the concept of the master
narrative in this book
comes from Walter R. Fisher, Human
Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia,
South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1989). The concept of the master narrative is
also used in anthropology and social theory.
See, for example, Arjun Appadurai, Modernity
at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 48-65, where he uses the concept of the
master narrative to critique ethnologies of colonialism and to advocate a
transnational anthropology based on narratives of “imagined lives.” In a certain sense, the present study
attempts a similar project.
variety of associations. In this sense, one could say that the mythical
Rabi’a is an icon too, except that her image
is evoked through
literature rather than through painting. However, now that she has been represented through movies and television, her image also carries
something of the visual aspect of an actual icon. As a master narrative,
the myth of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya is part of an ongoing process of reciprocal composition: it both shapes other narratives and is shaped by
them.
A narrative is defined
as “a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially
organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve
a conflict by establishing
audience expectations according
to the known trajectories of its literary
and rhetorical forms.”15 Based on this definition, we can say that the master narrative of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya was first created
by the Sufi Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar (d. 1220 CE). ‘Attar’s
chapter on Rabi’a in the hagiographic anthology Tadhkirat
al-awliya’ (Memorial of the Saints) established the model for her life story. However,
three centuries before
‘Attar elements of her
myth had already
begun to appear
in the form of dicta
and narrative tropes.
Stories and accounts that
contain narrative tropes are often recounted for rhetorical or ideological purposes.16
As this study will reveal, the master narrative of
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is composed of four main tropes:
Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover,
and Rabi’a the Sufi. Each of these tropes comprises
a chapter of the present
study. Chapters 5 and 6, which
deal with the trope of “Rabi’a the Icon,” include
all of the previous tropes
plus new tropes that emerged in the twentieth century
from the rewriting
of her vita by academic scholars, novelists, and dramatists. As part of a continuous process
of representation and interpretation, Rabi’a
emerges anew in each period
of literary activity. This process has not
only continued in the modern
period, but has been intensified as well. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the story of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya has been transformed through the
influence of Existentialist philosophy, the modern novel,
radio, television, and cinema. I have
put the narrative of Rabi’a’s
life story, as it appears
in modern literature and media, in the
final chapters of this study rather than at the beginning because
this example best illustrates
the transformation of the Rabi’a narrative from master narrative
to myth.
According to the communications theorist Walter R. Fisher, a narrative can be
subjected to two tests of validity or rationality. The first test is the test of narrative probability, or whether the narrative is coherent and makes sense.17 To be coherent, a narrative must be systematic: “The stories must relate to one another
in consistent ways,
and carry a common
theme [or related themes].
They must form a structure where
one story reinforces, elaborates, or combines with another so that the whole is greater than the sum of
the parts.”18 The second test of narrative validity is narrative fidelity, or whether the narrative
relates to the world as the audience
understands it. Narratives make sense of the situations they relate by establishing archetypal characters, relationships, and standard actions
that the audience can
understand.19
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15 Halverson, Goodall,
and Corman, Master Narratives of Islamic Extremism, 14
16 Ibid, 13
17 Fisher, Human Communication as Narration in Ibid, 24
18 Ibid
19 Ibid. Narrative probability and narrative
fidelity are related
to Roland Barthes’
concept of the
“reality effect,”
which is discussed
in Chapters 4-6. Narrative fidelity
is also related to Hendrik
M. Vroom’s thesis of how the truth claims of religious stories are based
in the audience’s basic experiences, which is discussed in Chapter 5.
The use of narrative
tropes helps a narratives pass these tests by allowing
the audience to recognize common patterns in the way characters and their actions
relate to each other. This allows them to derive
a common meaning
for the master
narrative. Major narrative tropes
in the myth of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya such as Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a
the Ascetic, Rabi’a the Lover, and Rabi’a the Sufi can become master
narratives because each is
made up of its own set of archetypal characters, relationships, and actions
and each passes
the tests of narrative
validity and narrative
probability. In addition,
the narrative elements
in each of these tropes are related to narrative elements
in the other tropes, such that one could plot the
relationships between these tropes or archetypes in a diagram.
In this way, the narratives of Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover,
and Rabi’a the Sufi form a
matrix or web of tropes
that make up the composite master narrative of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. This study will demonstrate how the elements
of this matrix fit together
and show how this
master narrative was tranformed into a myth. As long as the narrative elements
of Rabi’a’s story continue
to make sense
and have relevance for her audience, we can refer to
her metaphorically as the Woman Who Never Dies.
II.
Key Premodern Sources
and Modern Works on Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya
The narratives of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya are too numerous to count. This
situation has become even more problematical since the creation
of the Internet. A Google
search of the name
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya” comes up with 28,800 entries;
the name “Rabi’a
al-Basri” yields about 179,000
entries; the name “Rabi’a” yields
over 24 million
entries because girls and women who are currently named Rabi’a are also included. The
trouble with this mass of information is that very little of it can be used as historical source-material. Mostly the stories, quotations, and anecdotes
about Rabi’a recycle
information contained in a handful
of key narratives that span a 1200-year period
from the mid-ninth century CE to the present.
Because it is impossible to
cover all of the works— even the premodern ones— that mention Rabi’a, I will
concentrate in this study on the medieval and modern narratives that were most
influential in creating her master narrative.
For a figure about whom there seems to be so much information, it comes as a
surprise to learn that there
is no contemporaneous historical information on the life of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. As noted above,
the first version
of Rabi’a’s vita or
life story was not written until 400 years after
the approximate date of her death. Works that provide
even a small amount of credible
historical information on Rabi’a are very rare. As discussed in Chapter 1, only
a handful of sources mention
her in the century after her death. Since some of these sources are currently missing,
information from them must be gleaned by searching later sources for quotations and citations from these works.
The earliest mention
of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya is a single
statement attributed to her in the doctrinal work al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah (God as the Goal and the Return),
by the Sufi al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi of Baghdad (d. 857 CE). This is the earliest extant
work to mention
Rabi’a and no one has identified it previously. The second work to contain
information on Rabi’a was Kitab al- ruhban (The Book of Monks), a work on asceticism by Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al- Burjulani of Baghdad (d. 852 CE). Two citations
of Rabi’a from this work can be identified
in later sources. Burjulani’s citations
of Rabi’a may actually be older than Muhasibi’s;
however, we cannot be certain
of their date because the work itself has been lost. This is one reason
why Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban
also has not been cited previously by modern
scholars. These citations
by Muhasibi and Burjulani are the earliest
references to Rabi’a in
Sufi literature.
The earliest non-Sufi references to Rabi’a are in the works of two major
literary figures of Abbasid-era Baghdad. The first
of these is Abu ‘Uthman
al-Jahiz (d. 868 CE), a famous
theologian, essayist, and rhetorician who mentions Rabi’a
in two of his books,
Kitab al-hayawan (The
Book of Animals) and Kitab al-bayan
wa-l-tabyin (Treatise on the
Demonstrative Proof and the Art of Persuasion). Scholars have known about Jahiz’s
citations of Rabi’a for many years. However, previous
scholars have not identified the references to Rabi’a
in another important work from the generation after
Jahiz. This is Kitab balaghat al- nisa’ (Book of the Eloquence of Women) by Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur of Baghdad (d. 893
CE). Balaghat al-nisa’ is
the first book devoted entirely
to women in Arabic literature. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
references to Rabi’a have not been identified previously because he does
not refer to her as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya or even as Rabi’a al-Qaysiyya, which is how Jahiz
refers to her. Instead, he calls her Rabi’a al-Musmi’iyya, “The Woman Who Must Be Heard.” However, we can be certain
that this figure is Rabi’a because some of the quotations
that are attributed to her by Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur are the same as those that are found in Jahiz.
What historical information can be ascertained from the earliest
sources on Rabi’a? As stated above, there is very little except
to confirm that a famous
ascetic and teacher
named Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya or Rabi’a al-Qaysiyya (the first name refers to refers to her clan and the second name refers to refers to her tribe)
existed in or around the city of Basra in southern
Iraq in the eighth century
CE. This is important because
otherwise one might
assume that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is merely a figure of literature. Even the exact dates of her birth and
death are not known. The commonly accepted
birth date of 717 CE and death date of 801 CE come
from a much later period
and the ultimate
source of these dates is unclear. Everything about Rabi’a is tentative. However, the early
citations mentioned above
are valuable historically because
of their closeness to Rabi’a in place and time. Two authors— Muhasibi and Jahiz— were born in Rabi’a’s
home city of Basra. Because
of this, they could have known people who knew her personally. Clearly,
they heard stories
about her and were
aware of her reputation; otherwise, they would not have mentioned her. local reputation is the best evidence
we have that she existed. In addition, the non-Sufi writers
Jahiz and Ibn Abi
Tahir Tayfur are important sources
on Rabi’a because
they use her as a rhetorical
example. Both writers
regard her as a figure
of eloquence, even though she came from outside their own literary
and intellectual tradition. They could not have used her in this way if
her reputation had not been widely known,
much as the reputation of Mother Theresa
is known today.
In the classic study
Oral Tradition as History,
Jan Vansina defines oral
traditions as “verbal messages
which are reported
statements from the past beyond the present generation.”20 According
to Vansina, in order to be used as historical evidence, an oral tradition must establish one or more
links between the later
record of a report (whether
transmitted orally or in writing)
and the original observation on which the tradition is based.
If such a link does not exist, the tradition
cannot be used as historical
evidence. However, if a
link can be established, the tradition should
not be dismissed as unhistorical.
In Islamic literature, the links between
the written record
and the initial
observation are often passed down in chains of transmission (Ar. isnad,
pl. asanid). In the culture of oral
tradition in Islam, the chains
of transmission that accompany oral accounts are considered
proofs of the authenticity of the traditions
they support. Vansina views oral
traditions as evidence in much the same way. According
to him, the historian should view a tradition “as a
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20 Jan Vansina,
Oral Tradition as History
(London and Nairobi,
Kenya: James Curry and Heinemann Kenya, 1985), 27
series of successive historical documents all lost except for the last one and usually
interpreted by every
link in the chain of transmission. It is therefore evidence
at second, third, or nth remove, but it is still evidence unless it be shown that a message does not rely on a first statement made by an observer.”21 The same can be said of traditions about Rabi’a in the early sources.
Although we must not make the mistake
of treating oral traditions as if
their contents are fixed as in written
documents, they can still provide
important evidence of past
events, situations, statements, or ideas. For this reason,
it is justifiable to take the
aphorisms and citations of Rabi’a
in the earliest sources as circumstantial evidence
of her historical existence.
However, to conclude that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya probably existed does not make the
voice that speaks through
these traditions entirely
hers. She wrote
no books and no account of her was written
during her lifetime.
Although certain poems have been attributed to her,
these attributions are questionable at best. To date, no written body of work has been linked
conclusively to Rabi’a.
In addition, narrative tropes are already
found in some of the earliest
sources mentioned above. For example,
I discuss in Chapter 1 how Jahiz uses the figure of Rabi’a
as an example of the “person of bayan,”
a rhetorical trope from the Abbasid era that
combined notions of eloquence and wisdom and which defined
for Jahiz the ideal of the
person of reason.
The 350 years between the
mid-eighth century CE and the beginning of the twelfth century CE comprise
the period in which the most
important Sufi tropes of Rabi’a al-
‘Adawiyya were developed. The process of
turning the narratives of Rabi’a into narrative tropes began around the end of the tenth
century CE. By this time the geographical location of the Sufis who related
these narratives had expanded to include not only Iraq but also Syria
and Khorasan, a region that comprises eastern
Iran and much of Central
Asia. It was in Iraq, Syria, and Khorasan that the tropes
of Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a
the Ascetic, Rabi’a
the Lover, and Rabi’a the Sufi were developed. Two Sufi writers
were especially important
in this process.
The
first of these Sufi writers was Abu Talib al-Makki
of Baghdad (d. 996 CE), who
mentions Rabi’a
prominently in his doctrinal work Qut al-qulub (The
Sustenance of Hearts). Rabi’a was a key figure in Makki’s mystical
theology of Love. Although statements on divine
love attributed to Rabi’a appear
in the works of earlier
Sufis, the prominence that Makki gives her allows us to identify
him as the creator of the narrative trope of Rabi’a
the Lover. For Makki,
Rabi’a’s love of God symbolizes the highest station
of Love mysticism. Makki also depicts Rabi’a as a sage who initiates her disciples into the mysteries
of Love. I discuss
in Chapter 3 how Makki’s
rhetorical use of Rabi’a is similar to Plato’s rhetorical use of the priestess
Diotima of Mantinaea in The Symposium. In Plato’s work, Diotima initiates Socrates into the mysteries
of Love, just as Rabi’a is used by Makki to initiate
his readers into the Sufi theology of Love.
The second Sufi to develop
major narrative tropes about Rabi’a was Abu ‘Abd al- Rahman al-Sulami (d. 1021 CE), who lived
in the eastern Iranian city of Nishapur. Sulami was one of the greatest
systematizers of Sufism
as a form of orthodox
mysticism. He depicts Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya as the quintessential Sufi woman in his
book Dhikr al-niswa al- muta’abbidat al-sufiyyat (Memorial of Female Sufi Devotees). This is the first Sufi work
devoted entirely to women. Sulami
uses the figure
of Rabi’a to introduce the concept of ta’abbud
(literally, “making oneself into a slave of God”), which for him is the main characteristic of women’s
spirituality. As I have explained
in the Introduction to my 1999
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21 Ibid, 29
edition of Sulami’s work, Sulami also uses the figure of Rabi’a to advocate a theology of servitude, which he viewed as foundational for the Sufi way in general.22
Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women is significant as a historical source because it is the first extant work that mentions Rabi’a
to cite chains
of transmission for the stories
and dicta that it contains. Some of the names in these chains of transmission are authors of written
works that are now lost but would have been consulted by him. In addition
to Muhammad ibn al-Husayn
al-Burjulani mentioned above,
Sulami also cites the names of other
well- known authors of hagiographical or prosopographical works.23 These include Ibrahim
ibn al- Junayd of Baghdad (d. 883-4 CE), who, like Burjulani, wrote a work titled Kitab al-ruhban; Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi of Basra (d. in Mecca,
952-3 CE), an important early Sufi who wrote
a work of prosopography titled
Tabaqat al-nussak (Generations of the Ascetic
Ritualists); and Ja’far al-Khuldi of Baghdad (d. 959-60 CE), a famous
Sufi and poet who wrote
a hagiography titled Hikayat al-awliya’ (Stories of the
Saints).
The most important step in
the transformation of the Rabi’a narratives into a master narrative was taken around
the beginning of the thirteenth century CE. Before
this time no work
that mentioned Rabi’a had established itself as a model for subsequent narratives.
Certain works, such as Makki’s Qut al-qulub
and Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women, created important narrative tropes. In addition, there
is some evidence
that short works
specifically devoted to Rabi’a
were beginning to be written,
such as a work by the Hanbali
theologian Jamal al-Din Ibn al-Jawzi (1201 CE). However,
none of the authors who mention Rabi’a from the tenth through
the twelfth century
CE was able to establish
a model or paradigm for other works to follow.
Since by this time Rabi’a
had become recognized as an important figure of early Sufism,
the lack of a vita or
prior text for her hagiography is surprising.
All of this changed
with the publication of Farid al-Din al-‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al- awliya’. This is the most important work for the development of the Rabi’a myth. The story
that ‘Attar outlines in his chapter on Rabi’a has become the foundational text for subsequent narratives of Rabi’a’s life. ‘Attar’s composition of a vita for
Rabi’a marks the most important literary moment in the history of the Rabi’a myth. Because
this vita has gained
universal acceptance, no analysis
of the Rabi’a myth is sufficient without
reference to it. ‘Attar did more
than just provide
a new version of the Rabi’a narrative: the details of Rabi’a’s life that
he outlines in her vita appear to have been created out of whole
cloth. Virtually no tradition
recounting the events he describes
can be found in any previous work known today. For this reason, ‘Attar’s depiction of Rabi’a’s life-story must be viewed as a work of the imagination, whose message lies in its meaning, not in its presentation of supposed “facts.” In Chapter 5, I use Roland Barthes’ concept
of the “reality effect” to show how ’Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a exemplifies the power of verisimilitude to create its own reality.
Next, using the Russian
phenomenologist Aleksei Losev’s
theory of myth, I show how by adding an “outline” or back story to the tropes
created by his Sufi and non-Sufi predecessors, ‘Attar opened the way
for the popularization of the Rabi’a myth and enabled
an icon for Sufis to become an icon for all Muslims.
‘Attar’s contribution to the Rabi’a myth was particularly influential in medieval
Egypt. The Egyptian hagiographers Shu’ayb al-Hurayfish (d. 1398 CE) and ‘Abd al-Ra’uf al- Munawi (d. 1621 CE) based their notices on Rabi’a on ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’ and mimicked some of his rhetorical techniques. Because of the overwhelming influence of ‘Attar’s work, no major changes to the Rabi’a
narrative occurred until the twentieth century.
![]() |
22 See Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 54-60.
23 For a more detailed
discussion of these authors and their works, see Ibid, 48-53.
The changes that took place
in the modern period were stimulated by changes in the notions of factuality and objective knowledge brought about by the rise of historicism in the nineteenth century.
In the middle of the twentieth century,
other changes were introduced
through the influence of Existentialist philosophy and the dramatic requirements of modern
entertainment media. A number of historical works on Rabi’a
appeared in Europe
and the Arab world
during this period.
Several of these
are discussed in the chapters
below, when they raise issues that are relevant
to the subject under consideration. However, two historical works deserve special attention because of their
influence on the Rabi’a narrative as it developed in modern times.
These are Margaret
Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic, which was first published in1928, and ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s
Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi (The
Martyr of Divine Love), which
was first published in 1948.
In
terms of her importance to the Rabi’a
myth, Margaret Smith (1884-1970) has been
as influential for the English-language tradition of works
on Rabi’a as ‘Attar has been for the
Sufi tradition of the Rabi’a narrative. In other words, one could say with only slight exaggeration that Margaret Smith
is the “English ‘Attar.” Smith wrote the first modern historical study of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya. This work, Rabi’a the Mystic A.D. 717-801
and Her Fellow Saints
in Islam, Being the Life and Teachings of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya of
Basra, Sufi Saint ca. A.H. 99-185, A.D. 717-801, Together
with Some Account
of the Place of Women in Islam, has become the most widely read and influential work on Rabi’a in English or any other European
language.24 In fact, in translation it may be the most widely read book
on Rabi’a in any language.
Because Smith’s work has influenced the scholarship on Rabi’a in so many ways,
I could not confine my discussion of it to
a single chapter.
Instead, I refer to Smith’s
contributions throughout this work. In many ways, the present study
is built on the
foundation of Smith’s pioneering scholarship; in other ways, however, it critiques her scholarship. One of the most important
differences between the present work and that of
Smith is its initial premise:
whereas Smith was concerned with uncovering the “real” or historical Rabi’a, I dispute
the notion that the “real” Rabi’a can ever be represented in a way that
could correspond to the historicist model. Thus, I am more concerned in this work with
the figural Rabi’a— the Rabi’a of narrative
and myth. Although
Chapters 1, 2, and 4, are devoted to a discussion of the religious, social, and intellectual worlds that the “real” Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya might have occupied, the most that I can accomplish in these chapters
is to fill in social and historical background for the tropes of Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a the Ascetic, or Rabi’a the Sufi. There is no way to write ana empirical
and objective history
of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya with the source materials that currently exist. Thus, the only way to approach
her in a valid
historiographical manner is to focus
on the history of how she has been represented in the master narratives and literary tropes that make up her myth.
When
Margaret Smith wrote on Rabi’a in the early twentieth century, many of the sources that are available today were not available to her. One of the most important
of these sources is Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women. Without
Sulami’s work, much of the early
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24 See Margaret
Smith, Rabi’a the Mystic
A.D. 717-801 and Her Fellow Saints in Islam, Being the Life and
Teachings of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya of Basra, Sufi Saint ca. A.H. 99-185,
A.D. 717-801, Together with
Some Account of the Place of Women in Islam (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1928). A reproduction of this work with the original
title was published by The Rainbow Bridge in 1977. The
most widely available edition today is idem, Rabi’a: the Life and Work of Rabi’a and Other Women Mystics in Islam (Oxford,
U.K.: Oneworld Publications, 1994). Page
references to Smith’s work in this study will cite both of these editions
and will be written as Rabi’a (Oneworld) and Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge).
narrative tradition on Rabi’a would
still be lost. Because of the discovery of such works,
the twenty-first century scholar
is in a position to come up with new insights about Rabi’a and the
Rabi’a narratives that Smith was not able to make. In addition,
Smith lived in an era in which the
field of Islamic
Studies was dominated
by philological scholarship and historicism.
Today one can build on this previous scholarship but go beyond it as well. The scholar of
sainthood and sacred biography in Islam is now able to choose
from a much greater variety
of historiographical approaches.
However, Smith was also prone
to certain biases that need to be identified for contemporary readers. For example, her work is full of Orientalist bias against what she
believed to be the oppression of women in Islam. Another
bias in Smith’s
work is her use of Christian spiritual practices as models for Islamic spiritual practices. This bias has become
so prevalent in Sufi studies that it now constitutes a trope of its own. I argue in Chapter
2 that Smith overlooked the important ascetic
discipline of ethical
precaution (wara’)
in her discussion of early Sufi ascetic practices because this discipline— which was more common
among pagan philosophers and Jews than among
early Christian ascetics— did not fit well in her Christian-inspired model of asceticism. Smith’s over-reliance on Christian antecedents is apparent throughout the chapter on asceticism in Rabi’a the Mystic, where she even claims
anachronistically that the ascetic poverty
practiced by the earliest Sufis was the same as the
Franciscan approach of St. Francis
of Assisi and Brother Giles.25
The work that is most
comparable in influence to Smith’s
Rabi’a the Mystic for Arabic-language readers
is ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya (Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya the
Martyr of Divine Love).26 This
work has been so influential for subsequent Arabic scholarship on Rabi’a that if Margaret
Smith can be called
the “English ‘Attar,” then Badawi can be called the “Arab ‘Attar.”
‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi (1917-2002) is best known in the West as a scholar
of Islamic philosophy. However, in the Arab
world he was also famous as that region’s most important Existentialist philosopher.
Although Badawi’s
monograph on Rabi’a was written
as a scholarly and historical work, in actuality it has more in common with ‘Attar’s
quasi-novelistic attempt to construct the Rabi’a
myth than with empirical historical studies. Because of its frequent
use of creative license,
some Arab scholars treat Martyr of Divine Love as an embarrassment: sometimes this work is not even listed as part of his
bibliography.
Unlike Margaret Smith, who kept her speculations about Rabi’a within academic
limits, Badawi felt free to add new and original
plot elements to the Rabi’a
narrative. As we shall
see in Chapter 6, he portrays Rabi’a as an Existentialist. In doing so, he relied on the Existentialist concept of angst
(Ar. qalaq) to portray
her as an unquiet soul whose spirituality was part of a struggle to resolve inner conflicts and overcome traumatic
life experiences.
Basing his representation of Rabi’a on the Existentialism of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Badawi revised
‘Attar’s vita of Rabi’a,
following Kierkegaard’s
three-stage model of personality development. To better fit this model,
Badawi made up scenarios for Rabi’a’s life that the Sufi ‘Attar would never have imagined. Chief among these scenarios is the depiction
of Rabi’a as a social rebel who turns to hedonism in response to her
suffering. Drawing on the Christian tropes of the reformed sinner
and “fallen woman”
saint, Badawi also depicts
Rabi’a as experiencing a dramatic, “Road to Damascus”
conversion.
![]() |
25 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 98-9 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 74-5
26 ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Kuwait: Wakkalat al-
Matbu’at, 1978 reprint of 1948 first edition)
Badawi’s Martyr of Divine Love was the inspiration for the
1963 Egyptian movie Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. This well-known and widely popular
film chronicles Rabi’a’s
personal struggles, based on the Existentialist model of Rabi’a’s
life as interpreted by Badawi.
Badawi’s book also provided
the inspiration for the Lebanese
feminist author Widad El
Sakkakini to write al-’Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa (The Sufi Lover), a quasi-novelistic biography of Rabi’a that was published in 1955.27 This work, which is also discussed at length in Chapter 6, portrays Rabi’a in feminist
terms.
III.
A Note on Myth and
Method
I have already said quite a lot about
my approach to narrative in the preceding pages, but what does it mean to say that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is a myth? What definition
of myth do I use? Surprisingly, there is little
consensus in modern
scholarship on what the term,
“myth,” means. To use a pun coined by the folklorist Alan Dundes, it is easy to become
a victim of “myth-taken identity.”28 On one side of the theoretical spectrum are folklorists, such as Dundes himself,
who advocate a narrow definition of myth, in the belief that this is most scientific. For Dundes, “A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came
to be in their present
form.”29 Unless these conditions are met, a narrative cannot
be a myth. The term, “sacred narrative,” implies that a myth is religious, unlike
the folktale, which is secular. For Dundes,
a myth is also about origins. Although he stresses that a
myth’s story of origins is true, this is largely
because it serves
a religious function,
not because its contents
are true. Dundes still holds to an empirical notion
of truth: a myth is true
because it is a story that serves a religious
function; a folktale
is fictional because
it is just a story.
Following a tradition in
folklore studies that goes back to the Brothers Grimm in the early nineteenth century, Dundes draws a distinction between three types of narrative: myths, legends, and folktales. These types correspond to the terms
Mythen, Sagen, and Märchen in German, and the terms mythes, traditions populaires, and contes populaires, in French.30
Dundes regards them as universal categories that are both analytic
and ethnic because
similar distinctions can also be found
in many cultures. The difference between
them depends on their
content rather than on their form: whereas
myths are sacred
stories that talk about
origins and folktales are “once-upon-a-time” stories and hence fictional, legends
lie in- between.31 Legends
can be either sacred or secular; chronologically, they take place
after the time of origins but before the present. Unlike
myths, which discuss
origins, legends discuss matters that are relevant
to present-day concerns. However, they do not have the truth-value of myths. For Dundes,
the stories of saints are legends, as are certain
narrative tropes, such as
the tropes of the Flying
Dutchman or the Wandering Jew. Thus, he would not agree with the
contention made in this work that the narratives of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya constitute a myth.
As saint stories, they would be legends and the narrative tropes they use would be stories-
within-a-story, as in novels, short stories, or other types of fictional
narratives. To put it
27 Widad al-Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Damascus: Dar Tlas li-l- dirasat wa-l-tarjama wa-l-nashr,
1989 reprint of the 1955 Cairo first edition)
28 Alan Dundes,
Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory
of Myth (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London:
University of California Press, 1984), ix
29 Ibid, 1
30 See William
Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore:
Prose Narratives,” in Ibid, 25.
31 Ibid, 5-6
another way, they are like the Sagen that were used as source materials by Richard Wagner for his operas.
A major problem with Dundes’ division
of narratives into myths, folktales, and legends is that it does not correspond to terminology used in the Arabic language,
in which most of the Rabi’a
narratives appear. For example, if one looks
up the word “myth,” in an
English-Arabic dictionary, one finds something
like the following
definitions, which come from
a well-known English-Arabic dictionary from Lebanon:
shakhs khurafi (fictional
person), qissa khayaliyya (imaginary story), khurafa (story or folktale), talfiq (falsification), mayn (falsehood), and shakhsun la wujuda lahu (nonexistent person).32 These definitions are based on the common understanding of “myth” as an antonym
for “fact,” and the only narrative forms that are indicated are the legend
and the folktale.
In Modern Standard Arabic,
the term that is most commonly used for “myth” is
ustura
(pl. asatir). This term appears several
times in the Qur’an, where it has two meanings, both of which appear
in Sura 68, al-Qalam (The Pen). The first
verse of this Sura states: “[The letter] Nun and the Pen, and that which they write”
(Nun wa al-qalam wa ma yasturun) (Qur’an 68:1).
Qur’an, 68:15 states:
“When our verses are recited
to him, he says: ‘These
are but tales of the ancients’” (idh tutla ‘alayhi ayatuna
qala asatir al-awwalin). In the first of
these Qur’anic verses, the present-tense plural form of the verb satara refers to things that are
written down (ma yasturun). In the second Qur’anic
verse, the noun phrase asatir al-awwalin (“tales of the ancients”) is equivalent to the legends
or folktales of Dundes and the folklorists. The secondary meaning of this phrase connotes inaccuracy or falsehood.
The Qur’anic meaning of ustura is confirmed
by the medieval Arabic dictionary Lisan al-‘Arab (Language of the Arabs)
by Jamal al-Din
ibn Manzur (d. 1321 CE). 33
According to this dictionary, the cognate astur (pl.
astar or asatir)
originally referred to a line or
a row of things, such as a row of trees. When applied to narratives, this term connotes
a series of statements. The term astur also
refers to a line of writing, as in the first verse of
Surat
al-Qalam. The phrase,
asatir al-awwalin, in Qur’an 68:15 is defined by Ibn Manzur
as “that which was written down by the ancients,” or “a predicate
with a missing subject” (khabarun li-ibtida’in mahdhufin). We can thus conclude from these dictionary entries that with respect
to types of narratives, the Arabic term ustura refers in general to stories from the
past with no clear origin.
The definite plural
form al-asatir is defined
by Ibn Manzur as
“falsehoods” (al-abatil) or “disordered reports or accounts” (ahadith la nizama laha). Thus, the overall
connotation of ustura is
of a group of false
stories or narratives. This also
corresponds to Dundes’ definition of legends and folktales, but not of myths.
This evidence leads to the conclusion that the term “myth,” as it is defined by Dundes, does not exist in Arabic.
Medieval Arabs apparently talked about legends
and folktales but not “myths.” So what are we to make of this in light of Dundes’ definition of myth? Are we to conclude
that because the concept of myth as he defines
it does not exist in Arabic, Arabs do not have myths? It is hard to see how such a conclusion could be justified. Just because an exact equivalent of the folklorists’ definition of myth does not exist in Arabic,
it does not mean that Arabs have no myths. We no longer live in a world where we can get
away with treating another culture
as impoverished just because it does not have an equivalent to one of our academic
terms. However, because
Dundes’ definition of myth
32 Khalil Saadeh,
Saadeh’s Dictionary (Beirut: Librarie
du Liban, 1974), vol. 2, 1032. This is a widely
used dictionary by non-academic professionals in the Middle East.
33 Abu al-Fadl
Jamal al-Din ibn Manzur, Lisan al-‘Arab
(Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, reprint of 1883 first
edition,
n.d.), vol. 4, 363
arbitrarily ignores the semantic categories of
a major culture, we can conclude that it is inadequate as a universal
concept. Universalist definitions must apply in one way or another to every empirical case,
not just to some of them. Clearly,
we need a more inclusive definition of myth than Dundes and the folklorists are able to provide.
G. S. Kirk, a scholar of myth who was trained
in Classics, reached
the same conclusion about
the folklorists’ definition of myth. For Kirk, the formalistic view of myth used by folklorists is too narrow:
“[They] tend to exclude prima facie blocs of mythological
material for no particular reason.
Moreover, they tell us little about the nature of myths
themselves; they simply isolate, not very accurately, one characteristic.”34 Kirk proposes a more
inclusive definition by characterizing myths
as “dramatically constructed tales” that are passed down from antiquity
and incorporated into tradition.35 Even though myths may contain supernatural content, they are not necessarily religious
or sacred. Even secular stories can be called myths.
For Kirk, what is more important than the sacred
character of myths
is their popular appeal and openness
to differences of interpretation.
[A myth’s]
narrative core or plot must be such as to allow different emphases and
interpretations according to different customs, needs, and preoccupations. In one sense, a myth is always changing;
in another its narrative structure persists.
Many traditional oral tales . . . are what we term folktales or Märchen. [However,] it is sensible not to deny these the general title of
myths, since their themes interact with those of more imaginative and pregnant
types.36
Most of the narratives about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya fit this description. The same
might even be said of Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar’s medieval vita of
Rabi’a— that is, if one accepts
his contention that the stories
he relates are based on real traditions. In Kirk’s definition of myth, form and function are interrelated. In other words,
the form or structure of a story that
is part of a myth is just as important, if not more important than its content.
As Kirk states, “The continuing factor; the hypoxeimenon that receives the different qualities [of myth], is the
narrative structure itself.”37
Some of Kirk’s insights about
myth were known previously to scholars of Religious Studies. As early as 1954, Theodore H. Gaster defined
myth as “any presentation of the
actual in terms of the ideal.”38 This definition brings to mind Mircea
Eliade’s statement, mentioned earlier, that in mythical
narratives, “the essential
precedes existence.” Because Eliade’s writings on myth are so numerous and because he modified his views so often, there is
not enough space to discuss
them in detail here. In general terms,
Eliade’s definition of myth
is similar to that of Alan Dundes.39 However,
he makes other
observations that would seem to support the idea that the Rabi’a
narratives also constitute a myth. For example, in
34
G. S. Kirk,
“On Defining Myths,”
in Dundes, Sacred Narrative, 55 (reprinted from Phronesis:
A Journal for Ancient Philosophy, suppl. Vol. 1 (1973), 61-69.
35 Ibid, 56
36 Ibid, 57-58
37 Ibid, 58
38 Theodore H. Gaster, “Myth and Story,”
in Ibid, 112; reprinted from Numen,
1 (1954), 184-212
39 See, for example, Eliade,
Myth and Reality (5-6): “Myth narrates a sacred history;
it relates an event
that took place
in primordial Time, the fabled Time of the ‘beginnings.’ In other words, myth tells how,
through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality
came into existence, be it the whole of reality,
the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality— an island, a species of plant, a
particular kind of human behavior, and institution. Myth, then, is always an account of a “creation”: it relates how
something was produced, began to be. Myth tells of that which really happened, which manifested itself
completely. The actors in myths are
Supernatural Beings.”
The Myth of the Eternal
Return (1954), Eliade
states that the repetition of paradigmatic or archetypal acts is a hallmark of myth. 40 Paradigmatic acts or gestures are common characteristics of what Eliade
calls the “mythicization of historical personages.” To illustrate this concept,
he uses the example of the Serbian
folk hero Marko Kraljevic: “His historical
existence is unquestionable, and we even know the date of his death (1394).
But no sooner is Marko’s historical personality received into the popular
memory than it is abolished
and his biography is reconstructed in accordance with the norms of myth.”41 The same can be said of
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Circumstantial
evidence indicates that she actually
existed and her approximate death-date is known. However, her biography as constructed by ‘Attar and others is clearly more mythical than historical in the normal
sense of the term.
For Eliade, the “mythicization of historical personages” is based on the image
of ancient heroes. In Chapter 5, I discuss
how ‘Attar’s iconic
depiction of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya draws heavily on the mythical
images of the Virgin Mary and the Prophet Muhammad’s wife ‘A’isha. Although some may debate whether these figures can be called “heroes,” I would
submit that as the paradigmatic female figures of Islam, the Virgin Mary, ‘A’isha, and the
Prophet’s daughter Fatima
are analogous to folk heroes.
Today, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is included as the fourth of these paradigmatic women. In Eliade’s
terms, it is significant that the
name Rabi’a, means “fourth”
in Arabic. Whether
by chance or by design,
her name signifies her status as the fourth
of the paradigmatic female figures
of Islam. Given this
correspondence, the following statement by Eliade
on the figural relation between
myth and the hero is relevant
to Rabi’a’s example:
Myth is the last—
not the first— stage in the development of a hero.” But this only confirms the conclusion reached by many
investigators (Caraman and others): the recollection of a historical event or a
real personage survives in popular memory for two or three centuries at the
utmost. This is because popular
memory finds difficulty in retaining individual events and real figures. The structures by means of which [myth]
functions are different: categories instead of events, archetypes instead of
historical personages. The historical
personage is assimilated to this mythical model (hero, etc.), while the event
is identified with the category of mythical actions . . . If certain epic poems
preserve what is called “historical truth,” this truth almost never has to do
with definite persons and events, but with institutions, customs, landscapes.42
To appreciate the relevance
of these insights
to the Rabi’a myth, one need only recall
the statement made above that
the development of Sufi narrative tropes about Rabi’a first occurred about 200 years after her death and that her vita was not composed until 400 years after her death. This corresponds to Eliade’s observations about the limited
duration of historical memory.
Literary tropes and biographies do not become
major parts of the
repertoire of a myth until the memory of oral tradition begins
to fade. Although
Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya is not an epic hero like the Slavic heroes
discussed by Eliade,
she clearly provides an example of what he calls “the mythicization of historical personages.”
Eliade’s view of myth also
applies to the Rabi’a narratives when he talks about the reception of mythical
stories by their audience. For example, in Myth and Reality
(1963) he states: “What is involved
is not a commemoration of mythical events but a reiteration of
40 Mircea Eliade,
The Myth of the Eternal Return
or, Cosmos and History, Willard
R. Trask, trans. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1974 reprint of 1954 first edition), 34-36
41 Ibid, 39-40
42 Ibid, 43
them. The protagonists of the myth are made present, one becomes their
contemporary. This also implies
that one is no longer
living in chronological time, but in the primordial Time, the time when the event first took place. This is why we can use the term the ‘strong time’ of
myth; it is the prodigious, ‘sacred’ time when something new, strong,
and significant was
manifested.”43 The term, “reiteration,” that Eliade uses in this passage recalls the literary techniques of repetition, adaptation, appropriation,
and imitation— not to mention intertextuality— that have been used in the development of the Rabi’a narratives.
Furthermore, the fact that Rabi’a lived in the “strong time” of early Islam is fundamental to her mythical
image. As discussed
in Chapter 1, she is considered a member
of al-Salaf al-Salih, the “Righteous Predecessors” of Islamic tradition, who set the spiritual
paradigms for other Muslims to follow. In Sunni Islam, al-Salaf al-Salih are
second only to the
Prophet Muhammad as exemplars. This is why it is possible to hear a sermon on Rabi’a’s
spirituality in a Saudi-Wahhabi mosque
as well as in Sufi gatherings. In the eyes of Saudi Muslims, her status as a Righteous
Predecessor absolves her of the alleged doctrinal
errors of the Sufis, who also
include her as one of their own.44
Although Eliade occasionally discusses
European saints and Indian yogis in his works
on myth, to my knowledge
he does not discuss Rabi’a or any figure that is fully comparable to her. Instead
of tropes, he talks about
“clichés.”45 And when he discusses history, it is not in the way that history is conceived here; instead, he contrasts history negatively with more “primordial” worldviews. However, his willingness to consider the legends of heroes as myths points the way to a broader definition
of myth that is suitable
for the present study. When I
refer to myth in this study, I follow the definition proposed
by Robert A. Segal,
a well-known American
scholar of myth who is even cited
approvingly by Alan Dundes.
46 The basic elements of Segal’s definition of myth are as follows:47
1.
A myth is
a story about something significant. Segal does not
specify in detail what myths are about because rigid definitions inevitably cause trouble. For example, if a myth is
only about creation as Dundes and the folklorists would have it, then most of the stories in the
Bible other than the Book of Genesis
would be legends
or folktales, not myths. Since this
would be absurd, says Segal, it is best to retain as broad a defintion of myth as possible. This broad definition also applies
to the time of myths: a mythical
story can take place in the past, the present, or the future. In addition, myths
can include beliefs
or credos, such as the American “rags to riches”
myth. In the present study,
Segal’s “credos” are treated as part of the category of narrative tropes.
2.
The main
figures of myths are personalities, whether divine, human, or animal. Mythical personalities can be either
the agents or the objects
of actions. If only divine
agents were the protagonists of myths, then the point made above about the Bible would apply here
43 Eliade, Myth and Reality, 19; the italics
are Eliade’s.
44 In the 1990s, I once heard
a Friday sermon
based on Rabi’a’s
teachings at a Saudi-sponsored
mosque in Washington, D.C. The Imam who
gave the sermon
was appointed by the Saudi government.
45 See, for example, Eliade,
Myth and Reality, 117, where he speaks of Indian narrative tropes or
“clichés” that make the philosophical concept
of the self more intelligible to uneducated audiences.
46 Robert A. Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, U. K.: Oxford University Press,
2004).
On the back cover, Dundes endorses this work as “a concise,
elegant, erudite overview
of the major nineteenth and twentieth century theories of myth.”
47 Segal’s definition of myth is summarized in Ibid, 4-6.
as well. Such a narrow definition of myth would exclude not only most of the Bible but also
the Qur’an, since God is not always
the direct agent
in biblical or Qur’anic narratives.
3.
The function
of a myth is weighty:
the myth accomplishes something significant for its
adherents. Segal leaves the meaning
of this statement open-ended on purpose. He does not specify what such an accomplishment should
entail in order to include
as many varieties as possible.
4.
To qualify as a
myth, a story— which may convey a
conviction— must be held tenaciously by its adherents. In this part of his definition, Segal
avoids the question
of whether a myth is true or false. This is because one is on the horns
of a dilemma no matter where one stands on this issue. If a myth is deemed to be false, then one is open to the accusation of being a crude empiricist. If a myth is deemed to be true, then one has to specify in what way or context it is true; this creates
its own problems
because every qualification can provoke a rebuttal. For Segal, it is immaterial to the concept
of myth whether
one believes in God
or holds a clearly erroneous conviction, such as the belief
that Elvis Presley
is still alive. What is important to myth is that it is tenaciously believed, that it is based on a story that says
something significant about
a personality, and that it is also significant in some way to its adherents.
If someone were to object
that in Segal’s definition, a wide variety of narrative types could be called myths,
he would reply
that this is precisely the point. Because
of the wide variety of narratives that function as myths in human cultures, any definition of myth that aspires to universality should
be as inclusive as possible. To be inclusive, a definition of myth
must also be minimalist rather than maximalist in its stipulations. Otherwise, cultural
expressions that are unique to certain societies
might be arbitrarily excluded. When theories are derived from the widest possible
variety of data,
rather than being
the product only of an academic subculture, pragmatic considerations come to the fore. Robert
A. Segal’s inclusive and minimalist definition of myth is the result of a long career of studying
myths comparatively. If it appears less rigorous on the surface
than other definitions of myth, this is
because experience has taught him that narrow
definitions of myth are inadequate in practice and that comprehensiveness demands
flexibility. This is why I find Segal’s
definition of myth attractive. Not only does it allow me to discuss the development of the Rabi’a narratives as part of a mythmaking process, but Segal
arrived at his definition of myth for the
same reason that I turned to literary
theory as a supplement to traditional methods
of historical and Religious
Studies inquiry: because
the evidence warrants
it.
Before concluding this section,
I must say a few additional words about method.
I do not want to belabor
the point, because
by now it should be apparent that theories of myth,
along with historiographical methods based
on the so-called “linguistic turn,”
are appropriate tools of analysis for this study.
I also feel that in the preceding pages, I have made sufficient arguments for the relevance of literary theory
and theories of narrative. However,
in case some doubt still remains,
I should reiterate
that in the way that I use them, the theoretical
approaches mentioned above are tools, not ideologies. Unlike some colleagues in Religious Studies, I do not believe in post-modernism or the linguistic turn as articles
of faith. To give
but one example: in Chapter
4, I critique Elizabeth A. Clark’s use of Barthes’
concept of the “reality effect” as going too far by denying
empirical reality to rhetorically constructed narratives. When I
approach such narratives, I do so pragmatically, like a contractor
contemplating the construction of a new house or renovation project.
I assess the problems of truth
and method that lie before me and try to find (metaphorically) the best subcontractors and tools for the job. When it comes
to my toolbox, I want it to contain the greatest number
of useful tools as possible. Sometimes
traditional tools work best; at other times, however, it may be necessary to go “high-tech,” so
to speak.
My use of the construction metaphor
follows Jonathan Potter in his book,
Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric,
and Social Construction (1996). Although I am not
a specialist in the sociology of scientific knowledge or conversation analysis
as Potter is, I
have found his pragmatic and constructivist view of knowledge very helpful in framing the present study. Potter’s approach
to the representation of reality
is based on two premises: (1) descriptions and accounts
construct versions of the world; and (2) these descriptions and accounts are themselves
constructed.48 As Potter
describes this perspective, it “suggests the possibility of assembly, manufacture, the prospect of different structures as an end point, and the
likelihood that different
materials will be used in the fabrication. It emphasizes that descriptions are human practices and that descriptions could have been otherwise.”49 He goes
on to explain, “Reality enters
into human practices
by way of the categories and descriptions that are part of those practices. The world is not ready categorized by God or nature in ways
that we are all forced
to accept. It is constituted in
one way or another as people talk it, write it, and argue it.”50
Potter’s view of the relationship between
reality and constructed practices of discourse is a handy
perspective from which to approach
the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya from narrative to myth. As described
above, everything that we know about Rabi’a is a
product of construction. As Potter
states, constructivist models
can be useful because they enable us to ask questions of the data that we could not ask if we used another metaphor.
As Potter puts it, “If we treat descriptions as constructions and constructive, we can ask how they are
put together, what materials are used, what sorts of things or events are produced by them,
and so on.”51 He goes on to argue that in using
this approach as an analytical tool, we do not
need to get sidetracked by engaging in abstract philosophical discussions of what sorts of things
exist and what their status is. “Instead,
these [pragmatic] arguments
about metaphors are intended
to clear the way for a focus on practical
and analytic issues.
Indeed, the abstract formulation of this problem
can be positively misleading because
it focuses on the relation between a description and ‘reality’ in the abstract,
rather than considering the sorts of practices in which descriptive
discourse operates.”52
A common theme of my use of literary
theorists like Barthes,
White, Losev, and others is that they all use constructivist models
of discourse in one way or another.
I do not necessarily accept everything that they have to say. I take what I need from their theories
and leave the rest. One can argue about which theories
of construction to use, but it is very
difficult to argue against the appropriateness of this metaphor
to the study of the Rabi’a
narratives. Excluding this approach on ideological grounds
would not be true to the sources on Rabi’a that exist.
However, this is not to say that a constructivist model necessarily works best for the study of every Muslim saint. For example,
in cases where a saint has left a legacy of
personal writings, such as with the Sufi master ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani
of Baghdad (d. 1166
CE), the situation changes significantly. The existence of a body of writings
adds a level of empirical objectivity to the question
of who the “real” person
is that cannot be found
in the
48 Jonathan Potter,
Representing Reality:
Discourse, Rhetoric, and Social Construction (London: Sage
Publications Ltd., 2012 reprint of 1996 first edition), 97
49 Ibid, 97-98
50 Ibid, 98
51 Ibid
52 Ibid
sources associated with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. The question of who the “real” Rabi’a
was cannot be answered
objectively; however, the question of who the “real” ‘Abd al-Qadir was can
be answered, at least to a certain
extent. In such cases, the wider variety
of available information dictates
that other theoretical approaches should be explored.
The situation is similar
with respect to historiography. In this study,
I rely rather heavily on Hayden
White’s theory of tropes and his concept
of “the content of the form” in historical writing. However, as with my use of Potter’s constructivist approach, this does not
mean that I adhere to White’s theories
ideologically or that “anything goes.” Scholars who write
about Hayden White,
including some of his followers, often make the mistake of assuming that because White uses concepts
like “the fictions
of factual representation,” he does not believe
in objective historical facts. This could not be further from the truth. In his book,
The Content of the Form, White explains that history writing
and fiction writing
start from different premises:
“What distinguishes ‘historical’ from ‘fictional’ stories
is first and foremost their content, rather
than their form. The content
of historical stories
is real events, events that really
happened, rather than imaginary events,
events invented by the narrator
. . . The
form of the discourse, the narrative . . . is a simulacrum of the structure and process of real
events . . . and insofar as it is an accurate
imitation, it is to be considered a truthful
account thereof.”53
In other words, if the form of
historical writing reflects the tropes and metaphors of fictional writing, this does not necessarily mean that the content of historical narratives is not factual. What White means
to stress is that the form of narrative can affect the representation
of facts and events in historical writing,
such that the representation creates
new figural content that shapes how these facts
and events are considered by readers. This is what White
means by “the content of the form,” and it is particularly important in the representation of iconic
historical figures, such as George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln,
King Mohammed V of Morocco, or Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. However, the difference between Rabi’a and these
other iconic figures is that historians who write about Washington, Lincoln,
and King Mohammed V have other sources of historical information at their disposal
that do not depend on literary
representation. With
Rabi’a this is not the case. Thus, her representation in narratives is heavily
dependent on the form or way in which she is represented. Since all evidence of Rabi’a is literary, in such an extreme case, the content
of what we know about her
is virtually indistinguishable from the narrative form in which
she is depicted.
IV.
The Plan of This Work
Rabi’a from Narrative to Myth: The Tropics of Identity of a Muslim Woman Saint is a work of Religious Studies,
but it is also a work of history. The purpose of this work is to trace
the representation of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra (ca. 717-801 CE) through narrative to master narrative and myth by studying the tropes that have come to define her identity. As mentioned above, four major narrative tropes define Rabi’a
as an exemplary figure. These are Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover,
and Rabi’a the Sufi. However, Rabi’a is more to Muslims than just an exemplary figure:
she is also revered as a saint. Thus,
another narrative trope must be added to this list: Rabi’a the Icon. As an iconic figure, Rabi’a is
primarily a literary
icon rather than a visual icon because
until the twentieth
century her
53
Hayden White, The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 27, my italics; on the “fictions of
factual representation,” see idem, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural
Criticism (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1978), 121-134.
image appeared only in the written
word and in the imagination of the reader.
However, it is appropriate to consider her an icon because her recollection evokes multiple narratives connected with the name, “Rabi’a,” just as a painted icon evokes a variety of narratives that are
associated with a single, stylized
image.54 The metaphor
of the icon is even more
appropriate for Rabi’a now that she has become the subject of two motion pictures, numerous songs in different languages, and at least one television mini-series.
The chapters in this work
will discuss each of the above narrative tropes in order, culminating in the trope
of Rabi’a the Icon. Chapter
1, “Rabi’a the Teacher,” is the first
of three historical chapters
in this study. I call these chapters
“historical” in comparison with the “literary” chapters
of this study because in them I try to sketch the historical and cultural
environments in which the “real” Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya would have lived. When I first began this study, I did not believe
that I would find any historical evidence
of Rabi’a worthy
of the name. Her mythical image is so powerful that it seems to obscure
any trace of a real person.
However, after reviewing the earliest
references to Rabi’a in the works of Muhasibi, Jahiz, and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, and the traces
of reports about
her by Burjulani, Ibn al-A’rabi, al- Khuldi and others,
I began to believe that a real person did in fact lie behind the Rabi’a narratives, even if little was
visible except her name.
Realizing that a clear
picture of the historical Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya could not be
drawn from empirical historical methods,
I thought it best to discuss the types of spiritual and moral
education, asceticism, and Proto-Sufism that were current
in her time, hoping that this
would shed indirect light on the woman
of the Arab clan of ‘Adi ibn Qays who provided the inspiration for what would become the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. As I discuss in the
Conclusion, this method
is comparable to studying a palimpsest, in which one finds the faint
trace of an earlier work beneath a more legible
later work. Perhaps
more appropriately, it is
also like finding the impression of lost writing
on a manuscript page below the page where
the image was originally drawn. One can find such a lost image by rubbing a pencil lightly across the surface of the bottom
page so that the impression faintly appears. In a similar
way, in this study I try to reveal the lost image of the historical Rabi’a
by sketching in the
cultural, intellectual, and religious environments of Basra and the early
Islamic world of her
time.
Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of the earliest
sources of information on Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. Besides discussing the writers mentioned in the first
part of the Introduction in greater detail, this section
also discusses the genre of tabaqat (“levels” or “generations”)
literature in which most of the early sources on Rabi’a are found. Next, I discuss
the students and associates of Rabi’a that are named in these early works. After this, I attempt
to sketch a rough
picture of Rabi’a
of Basra as she appears
in the earliest sources. In this section
of the chapter, I come to the following
conclusions about the “real” Rabi’a:
(1) She was an Arab, not
a Persian or Aramaic inhabitant of early Islamic
Iraq. (2) She was most likely not a slave but a free woman of considerable standing in her clan and tribe. (3) She was an early Sunni
Muslim and not from a dissident sect such as the Shi’a or Kharijites. (4) She was noted in her
community for her wisdom and eloquence.
Further developing this last point, I discuss
Jahiz’s description of Rabi’a as a person of bayan. For Jahiz, using this appellation meant that Rabi’a
was known for the rhetorical quality of her teachings
and her ability
to make clear and effective arguments. In this section
54
Instead of using the term, “icon,” the Dutch historiographer Frank R. Ankersmit refers to “proper
names of narrative substances (i.e., of views or representations of the
past, or . . . of a common denominator to be discerned in a number of roughly
comparable representations).” See
idem, Historical Representation (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2001), 57.
of the chapter, I discuss what this depiction
of Rabi’a meant in the intellectual culture
of late Umayyad and early Abbasid
Iraq. I describe the aphoristic pedagogy attributed to Rabi’a and show
how this pedagogy
had its roots in late-antique Stoicism. Next, I turn to Rabi’a’s
purported student Sufyan
al-Thawri (d. 778 CE), and how traditions show unusual unanimity in associating Thawri with her. Because
Thawri’s personality is an important part of these traditions, I describe how historical and prosopographical sources
describe his life and
character. Based on these sources,
I conclude that Thawri could only have known Rabi’a in
the last three years of his life, when he was hiding
out as a political dissident
in Basra.
In the last part of Chapter
1, I discuss how in early Islam the concept of the person of culture
meant more than just the etiquette or literary eloquence that it means today. In Rabi’a’s time, this concept
was related to the concept
of ta’dib, “character formation.” This is the sense in which Rabi’a is depicted in the early sources as a mu’addiba: she is depicted as
a teacher, trainer, and molder
of character. As an ethical discipline, ta’dib was
concerned with mental discipline and the formation
of noble qualities
of mind and soul. Ta’dib was
also related to the virtues of muruwwa, “manly” or mature comportment, and hilm,
rational judgment derived from reason and experience. Much like the Stoic teacher
of late antiquity, Rabi’a the Teacher — whatever else she may have been— is remembered as a moral and
ethical mentor and exemplar.
Chapter 2, “Rabi’a the Ascetic,” discusses
Rabi’a as an exemplar of Sufi asceticism.
As part of the background to this chapter,
I propose a new theoretical approach to early Islamic asceticism. In doing so,
I draw on recent theoretical discussions of asceticism, comparative studies
of asceticism, and works that provide new insights into asceticism in late
antiquity, early Christianity, and early rabbinic
Judaism. To my knowledge, none of this material has been used before in the
study of Sufism.
At the beginning of the chapter,
I frame my discussion of Rabi’a the Ascetic in terms
of the “World/Nonworld Dichotomy,” a model developed
by the Belgian anthropologist
Jacques Maquet. Maquet
depicts the Nonworld
is an alternative worldview that is conceived as a form of liberation from the economic
and social constraints of normal life. This view of
asceticism is valuable as a model for the study of Rabi’a and other ascetics of early Islam because it enables us to see them as a counterculture. Because the World/Nonworld Dichotomy is depicted in the Qur’an,
early Muslim ascetics
did not have to go beyond the literal meaning of the Qur’an to
justify their practices.
The second section of Chapter
2 discusses the problem of asceticism as a theoretical category in Religious
Studies. Here I draw on Pierre Hadot’s
observation that asceticism is both a philosophy and a way of life. This view of asceticism
allows one to make a connection
between the ascetic practices of Sufis and non-Sufi ascetics,
such as Khariji
and Hanbali pietists. It also helps
explain why later Sufi writers,
looking back on early Islam,
tended to consider all famous ascetics
as Sufis or potential Sufis,
even though this was inaccurate.
After noting the lack of a common theoretical language for the study of asceticism in general,
I discuss new methodological
approaches to asceticism such as
Gavin Flood’s work on the
ascetic self and Catherine Bell’s
work on ritual practices. I argue that the systematic study of asceticism in early Islam must begin by avoiding
anachronistic approaches (whether
from Sufi hindsight or postmodern theories), and should focus instead on the terminological distinctions that were important
to early ascetics
themselves.
Following my own advice,
in the next section of Chapter 2 I discuss
the key terms
of early Islamic asceticism. Three types of ascetic practice
were prominent in this period:
zuhd (renunciation, or asceticism in general), wara’ (moral or ethical precaution), and nusk (ascetic
ritualism, which includes
extreme ritualistic behaviors and the practice
of asceticism as a
vocation). A more problematical term is faqr (poverty). Although the term faqir (“poor
one”) has long been a synonym for Sufi,
the intentional cultivation of poverty does not seem to
have been as important for early Islamic
ascetics as it was for early Christian ascetics.
Many of the extreme
ascetics that appear in early Islamic sources
were ascetic ritualists, who were exceptions to the normal rule. I argue that in early Islamic asceticism moderation was the general
rule, just as it was for Islam
as a whole. When one takes the full variety
of the practices of early Islamic
ascetics into account,
it appears that a life of poverty
was a byproduct of asceticism rather
than a required method. Although
poverty was common,
it was viewed as a material
fact of life. In this early period, patience was more important
as an ascetic practice than
poverty.
In this chapter I make a
theoretical distinction, originally drawn from
the work of the scholar of Judaism Eliezer
Diamond, between instrumental asceticism and essential asceticism. Instrumental asceticism, which is exemplified in early Islam
by the nasik or ascetic ritualist, is a form of renunciation that is practiced in pursuit of instrumental goals. By
contrast, essential asceticism is an inward imperative that causes the ascetic to view
renunciation as governing every aspect of her life. For the essential
ascetic, renunciation needs no instrumental goal because it is fully integrated into the path of piety;
in other words, it is a way of life. With respect
to the trope of Rabi’a
the Ascetic, the earliest sources
most often depict her as an essential ascetic
rather than as an instrumental ascetic.
The next section of Chapter 2
discusses women’s asceticism in
eighth-century Basra. Building on research first
conducted for my 1998 book Early Sufi Women, I argue that Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya was not the founder,
but the last major figure
of a tradition of women’s asceticism in Basra that went back more than a century
before her. The origins of this
tradition can be traced to the Prophet
Muhammad’s widow ‘A’isha
(d. 678 CE), who lived in
Basra and practiced asceticism at the end of her life. The first major figure of this tradition was Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE), a member of Rabi’a’s
clan who was a servant
of ‘A’isha. Textual evidence
indicates that Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya formulated the theology of servitude (ta’abbud) that Sulami saw as representative of Rabi’a’s spirituality. However, the circle of ascetics associated with Rabi’a differed
from Mu’adha and her students
in that they were practitioners of essential asceticism instead of instrumental asceticism.
At the end of Chapter 2, I
discuss a third major type of asceticism in Rabi’a’s time: reactionary asceticism. This type of asceticism was a form of protest
against the unequal distribution of wealth in Abbasid society.
This is a major theme
of the recently discovered Kitab al-zuhd (The
Book of Renunciation) by Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran of Mosul (d. 801 CE), who was
Rabi’a’s contemporary. Reactionary asceticism can also be considered a form of instrumental asceticism because
it too was focused on a specific
goal: the rejection and transformation of a materialistic society. However, the asceticism of Rabi’a was very
different from this. In the asceticism associated with the trope
of Rabi’a the Ascetic, outward practices of asceticism are subordinated to their inner
meaning. I argue
that since the practice
of essential asceticism is more an approach
to God than a rejection of the world,
it foreshadows the Love mysticism for which Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was to become most
famous.
Chapter 3, “Rabi’a the Lover,” is the
first “literary” chapter of
this study. Although every chapter of this work is both literary and historical, in the trope of Rabi’a the Lover it is impossible to separate the “real” Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya from her figural persona.
As noted above, this trope was created by the Sufi theorist Abu Talib al-Makki.
Eventually, it would become the most important
narrative trope of the Rabi’a
myth. In the twentieth century, partly through the influence
of Margaret Smith’s
validation of Makki’s
representation, the
trope of Rabi’a the Lover would
get a new lease on life in the writings
of poets, songwriters, and screenwriters, some of them in the West. Today, the figural reality of Rabi’a the Lover is
the only reality that matters for many of her devotees.
Chapter 3 begins with a theoretical discussion of the relation between
the concepts of asceticism and the love of God. I argue that Rabi’a’s
reputation for asceticism was not as far
removed from her reputation as a Love mystic as might be imagined. I show how an
emphasis on the love of God follows directly
from the essential asceticism that Rabi’a the Ascetic is depicted
as practicing. In order to support this assertion, I demonstrate that Rabi’a
was not the first to combine asceticism with a doctrine
of Love in Islam. First of all, the
concept of Love is prominent
in Qur’an and Hadith. Second,
just as Basra was the home of a
long line of women ascetics, it was also the home of other ascetics— both men and women—
who spoke about the love of God in their teachings. I also discuss
the Love mysticism of some of the women ascetics
of the Basra region. Prominent
among them was Hayyuna of the
port town of al-Ubulla near Basra, who may have been the “real” Rabi’a’s
teacher.
In
the next section of Chapter 3, I discuss the question of Rabi’a’s celibacy.
Although some writers have claimed that Rabi’a was married and then widowed,
she is identified as a celibate
in the early work of Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur. Unlike in the Islamic
world today, in Rabi’a’s
time celibacy was a common ascetic practice.
In this regard, I propose
a new way to think about celibacy as a form of asceticism. I separate celibacy
into two types: principled celibacy and
vocational celibacy. Principled celibacy
is a form of celibacy
that is based on scriptural foundations and is seen as fundamental to ascetic practice
in general. This is
the type of celibacy that is practiced
in Orthodox and Roman Catholic
Christianity. By contrast, vocational celibacy is based on individual choice and views marriage and children as impediments to the ascetic’s main vocation, which is service
to God. This type of celibacy is practiced in Islam and rabbinic Judaism.
It is also related to essential asceticism because married life is seen as a distraction from God.
A major part of Chapter 3 is devoted
to a discussion of the figural similarity between the trope of Rabi’a the Lover and Plato’s discussion of Love in The Symposium. I argue that the
Sufi portrayal of Rabi’a as a teacher
of the higher forms of love is similar to Plato’s
portrayal of the priestess Diotima
of Mantinaea, who teaches Socrates
the mysteries of higher
love in The Symposium. I trace the concept
of “Rabi’a the Muslim Diotima”
primarily through the writings
of Abu Talib al-Makki and Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar. Using a term coined by
Dimitri Gutas, I argue that the figure of Diotima
is an “incognito presence” in Sufi
depictions of Rabi’a. Although no complete copy of Plato’s
Symposium in Arabic has ever
been found, references to this work are fairly common in early medieval Islamic
literature.
Following the late scholar
of Arabic literature Ihsan Abbas, I suggest that the popularity of
The Symposium in
Abbasid court circles
around the time of Rabi’a’s
death may have led to the appropriation of Diotima as a trope in accounts
about Rabi’a from Makki onward.
This section concludes with a detailed
comparison between Plato’s
figural depiction of Diotima
and Sufi depictions of Rabi’a the Lover.
In the last part of Chapter
3, I discuss two of the most famous love poems attributed to Rabi’a, the “Poem of the Two Loves”
and the “Poem of the Intimate Gift.”
The Poem of the Two Loves was first attributed to Rabi’a by Makki to establish her reputation as a lover of
God. However, after Makki, some Sufis attributed this poem to other authors
besides Rabi’a. In the second part of this section, I argue that The Poem of the Intimate Gift, which originally came from the Syrian Sufi tradition, could not have been composed
by Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. If it was composed
by any early Sufi, it was most likely composed
by Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus, who died about 40 years
after Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. I conclude this chapter with
some
transitional observations on how Love mysticism relates
to the Sufi concept of the
knowledge of God (ma’rifa).
Chapter 4 is based
on the question, “What does it mean
to say ‘Rabi’a the Sufi?’”
I argue that it is anachronistic to answer this question by projecting back later definitions of Sufism onto the past. This has been done not only by modern writers on Sufism,
but also by premodern Sufis themselves. Indeed,
much of the history of early Sufism
as we know it today is the result of later Sufi theorists
projecting their concepts
back onto earlier
periods. Thus, in order
to avoid anachronism, one must change
this focus and ask more concretely:
“What was a ‘Sufi’ in Rabi’a’s time?”
To answer this question, I examine references to the earliest figures
called “Sufis” in the works
of Jahiz, in Muhasibi’s Kitab al-makasib (The Book of Outcomes), and in Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani’s (d. 1037 CE) Hilyat al-awliya’ (The Adornment of the Saints).
In the Hilya, I concentrate on reports of Rabi’a’s contemporaries transmitted by the earliest
chroniclers of the Sufi tradition. I focus on two figures
in particular because of the relatively large amount of information available on them: Abu Hashim al-Sufi of Kufa (d. ca. 776 CE) and Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil (fl. ca. 775 CE) of Kufa
and Basra.
Based on the information available about these figures, I conclude that the meaning of the term “Sufi”
in Rabi’a’s time revolved around
a specific set of attitudes and practices. I call this “Proto-Sufism” because institutionalized Sufism—
as indicated by the use of the term
madhhab, “method,”
in Sufi works of the late tenth
century— had not yet been developed. Six characteristics defined
the Proto-Sufism of Rabi’a’s time: (1) a worldview
governed by the World/Nonworld dichotomy; (2) a spiritual
discipline based on the pursuit
of both outward and inward purity;
(3) an ascetic practice characterized by ascetic ritualism; (4) social practices characterized by ascetic moralism
and spiritual and ethical training; (5) a critical attitude
toward ordinary life; (6) the internalization of ascetic practice
through essential asceticism and/or
Love mysticism. I argue that the most important difference between the Proto-Sufism of Rabi’a’s time and the Sufism of later periods
was that whereas later Sufi doctrine was focused on the internalization of theological concepts,
Proto-Sufism was conceived almost entirely in terms of practice.
The second section of Chapter 4 discusses the metaphor of the heart in early Sufism.
It opens with an examination of the heart as a metaphor in the Qur’an,
the Hebrew Bible,
and the New Testament. A comparison of these texts shows a common understanding of the heart as
the spiritual core of the human being and the seat of the morals and the conscience. Early Eastern Christian writings in particular speak of the heart in ways that are evocative
of Sufi teachings. In this section, I focus on the writings
of St. Isaac of Nineveh
(fl. ca. 680 CE),
who flourished in the same region where
Rabi’a lived. The use of the heart as a metaphor was common among early
Muslim ascetics in the region
of Basra, where modern scholars have traced it to the school of al-Hasan
al-Basri (d. 728 CE) and especially to his student Malik ibn Dinar (d. 745 CE). At least one of Rabi’a’s female
contemporaries is mentioned in Sufi sources as Ibn Dinar’s
student, and it is not inconceivable that Rabi’a herself
may have met him. I suggest
that if this indeed occurred,
Rabi’a’s association with Ibn Dinar may have been
behind the erroneous
accounts of her companionship with al-Hasan al-Basri.
I also discuss two other
figures that transmitted Ibn Dinar’s teachings and were contemporaries of Rabi’a and her associates. These are Abu Sulayman al-Darani
(d. 830 CE) and his disciple
Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari (d. 845 CE). These early Sufis were influential in spreading the doctrines of Proto-Sufism from Basra to Syria, Egypt,
and Khurasan. Before he
moved to Syria, Darani was reported to have associated with Rabi’a’s disciple
Maryam of Basra and may have met Rabi’a
herself. Ahmad ibn Abi Hawari was the husband of Rabi’a
bint Isma’il of Damascus,
who is often confused with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in later works. Darani was one of the most important specialists in the doctrine
of the heart in early Sufism.
I argue that his theory of the
heart may reflect the teachings of Rabi’a and her
circle. The metaphors that Darani uses to discuss
the heart are closely related
to the concept of essential asceticism. These metaphors include
the “preoccupation” of the heart, the “condition” of the heart, and the “knowledge” of the heart.
In his Book of Sufi Women, Sulami mentions a group
of people that he calls
“masters of hearts”
(arbab al-qulub). I suggest
that Darani belonged to this
group.
Chapter 4 concludes by discussing the Sufi concept
of knowledge (ma’rifa). I argue
that a common theme that emerges out of all the early
works that mention
Rabi’a, both Sufi and
non-Sufi, is that she is a woman of knowledge
and a knower of God. The trope of Rabi’a the Knower runs like a thread through all of the narrative tropes about Rabi’a in the premodern period, from Rabi’a
the Teacher, to Rabi’a the Ascetic, Rabi’a
the Lover, to Rabi’a the Sufi. Drawing
on the works of scholars
of early and medieval Christianity, I argue that Rabi’a’s
reputation for knowledge is what led male Sufi writers such as ‘Attar
to claim that she should be regarded as a man rather than as a woman. It was her knowledge as well
that allowed Sulami to portray
her as the quintessential Sufi woman. Combined
with the ascetic traditions that she inherited from her male and female
predecessors, the wisdom
that she displayed through
her integration of knowledge and practice allowed
her to be seen not only
as a Sufi woman but also as a paradigmatic Sufi in general.
Chapters 5 and 6, which discuss
the trope of Rabi’a the Icon, return to the “literary”
aspect of this study. Chapter 5, “Rabi’a the Icon (I): The
Sufi Image,” discusses the
transformation of the four previous
master narratives of Rabi’a into a myth through the influence of the vita composed at the end of the twelfth century
CE by Farid al-Din al-‘Attar. This chapter opens with a discussion of how Roland
Barthes’ concept of the “reality
effect” is relevant to the study of the
Rabi’a narratives. Using Barthes’
terminology, I argue that
“referential illusions” in these narratives helped create the Rabi’a myth by allowing
the “paper time” of myth to replace the “chronological time”
of history. I also discuss
how Barthes agrees with Hayden White
in demonstrating that the form of a narrative can create
new narrative content that supersedes conventional notions of time and reality. Next, I contrast Barthes’ and White’s
literary approach to history with Thomas J. Heffernan’s
approach to sacred biography, which
views hagiographical works
as documents rather
than as literature. I argue that the literary
approach is better suited for the analysis
of the Rabi’a myth because it allows us to see how hagiography can create public
opinion about a saint rather than just reflect it. As Barthes
demonstrates, with myths
such as that of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, objectively verifiable truth
is largely irrelevant. Because narrative tropes
are used to create
referential illusions, verisimilitude is all that matters.
Besides comparing Barthes’ theories with those of Hayden White,
I also compare his work on myth with that of the Russian
philosopher and historian Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev (1893-1988). Losev approaches the subject of myth dialectically like Barthes, but his basis for analysis is phenomenological rather than linguistic. For Losev, when a person
becomes a mythical figure,
she is not only a literary representation; she is also an idealized
image or “pictorial emanation.” This idealized image or “face” of the subject becomes
the reality of her
myth over time. With the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, the idealized image
created by the narrative
tropes discussed in this study express a “face” or image of Rabi’a that is taken for
reality, no matter
what the objective “facts” of her historical persona
might be. According to Losev’s theory of myth, the “faces” of Rabi’a that emerge from hagiography, public opinion, and local knowledge interact dialectically to create the iconic image
of Rabi’a that is
perceived as her “true”
identity. Since a mythological persona
is created out of a combination
of form, image, visage, and outline, this persona is an icon, which is memorialized through the narrative form of myth. Hence, following Losev’s formulation, I refer to the mythological Rabi’a in Chapters 5 and 6 as
“Rabi’a the Icon.”
Chapter 5 is devoted to an
examination of Rabi’a the Icon in the vita
of Rabi’a composed by Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar. ‘Attar’s emplotment of Rabi’a’s life story is teleological
and the meaning it conveys
is theological. As expressed by Jean Annestay, a contemporary
French writer on Rabi’a, ‘Attar
attempts to convey
the “principial” meaning
of Rabi’a as a
mythological figure of Sufism. Because
of the influence of ‘Attar’s
narrative, even today writers continue to depict
what they see as Rabi’a’s
“principial” form. I explain that although
‘Attar did not make a painting of Rabi’a, he nonetheless created
an icon of her because
the vita or life story that he wrote amounted
to painting her image in words. To illustrate this, I
examine the opening paragraphs of the chapter
on Rabi’a in ‘Attar’s Memorial of the Saints’, showing how he sets up the story of Rabi’a by presenting her image in the form of an iconic
tableau. Important “scenes”
of this tableau
include ‘Attar’s comparison of Rabi’a with the
Virgin Mary and his depiction of her as an honorary
“man.” Following the historian of early
Christianity Karen King, I argue that ‘Attar’s
depiction of Rabi’a
does not indicate
a high valuation of femininity. This is because
when the ideal
of spirituality is seen as male or non-
gendered, gender and sexuality— especially with respect to women— are given an inferior
valuation. Also related
to this point is ‘Attar’s
conflation of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene when he compares
Rabi’a to “Mary the Pure.” Again following
King, I argue that
the trope of the virgin mother, because
it implies a denial of female sexuality, reinforces women’s subordination to men. Overall,
‘Attar’s depiction of Rabi’a is ambiguous. Because he compares her not only to Mary, but also compares
her implicitly to Jesus and Moses, he seems
to have thought of her as having
a quasi-prophetic status.
This creates a contradiction
that ‘Attar never resolves in his narrative.
After discussing the
Introduction to ‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a, I next discuss his emplotment of Rabi’a’s life-story. As Losev states in his theory of myth, every visage needs an
“outline” in order
to fumction effectively. I argue that ‘Attar creates
such an outline
by making up the missing details
of Rabi’a’s life in order to provide
a narrative context
for her sainthood. I call ‘Attar’s
vita of Rabi’a a “just-so story” because the form in which it is
presented indicates that he wanted
it to be taken as true. Unlike
Sulami, who provides
chains of transmission for his accounts
about Rabi’a, ‘Attar presents his information as if it came
from traditions that everyone knows:
such traditions are to be treated as authentic simply because they are allegedly old.
In the remainder
of Chapter 5, I discuss the most important plot elements of ‘Attar’s
vita of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. These plot elements include
the story of her childhood, including her birth as the fourth daughter of a poor family, the miracles that foreshadow her sainthood, her capture and captivity during a famine,
her servitude and eventual freedom
from captivity, her employment as a musician,
her performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca, her visions of the Ka’ba, her encounters with al-Hasan al-Basri,
her intimate conversations with God, and the dream-visions that other Sufis had of Rabi’a after her death. Each of these plot elements is discussed with reference to their literary
antecedents, their figurative meaning, and their use and adaptation by later writers.
Chapter 5 concludes with a discussion of accounts of Rabi’a’s
burial sites. Although
the “real” Rabi’a is most likely buried near the tomb
of al-Hasan al-Basri
in the al-Zubayr suburb of modern Basra,
other tombs attributed to her can also be found in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Cairo.
Chapter 6 is titled,
“Rabi’a the Icon (II): The Secular Image.”
This title highlights the fact that since
the twentieth century,
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya has become as much a subject of secular attention as of religious attention. Her depiction in academic literature, New Age literature, Internet
entries, and film and television, demonstrate that she is not only a Muslim
saint but a secular icon as well. The majority
of Chapter 6 discusses Rabi’a as she appears in ‘Abd
al-Rahman Badawi’s academic
work, Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi
(The Martyr of Divine
Love). This chapter
also examines Rabi’a
the Film Icon, as she appears in the two movies
and a miniseries that were inspired by Badawi’s book. The chapter
also discusses her depiction in the Lebanese
writer Widad El Sakkakini’s book, al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa (The Sufi Lover).
This feminist treatment of Rabi’a’s life draws not only on Badawi’s work but
also on Simone de Beauvoir’s book, The
Second Sex.
As mentioned above,
just as Margaret Smith succeded ‘Attar as the chief agent of the Rabi’a myth in the English-speaking world, the Egyptian
philosopher ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi succeded ‘Attar as the chief
agent of the Rabi’a myth in the Arab world. Also like Smith, the verisimilitude of Badawi’s depiction
of Rabi’a was based on his scholarly reputation. As an Existentialist philosopher, he believed
that one’s personality develops from one’s life experiences. Thus, in Martyr of Divine Love, he grounds each aspect of Rabi’a’s
personality in specific
life experiences, even if there is no textual evidence
for them. Badawi took his model for the stages
of personality development from the Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. As part of his interpretation of Kierkegaard, he believed that the full potential
of the human being must be attained
through struggle. For Badawi, the most intense
personal struggles are those associated with faith.
In the first part of Chapter
6, I describe how Badawi
traces Rabi’a’s career
through three stages of development: the aesthetic path, the ethical
path, and the religious path. The
period of Rabi’a’s youth, enslavement, and eventual liberation provides the context
for Badawi’s depiction of the Aesthetic Rabi’a. Badawi adds to ‘Attar’s
original plot outline
by constructing a new image of Rabi’a that visualizes her as beautiful, restless, and independent- minded. Because
the aesthetic personality type is supposed
to be both artistic and sensual, he adds
to her vita the
trope of sin and redemption by combining ‘Attar’s
reference to Rabi’a
as a musician with Christian tropes
of saints who had dramatic
conversion experiences. Badawi also adds another Christian trope to this image— that of the “fallen woman”
saint. He depicts Rabi’a as indulging in a life of sensuality and excess. As she grows into the ethical stage, she
repents of her former behavior
and turns to asceticism in rejection of her past. The religious
or redemptive stage of her life is marked by her conversion to Sufism.
After describing Badawi’s revision
of ‘Attar’s narrative
in detail, I turn next to Widad El
Sakkakini’s feminist revision
of Badawi’s narrative. For El Sakkakini, the aesthetic Rabi’a was a liberated but unfulfilled woman, whose indulgences included sexual experimentation. El Sakkakini imagines that Rabi’a was sexually abused
by her master after she was captured and sold into slavery.
She is the only writer
to suggest that Rabi’a was raped. In this and other aspects of her representation of Rabi’a, El Sakkakini was influenced by Simone De Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy as expressed in the book, The Second Sex.
Modifying Badawi’s speculations on Rabi’a’s “Road to Damascus”
conversion, she uses the example
of the early Christian saint Thaïs of Alexandria to depict Rabi’a’s
transition from the aesthetic
stage of her life to the ethical
and religious stages. Thaïs was a former courtesan whose legend was popularized in a nineteenth-century Orientalist novel by Anatole France.
Drawing as well from another nineteenth-century work, The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs, El
Sakkakini even intimates
that the young Rabi’a’s sexual experiences may have included women.
Although Badawi’s and El
Sakkakini’s representations of Rabi’a were strongly criticized by many of the writers that came after them, their Existentialist portrayal
of Rabi’a’s vita remains influential today because of its usefulness in popular drama. The second half of Chapter 6 discusses Rabi’a
the Film Icon,
an image that was made famous by the
Egyptian screenwriter Saniya Qurra’a. After writing the play of a radio drama on Rabi’a
that aired in 1955, Qurra’a
wrote a half-historical and half-fictional book in 1960 titled, ‘Arus
al-zuhd: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (The Bride of Asceticism: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya). This work
contains the outline of the screenplay of the movie
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, which appeared
in 1963. Qurra’a’s depiction of Rabi’a in this film,
which was inspired
partly by Badawi
and partly by the author’s own imagination, provided
the iconic image
of Rabi’a that is best known in the Muslim
world today. In this section
of Chapter 6, I discuss
this film in detail,
along with the largely forgotten Egyptian movie Shahidat al-hubb
al-ilahi (Martyr of Divine
Love), which preceded its more famous counterpart in 1962.
At the end of Chapter 6, I
turn once more to Roland Barthes’
concept of the “reality effect” to discuss how the presentation of an image on film provides a more immediate— and hence more powerful—
sense of reality
than any hagiography, scholarly work, or novel could do.
Through the power of what Barthes calls
“cinematographic hypnosis,” a movie produces an aura of factuality that is powerful
because of the immediacy of the experience it evokes.
For this reason, says Barthes, film as a genre is inherently ideological. At the end of the chapter, I illustrate these
theoretical points through
the example of the 1996 miniseries from Egyptian television, Rabi’a ta’ud (Rabi’a Returns).
CHAPTER 1 RABI’A THE TEACHER
“Take
me to the teacher (mu’addiba). For when I am apart
from her, I can find no solace.”
—
Sufyan al-Thawri
(d. 778 CE), speaking about
Rabi’a in Sulami’s
Dhikr al-niswa al-
muta’abbidat al-sufiyyat (Memorial of Female Sufi Devotees)
“He who is not educated
by virtue (man lam yu’addibhu al-jamil) is reformed by tribulations.”
—
Abbasid Caliph
Harun al-Rashid (d. 809 CE) in Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi,
al-‘Iqd al-Farid (The
Peerless Necklace)
I.
Who Was the Historical Rabi’a?
Who was the historical Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya? As stated in the Introduction, the Rabi’a who is famous for millions of Muslims and non-Muslims around the world is a “constructed
saint,” a composite image of female spirituality whose outline continues
to be shaped through
stories, songs, poems, and other popular forms of expression. Also as stated
in the Introduction, the inconic figure
of Rabi’a as she appears
in Sufi literature, popular tales, and now cinema
and the Internet constitutes a master narrative: her identity is embodied in a trans-historical narrative that is deeply embedded not only in the culture
of Islam, but now in global culture
as well. To put it another
way, Rabi’a is a product
of cultural memory,
and any serious
attempt to study
her representation in different
narrative genres must involve what Nicholas Wolterstorff has called the archaeology of cultural memory: “telling the story of how we got where we are in our
thinking.”1
However, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya
is not just a figure of literary reputation and cultural memory. There was a real person at the beginning, a woman who lived in the Iraqi
city of Basra roughly between the years 714 and 801 CE.2 Although we know little in detail about her, we can
surmise that she was a woman whose
personal example was impressive to her contemporaries; otherwise she would not have been used by writers in the generations immediately after her death
as a
rhetorical example. Therefore, the archaeology of the narrative
tropes and cultural
constructs that make up the building
blocks for the master narrative of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya must start where all archaeological investigations begin, with the most concrete
evidence at our disposal, no matter how scarce that evidence may be.
a.
Early Sources for the Historical Rabi’a
1 Nicholas Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), xiv.
2 Although a few sources
claim that Rabi’a
died as early as 752-3 CE, this date can be rejected
on the basis
of accounts attributed to her students
and associates, who flourished in the second
half of the eighth century CE.
Unlike an actual archaeological investigation, the archaeology of cultural memory about
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya can uncover no artifacts that can be attributed unquestionably to Rabi’a herself. She wrote no books and no hagiographical account was written
about her during her
lifetime.3 In literary
terms, there is no “prior
text” on which
to base an outline of Rabi’a’s life. What was to become the defacto
“prior text” for Rabi’a’s vita was
not written until the beginning of the thirteenth century
CE, more than 400 years after her death. How, then, are we to determine
which of the many accounts
of her actions, sayings, and teachings represent
the historical Rabi’a? Is there any way to sift through the accumulated narratives to find a trace of the person behind the myth?
There is one way, although
it is not methodologically foolproof. One can turn to the sources that provide what are likely to be the chronologically closest views of Rabi’a extant in
Islamic literature. However,
it should not be forgotten
that even these were composed
fifty years or more after her death. The earliest accounts
about Rabi’a come from four sources: (a) a single aphorism in a doctrinal
work by the ninth-century Sufi al-Harith al-Muhasibi; (b) anecdotes
reported by the ninth-century hagiographer Muhammad ibn al-Husayn
al-Burjulani; (c) statements ascribed to Rabi’a in the works of the ninth-century non-Sufi essayists Jahiz and Ibn Abi
Tahir Tayfur; (d) alleged first-hand accounts about Rabi’a
that were reported
on behalf of her
students in Sufi doctrinal and hagiographical works
from the tenth through the thirteenth
centuries CE.4
The
earliest non-Sufi writer
to provide information on Rabi’a was Abu ‘Uthman
al-Jahiz (d. 868 CE), a noted
essayist and theologian whose writings encompassed a wide range
of subjects.5 Jahiz mentions
Rabi’a in two of his books, Kitab al-hayawan (The Book of Animals)
and Kitab al-bayan wa-l-tabyin (Treatise on the Demonstrative Proof
and the Art of Persuasion). Jahiz’s references to Rabi’a are significant because
of his closeness to her in time and place. As a native
of Basra, Rabi’a’s
home city, he may have known people who were personally acquainted with her. Clearly, he had heard
stories about her and was well aware of her reputation. However, even at this early stage, Rabi’a
was not immune to the effects of literary representation. In his works, Jahiz defined her rhetorically and transformed her into what Pierre Hadot has called a
figure. Like a character
sketch in a novel, the creation of a figure defines “what we think we
know” about a historical personage. For Hadot, the figure of a personage is a constructed
3 The
assumption by Margaret Smith and other modern writers that Rabi’a left behind
written works is based on the attribution of certain poems to her, such
as the famous “Poem of the Two Loves,” which will
be discussed in Chapter 3. However,
most if not all of these poems were not by Rabi’a herself but were composed by
others. To date, no written work has been linked conclusively to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. On the subject of Rabi’a’s purported writings see Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 69 and 125-6 and
(Rainbow Bridge) 47 and 101-2.
4 In assuming
that the historical Rabi’a can be discussed to a certain
extent, I disagree
with Julian Baldick,
who claims that
early accounts about Rabi’a are “too allusive, and usually too late, to have
any value for reconstructing her life and teachings.” In my opinion,
Baldick holds early sources on Rabi’a to a standard of objectivity that could not be met even by works on some modern historical figures. See Julian
Baldick, “The Legend of Rabi’a of Basra: Christian Antecedents, Muslim
Counterparts,” Religion 19 (1990),
233.
5 The best work on Jahiz is Charles Pellat,
The Life and Works of Jahiz, translated from the French by D.
M. Hawke (London:
Routledge and Kegan
Paul and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). For a
short introduction to Jahiz’s works, see also James E. Montgomery, “al-Jahiz,” Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 311:
Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925, Edited by Michael Cooperson and Shawkat
M. Toorawa (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005), 231-42; another
useful reference is Charles Pellat, “Djahiz,” EI2, vol. 2, 385-7.
representation. However, because
it encapsulates what we feel we know about the personage, it is just as much a historical “reality” as the personage
herself. Hadot explains
this phenomenon in the following way: “The historical Socrates is probably an insoluble enigma.
But the figure of Socrates, as it is sketched by Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes, is a well-attested historical fact.” 6
According to Michel de Certeau, the process of establishing the identity of a saint like
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya starts
by associating a personage with a place.7 Since the time of Jahiz, Rabi’a has most often been associated with her city of origin.
Thus, she is most often known as “Rabi’a of Basra.” As we shall see later on in this chapter,
Jahiz also attempts
to define Rabi’a rhetorically by fitting her into his theory of bayan,
a concept that refers to rhetorical excellence. Modern scholars consider Kitab al-hayawan and al-Bayan wa-l-tabyin, the works of Jahiz in which
Rabi’a appears, to contain the most important discussions of Jahiz’s
theology. This theology was rationalistic and depended on logical arguments
to define the nature of God.8
Although Jahiz saw Rabi’a as different from himself in her approach
to Islam, he nevertheless
used her as an example
for some of his arguments.
By using the figure of Rabi’a rhetorically in this way, he thus played
an important role in the creation of her narrative image.
Several modern scholars
have already remarked
on the references to Rabi’a
in Jahiz’s works. However,
no one has yet mentioned
the references to her by another ninth-century essayist, Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur. Like Jahiz, Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur of Baghdad
(d. 893 CE) was a literary
critic and cultural
observer. 9 His most notable work was a local history
of Baghdad titled Kitab Baghdad
(The Book of Baghdad). This work contained a description of Baghdad and accounts of events that occurred during the reigns
of the Abbasid Caliphs. Ibn Abi
Tahir Tayfur supported himself as a book dealer and published other works on a wide variety of subjects. The most famous of these was Balaghat al-nisa’
(The Eloquence of Women), which is
the earliest extant work devoted
to women in Islam. In this work, Rabi’a is characterized as Rabi’a al-Musma’iyya, “Rabi’a the Woman
Who Must Be Heard.”10 This is an important
appellation because it shows that Rabi’a was already regarded
as an iconic figure less than 100 years after her death.11
6 See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life,
ed. Arnold L. Davidson, Michael
Chase trans. (Oxford and Malden, Massachusetts:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1995), 116 and n. 80.
7 Michel de Certeau, The Writing
of History, Tom Conley trans.
(New York: Columbia
University Press,
1988),
272
8 Montgomery, “al-Jahiz,” 237-9
9 See Shawkat
Toorawa, “Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,”
in Dictionary of Literary
Biography Volume 311: Arabic
Literary Culture, 500-925, 141-9. See also, Franz Rosenthal, “Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur,” EI2, vol. 3,
692-3. 10 Ahmad ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur al-Khurasani, Balaghat al-nisa’, Muhammad Tahir al-Zayn
Ed. (Kuwait: Maktabat
al-Sundus, 1993), 210
11 On the term musma’, see E.W. Lane,
Arabic-English Lexicon
(Cambridge: The Islamic
Texts Society,
1984 reprint of
1863 first edition), 1429. In the
Book of Asceticism (Kitab al-zuhd) in
al-Bayan wa al- tabyin, Jahiz
mentions a man named ‘Amr ibn al-Khawla, whose mother was called “Khawla of the
Masami’a.” The modern editor of this
work states in a footnote that al-masami’a
referred to the descendants of Masma’ ibn Shihab ibn ‘Umar. However, he cites no source for this
information. It is etymologically
possible that the Rabi’a to whom Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur refers was “Rabi’a
al-Masma’iyya” rather than Rabi’a
al-Musma’iyya. However, I have not been able to find any independent verification of a clan of Masami’a in the major
biographical works dealing with Iraq in this period. In addition, it will become clear below that Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur’s accounts about Rabi’a match those of Jahiz quite closely.
The greatest amount of early information on Rabi’a is to
be found in Sufi
doctrinal and hagiographical works. Many of these
works claim to reproduce first-hand accounts that were transmitted by Rabi’a’s students
and contemporaries. Although the earliest of these accounts have a strong aura of authenticity, they are historiographically problematical because most of the
works in which they appear were written
a century and a half or more after Rabi’a’s death. Most early Sufi hagiographical works were examples
of tabaqat (levels, classes,
or generations) literature. These were biographical dictionaries in which noted Sufis were classified either chronologically or by their spiritual
practices.12 The tabaqat genre originated in the field of Hadith
studies out of the need to assess the reputation of the bearers
and transmitters of tradition.13 Most Sufi tabaqat works sought to link the Sufi tradition to the “Righteous Predecessors” (al-Salaf al-Salih), the Companions of the Prophet
Muhammad and the following
two generations of their successors. This category of individuals comprised
the most important tradition-bearers of Sunni Islam.
In the words of the contemporary historian Tarif Khalidi, the tabaqat genre
provided continuity between
the generation of al-Salaf al-Salih and
subsequent generations of pious
Muslims: it linked
the “then” to the “here
and now.”14 Because
of their origin in Hadith studies,
Sufi tabaqat works were often written
in the style of Hadith
collections. The best of them relied
on first-hand accounts
that contained chains of oral and written transmission (sing.
isnad) leading from the witness of the event back to the author
of the work in which the
account of the event appeared.
The earliest known tabaqat work
to mention Rabi’a
appears to have been Kitab al- ruhban (The Book of Monks) by Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Burjulani of Baghdad (d. 852
CE).15 Although no copy of this work is known to exist at the present time, portions of it can be
found in later Sufi works. When chains
of transmission are cited in Sufi tabaqat works, the appearance of the name “Muhammad ibn al-Husayn” indicates that the account
was transmitted by Burjulani
and most likely
came from Kitab al-ruhban. The two anecdotes
about Rabi’a from Burjulani that can be identified are extremely important
because they may represent the earliest
accounts about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in existence. These anecdotes will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
Therefore, one can conclude
that both authors
were talking about the same person. See Abu ‘Uthman
‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz, al-Bayan
wa al-tabyin, ed. Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Daljamuni (Beirut: n.d. reprint
of 1900 first edition), vol. 3, 110, n. 2.
12 On the origins of Sufi tabaqat literature, see my Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 48-53.
13 For an overview of the tabaqat genre, see Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim
Historiography
(Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1968), 93-5; and Claude Gillot, “Tabakat,” EI2, 7-10. See
also, Ibrahim Hafsi, “Recherches sur le genre ‘Tabaqat’
dans la litérature arabe,” Arabica xxiii (1976), 228-65, xxiv (1977), 1- 41 and 150-86; and R. Stephen
Humphreys, Islamic History, a Framework
for Inquiry (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991),
187-208.
14 Tarif Khalidi,
Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical
Period (Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press,
1994), 46.
15 For information on Burjulani, see Tor Andrae,
In the Garden of Myrtles: Studies
in Early Islamic
Mysticism, trans.
Birgitta Sharpe and Introduction by Eric Sharpe (Albany, New York: State
University of New York Press,
1987), 32. See also, Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins
of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, Benjamin Clark,
trans. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1997),,
160. See
also, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071 CE), Tarikh Baghdad wa Madinat al-Salam, ed. Mustafa ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Ata (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1997), vol. 2, 219,
where the traditionist Ahmad ibn Hanbal cites Burjulani as a reliable source of
information on Muslim ascetics.
The earliest extant Sufi work to mention
Rabi’a was written by al-Harith ibn Asad al- Muhasibi of Baghdad (d. 857 CE). In the treatise titled
al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah (God as the
Goal and Return), Muhasibi states:
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya would
say at the coming of night, ‘The night has come, the darkness has mingled (ikhtalata al-zalam), and every lover
is left alone
with his beloved. Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.’”16 As with the references to “Rabi’a al- Musma’iyya” in Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
Balaghat al-nisa’ and the anecdotes from Burjulani
noted above, no scholar has yet recognized this passage as the earliest
reference to Rabi’a.
Muhasibi’s mention
of Rabi’a is significant for two reasons.
First, his reference to Rabi’a is the
earliest apart from Burjulani’s. Second,
like Jahiz, he spent the first part of his life in Basra,
Rabi’a’s native city. Born in 781 CE, he would
have lived in Basra during
Rabi’a’s lifetime and may
even have seen her. In her book on Muhasibi, which was published seven years after
her influential work Rabi’a the Mystic, Margaret
Smith agrees that Rabi’a’s fame “must certainly have come to [Muhasibi’s] ears.”17 Smith also states that Muhasibi quotes Rabi’a in one of his
works; however, she provides no source for this claim
and the statement she reproduces is different from that given above.18 Despite
her extensive knowledge
of manuscript collections in the Middle East, al-Qasd wa al-ruju’
ila Allah does
not appear in Smith’s list of Muhasibi’s known works.19 However, we can be fairly certain
that this work was in fact Muhasibi’s. ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Ata, the Arabic editor
of Muhasibi’s works,
states that two manuscript copies
of the work can be found in collections in Istanbul that would have been known to Smith in the early
1930s.20 He also confirms the work’s authenticity by means of doctrinal and stylistic similarities with other, better-known examples
of Muhasibi’s works.
The
next extant Sufi work to mention Rabi’a was written
over a century after Muhasibi’s.
This is Kitab al-luma’ fi-l-tasawwuf (Flashes of Insight
into Sufism) by Abu Nasr al-Sarraj (d. 988
CE). In a section of this book on the miracles of Muslim saints,
Sarraj arranges the early
tradition-bearers of Sufism into a list based on generations. As in other Sufi tabaqat lists, these generations go back to al-Salaf al-Salih. One of the most important
of these generations includes Muhammad ibn Wasi’ (d. 738 CE), Malik ibn Dinar (d. 745 CE), Farqad
al-Sinji (d. 748-9 CE),
Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani (d. 748-9 CE), ‘Abd al-Wahid
ibn Zayd (d. 793-4 CE), and Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya (d. 801 CE).21 Significantly, all of these individuals are from the city of Basra.22
16 Abu ‘Abdullah
al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah, ed. ‘Abd al-Qadir
Ahmad ‘Ata (Cairo: Dar al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1980), 104
17 Margaret Smith,
An Early Mystic of Baghdad: A Study of the Life and Teaching
of Harith B. Asad al-
Muhasibi, A.D. 781-857 (London, U.K.:
Sheldon Press, 1977 reprint of 1935 first
edition), 215
18 Ibid; in Smith’s account,
Rabi’a is asked,
“How did you attain to this station
(of intimacy with God)?”
and she replied, “By abandoning what did not concern me, and seeking
fellowship with Him Who is Eternal.” This statement will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, where it
is traced to a later source.
19 Smith, An Early Mystic, 44-59
20 In the Introduction to his edition
of Muhasibi’s Bad’ man anaba ila Allah (The
Beginning of Penitence
for the Sake of
God), ‘Ata states that manuscript copies of al-Qasd
wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah can be found in the Jarallah (no. 1728) and Shehid Ali
(no. 3319) manuscript collections in Istanbul.
Al-Harith ibn Asad al- Muhasibi, al-Tawba, ed. ‘Abd al-Qadir
Ahmad ‘Ata (Cairo:
Dar al-Islah, 1982) 18. However,
in his earlier (1980) edition of al-Qasd,‘Ata
states that only a single copy of this manuscript exists (Muhasibi, al-Qasd, 27).
21 Abu Nasr ‘Abdallah b. ‘Ali al-Sarraj al-Tusi, The Kitab al-Luma’
fi’l-Tasawwuf, Reynold Alleyne
Nicholson, ed. (London: Luzac & Co. Ltd., 1963 reprint of 1914 first edition), 322
22 See Massignon, Essay, 114.
According to Sarraj, early scholars and the founders
of schools of Islamic religious
practice used them as sources of tradition and confirmed what they had to say. The next generation of tradition-bearers for Sarraj included
Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani (already
mentioned), Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 778 CE), and Hammad ibn Zayd (d, 793 CE). These men also came from Basra or spent considerable time in that city. According
to Sarraj, none of these figures denied
the teachings of Rabi’a
or her contemporaries: “They are our leaders
in religion and confirm our knowledge of
God’s rules and regulations and our knowledge of what is permissible and forbidden. So how can we
believe them in some of what they report and not believe
them in other things?”23 This statement from Kitab al-luma’ provides further testimony for Rabi’a’s reputation as an important figure of early Islam.
Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami’s (d. 1021 CE) Dhikr al-niswa al-muta’abbidat al- sufiyyat (Memorial of Female Sufi Devotees) contains
accounts from four Sufi tabaqat works
that were written before Sarraj’s Kitab al-luma’. The earliest of these is Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban. Sulami also includes accounts
from another Kitab al-ruhban
by Ibrahim ibn al-Junayd of Baghdad (d. 883-84 CE). In addition,
he includes information from Tabaqat al-nussak
(Generations of the Ascetic Ritualists) by Abu Sa’id
ibn al- A’rabi of Basra (d. in Mecca, 952-3 CE)
and Hikayat al-awliya’ (Stories of the Saints)
by Ja’far al-Khuldi of Baghdad (d. 959-60
CE).24 Unfortunately, all of these works now appear to be lost. However, we know something
of their contents because
Sulami and other authors of early works cited them. For example,
citations of Burjulani appear in many Islamic prosopographical sources and a portion of Ja’far al-Khuldi’s book can be found in the Fihrist (Bibliographical Catalogue) of Muhammad ibn al-Nadim of Baghdad (d. 990 CE).25 Sulami was conscientious about citing his sources of information and listed full chains of transmission whenever
possible. Thus, his Book of Sufi Women can
potentially be used as a historical source.
However, while some of Sulami’s
notices on Rabi’a’s female contemporaries come from the works mentioned above,
his notices on Rabi’a does not. It is not clear why this is the case, because
Sulami includes a report about Rabi’a from one of these
sources in another work.26
The
majority of the references to Rabi’a in works of Sufism do not appear until nearly
150 years after her death. This underscores the importance of the references to Rabi’a in the
works of Burjulani, Muhasibi, and Jahiz, who are separated from her by only half a century,
and in Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
Balaghat al-nisa’, which appeared
a generation later. It also appears
that Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women is the earliest
extant Sufi work to give complete chains
of transmission for reports
about Rabi’a, although
they do not come from the sources
mentioned above. None of the extant
Sufi works that predate Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women provide
chains of transmission for accounts about
Rabi’a. These include,
besides Muhasibi’s al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah and Sarraj’s
Kitab al-luma’, Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi (d. 990 CE), Kitab al-ta’arruf li-
23 Sarraj, The Kitab
al-Luma’, 322-3
24 On these works, see R. Cornell,
Introduction to Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 52-53
and notes.
25 See Bayard Dodge, trans.,
The Fihrist of al-Nadim:
A Tenth-Century Survey
of Muslim Culture
(New
York:
Columbia University Press, 1970), vol. 1, 455-61.
26 See, for example, the account about Rabi’a taken from Ja’far
al-Khuldi (“Ja’far ibn Muhammad”) in
Sulami’s Kitab ‘uyub al-nafs wa mudawatuha (Book of the Faults
of the Soul and their Cures), in Nasrollah
Pourjavady, Majmu’at Athar Abu ‘Abd
al-Rahman al-Sulami (Tehran: Tehran University Publishing Center, 2000), vol. 1, 72-73. Each work in this collection of Sulami
texts is paginated separately.
madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf (Introduction to the Methodology of the Sufis);
Abu Talib al-Makki
(d. 996 CE), Qut al-qulub
(The Sustenance of Hearts); and ‘Abd al-Malik
al-Kharkushi (d. 1016 CE), Tahdhib al-asrar
(The Primer of Secrets). Therefore, according to modern standards of historical research, the citations
from Burjulani, Muhasibi,
Jahiz, Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,
and Sulami are unique
in that they are the closest we can get to primary
sources about Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya.
b.
Students and Associates of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya
What do the early
sources tell us about the students and associates of Rabi’a? For Sulami
and most other writers, the most important
of Rabi’a’s students
was Sufyan al-Thawri
(d. 776 CE), a key figure in the formative period of Islamic
jurisprudence.27 Although Thawri
was considered an important
source of tradition by the Sufis,
he was not a Sufi himself. For example,
his commentary on the Qur’an is accepted
as an important work of early Qur’anic
exegesis by all Sunni
Muslims.28 Thawri was born and raised in Kufa but lived in Basra at the end of his life.
He and Rabi’a were approximately the same age when they knew each other. Sulami
reports that Thawri sought
Rabi’a’s advice on ethical matters
and that he sought her spiritual counsel
as well.29
Sulami also reports
that Shu’ba ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 776-77 or 781-82 CE) transmitted Rabi’a’s teachings.30 Shu’ba was a Hadith scholar
and friend of Thawri who resided in Basra.
He also wrote an early commentary on the Qur’an.31 Born in the Iraqi city of Wasit to a family of Persian origin, he was one of many non-Arab
clients (mawla, pl. mawali) of Arab clans
who were beginning to rise to positions of importance in the early Abbasid period.
Another Hadith scholar and companion of Thawri who reported
on Rabi’a was Ja’far ibn Sulayman al-Dab’i
(d. 794-5 CE).32 In an isnad cited
by Sulami, Dab’i
confirms a contention made by Abu Bakr al-Sarraj that Rabi’a knew Muhammad
ibn Wasi’, although
she would have been in her early twenties at the
time of Ibn Wasi’s death. Ibn Wasi’ was a Hadith
transmitter, Qur’an reciter,
and ascetic who was
a student of the famous
Sunni theologian al-Hasan
al-Basri (d. 728 CE).33 Ibn Wasi’ and other
students of Hasan, such as Malik ibn Dinar and Farqad al-Sinji,
who are also mentioned along with Rabi’a by Sarraj, may have served
as important links between Rabi’a
and Hasan, with
27
See Sulami, Early
Sufi Women, 74 and 76. The most
extensive treatment of the life and teachings of Sufyan al-Thawri can be found in Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani (d. 1038-39 CE), Hilyat al-awliya’ wa tabaqat
al-asfiya’ (Adornment of the Saints and Generations of the Pure), ed. Abu
Hajr al-Sa’id ibn Basyuni Zaghlul (Beirut: n.d. [reprint of the 1938 edition]),
vol. 6, 356-93 and vol. 7, 3-143.
28 See Abu ‘Abdallah Sufyan ibn Sa’id ibn Masruq
al-Thawri al-Kufi, Tafsir Sufyan al-Thawri, ed. Imtiaz
Ali ‘Arshi
(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983 reprint of 1965 first edition). The Ranpur, India, manuscript on which this edition is based is the only known copy of this work. See also, Claude
Gilliot, “The Beginnings of Qur’anic Exegesis,” The Qur’an: Formative Interpretation, ed. Andrew Rippin (Aldershot,
U.K.: Ashgate Publishing and Variorum, 1999), 15.
29 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 74
30 Ibid and Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 6, 144-209
31 See Charles
Pellat, Le Milieu Basrien
et la formation de Gahiz (Paris: Librarie
d’Amérique et d’Orient
Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1953), 83.
32 See Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 78 and Isfahani,
Hilya, vol. 6, 287-96;
according to Massignon, Dab’i
was a disciple
of Farqad al-Sinji.
See idem, Essay, 115.
33 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 78 and n. 16; see also, Isfahani,
Hilya, vol. 2, 345-57.
whom
she is often associated anachronistically in later works. Although Rabi’a
would have been too
young to know al-Hasan al-Basri
during his lifetime,
it would have been possible
for her to have known his students.
Sulami also mentions that Rabi’a had several female disciples and colleagues. These included Maryam of Basra
(d. early ninth
century CE), who apparently was a love mystic.34
Others included Sha’wana
of al-Ubulla (d. ca. 770 CE), who had both male and female disciples like Rabi’a (see Chapter
2),35 and Rabi’a al-Azdiyya of Basra (d. end of eighth century
CE).
Rabi’a al-Azdiyya has often been confused
with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya by later generations of Sufis.36 Surprisingly, Sulami cites none of these women as sources
of accounts about Rabi’a.
This distinction only belongs to a woman who appears
in the much later Sifat al-safwa
(Attributes of the Pure) by the Hanbali scholar
Abu al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201 CE).37 Ibn al-Jawzi cites Rabi’a’s servant ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal
as a source of information.38 According
to an isnad provided by the Hanbali
prosopographer Muhammad al-Dhahabi (d. 1374 CE), the accounts
of ‘Abda that were used by Ibn al-Jawzi
originally came from Burjulani’s ninth-century Kitab al- ruhban.39 It is difficult to assess the reliability of these accounts
because not only does ‘Abda claim to be present
at Rabi’a’s death,
she also recites
dream narratives that recount posthumous conversations with her. The dream conversation is a common trope in Islamic hagiography and serves to establish
the divine acceptance of the person who speaks from beyond
the grave. Often, such conversations are not about the deceased, but about other famous people who were known to the
deceased or her companions. In ‘Abda’s dream
accounts, Rabi’a serves
as a messenger from the beyond,
which confirms her status as a respected transmitter of Sufi traditions.
II.
Rabi’a in the Earliest Sources
a.
Rabi’a the Arab
Jahiz mentions Rabi’a eight times in his works: four times in Kitab al-hayawan and four times in al-Bayan wa-l-tabyin. In these works she is not called
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya,” the name
by which she has become
famous, but is instead identified as “Rabi’a al-Qaysiyya.” Although these appellations seem different, they do not contradict each other. The name Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya refers to ‘Adi ibn Qays, the Arab clan in Basra to which Rabi’a belonged. In Arabic, a
34 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 84-5
35 Ibid, 106-7
36 Ibid, 128-9
37 The most recent edited
edition of this work is Abu al-Faraj
‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa,
ed. Mahmud
Fakhuri and Muhammad Rawwas Qal’anji (Beirut, 1986), in four volumes. In the present study, references to Sifat al-safwa are from the Alexandria,
Egypt, Dar Ibn Khaldun reprinted edition in two volumes (not dated). The section on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya can be
found in vol. 2, 710-12 of the Alexandria edition. For a complete
English translation of Ibn al-Jawzi’s notice on Rabi’a
see the Ibn al-
Jawzi Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi
Women, 276-83.
38 See the Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 280-2, for an English translation of Ibn al-Jawzi’s
references to ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal.
The original can be found
in Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2,
712.
39 See the isnad from Burjulani
via ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal
in Shams al-Din
Muhammad ibn Ahmad
b.
‘Uthman al-Dhahabi, Siyar a’lam al-nubala’, ed. Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut and Salih al-Sumr
(Beirut: Mu’asasa al-Risala,
1996), vol. 8, 242.
man from ‘Adi ibn Qays would be called
‘adawi; a woman would
be called ‘adawiyya. Qays was the name of the tribe to which the ‘Adi ibn Qays belonged. The Banu Qays (Sons of Qays)
belonged to a large tribal
confederation called Mudar. Both Qays and the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe of Quraysh were part of Mudar. In early Islamic
times, belonging to one of the tribes
of Mudar meant that one was a northern
Arab, as opposed
to the “Yemenis” (also known as
Qahtanis or Himyaris) who had originally come from southern
Arabia. Tribes of both northern and southern Arabian origin had been living in Iraq for two or more centuries
before Islam.
Segments of the tribes
of Mudar were numerous in southern Iraq and in the region
of Basra. Most segments
of Qays settled in the Jazira, a region west of the Euphrates River that stretched between Iraq and Syria. A group of Qays also settled
in Basra, where they made up one “fifth”
(khums) of the five original tribal groups that settled in that city. The fifth to which the ‘Adi ibn
Qays belonged was known as Ahl al-‘Aliyya (The
People of Upper
Arabia).40 Yemeni Arabs were also numerous in Basra. One of the most important
Yemeni tribes in Basra was Azd. The identity of this tribe is reflected
in the name of Rabi’a’s
contemporary and namesake,
Rabi’a al- Azdiyya.41
Unlike some later writers,
who depict Rabi’a as coming from a non-Arab background, Jahiz places her firmly
within the Qays tribe and even suggests
that she enjoyed
a high status among her clan. In al-Bayan wa-l-tabyin he says: “Rabi’a
al-Qaysiyya was asked,
‘Could we ask the
men of your clan to buy you a servant
to do your household chores?’
She replied, ‘By God, I am ashamed to ask for the world
from the One who owns the world.
So how can I ask for the world
from one who does not own it?’”42 The same statement also appears in Kitab al-hayawan,
but in a slightly different
version. Here Rabi’a is asked,
“Would you give us permission to speak to your people so that they collect for you the price of a servant?
He could be a support
for you and be of sufficient service to you so that you could devote yourself
to worship.”43 A third variant of this story appears in Balaghat al-nisa’ by
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, where Rabi’a is told to ask
the Sultan (i.e., the governor
of Basra) to repair her dwelling. Her response to this advice is
the same as in Jahiz’ account: “By God, I do not ask for the world from the One who owns it, so
how can I ask for the world
from one who does not own it?”44
The context in which Rabi’a’s response
is situated reveals
important information about her
likely standing within
her clan and in Basra
at large. In Jahiz’s account,
Rabi’a is highly respected by the leaders
of her clan, who are concerned that her domestic
duties interfere with her
religious vocation. By offering to buy her a servant
or a slave to free her from her chores,
they confirm that she was a highly valued person, despite
the fact that she was a woman. In al-Bayan
wa al-tabyin, it is suggested
that the leaders
of her clan should buy her a servant. In al-Hayawan, it is suggested that the clan members together
should collect money to buy her a servant. In
40 Pellat, Le Milieu Basrien, 23
41 For a concise overview
of tribal fractions
in Umayyad Iraq, see Marshall
G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of
Islam:
Conscience and History
in a World Civilization (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), vol. 1, 227-30. On Arab settlement patterns in the region
of Basra, see Michael G. Morony, Iraq
after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1984), 245-50.
42 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 3, 66
43 Abu ‘Uthman
‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz, Kitab al-hayawan, ed. ‘Abd al-Salam
Muhammad Harun (Beirut:
Ihya’
al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1969 [reprint of 1949 first edition]), vol. 5, 589
44 Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,
Balaghat al-nisa’, 205
Balaghat al-nisa’, she is told by the leaders of her clan to ask the governor
of Basra to rebuild her house. Obviously,
this is something that a governor
would not do for everyone. All three
versions of this story make it clear that Rabi’a was highly respected in her community
and was considered a valued asset by her people. In the social context of her time, a woman who earned such a high level of respect
was not likely
to have been a slave
or a servant herself. It is more likely that she was a hurra, a free woman of good standing in her clan.
Several non-Arab
Sufis and even some Arab writers depict Rabi’a as a mawlat, a non-
Arab client who was attached
to an Arab tribe.45 Up until the end of the Umayyad
Caliphate (ca. 750 CE), a non-Muslim could only convert
to Islam if she were sponsored by a patron from an Arab
tribe, who either
adopted the convert
into the tribe or bound the convert
to the tribe through a legal act of clientage (muwalat). The client was known as a mawla (fem. mawlat) and typically
was either a freed slave
or a free non-Arab (‘ajami) who provided useful
services for the patron
or the patron’s clan. Although
it was possible under Islamic
law for a freed slave
or even a slave to own a slave herself, this was very rare, just as it was rare for a servant to employ a servant.46
While it is theoretically possible that Rabi’a was of non-Arab origin,
the information provided by Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
suggests otherwise. Although
she might have been
attached to her clan through
clientage, she would
have had to enjoy such an unusually high status that she transcended the social restrictions placed on non-Arab
clients in the Umayyad period.
A situation such as this would have been highly improbable.47 In addition, some claims that Rabi’a
was of non-Arab origin can be shown to be unlikely because
they were based on faulty information. For example, Sulami’s
claim that Rabi’a
was a mawlat in
his Book of Sufi Women is
undermined by a mistake that would never
have been made by a native of Basra. Although Sulami refers to Rabi’a
as “Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya,” he states that she was a mawlat of the Arab clan of Al ‘Atik (The People
of ‘Atik).48 The appellation ‘Adawiyya meant
that Rabi’a belonged to the clan of ‘Adi
ibn Qays, which, as we have seen, was
part of the north Arabian tribal confederation of Mudar. However,
Al ‘Atik was a clan of the South Arabian
Azd Arabs.
Because of this, it could not have been related in any way to either
Qays or Mudar.49 It would
have been impossible for Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya to bear the name of a clan from Qays and to be bound
through clientage to a clan of South Arabian origin.
If she had been the client of a South
45 See for example Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 74, where Rabi’a is depicted
as a mawlat of the clan of Al ‘Atik.
46 On the concept of clientage in pre-Islamic and early Islamic
times, see Jacob
Lassner, The Shaping of
‘Abbasid Rule (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980),
96-8; and Mahmood
Ibrahim,
Merchant Capital
and Islam (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press,
1990), 59-60 and 182-3.
47 The Umayyad-era poet Jarir once insulted the matriarch of a rival’s
clan by accusing
her of being a slave
and corrupted by her “foreign
stink.” Had Rabi’a
been a non-Arab client, she would likely
have been subjected to similar
abuse. See Allen Fromherz,
“Tribalism, Tribal Feuds, and the Social Status of Women,” in Amira
El Azhary Sonbol, ed., Gulf Women
(Doha, Qatar: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2012), 60.
48 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 74; unlike most of Sulami’s
information about Rabi’a,
this claim is not
supported by an isnad.
49 On ‘Adi ibn Qays and Al ‘Atik, see Pellat, Le Milieu Basrien, 28 and 30. Pellat’s information corrects
the mistake in
Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 74 n. 3,
where Al ‘Atik is linked both to ‘Adi ibn Qays and to Quraysh. Like Sulami, Massignon
(Essay, 149 n. 458) also sees Rabi’a as a freedwoman of Al ‘Atik, but
“corrects” her tribal designation to make her a member of Azd. However, this would also make her the same
person as Rabi’a al-Azdiyya.
Arabian clan,
she would have borne that clan’s name. We have already seen that there
were two Rabi’as living in Basra at the same time: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a al-Azdiyya. Unlike Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, Rabi’a
al-Azdiyya’s name indicates
that she belonged
to a tribe of South Arabian origin. Therefore, it is more likely to have been Rabi’a al-Azdiyya—not Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya— who was from Al ‘Atik of the Banu Azd and who may have been a client of that
South Arabian clan. While Sulami
corrects some misinformation about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in his Book of Sufi Women, he seems to have inadvertently contributed to a centuries-long tradition of confusion over the two Rabi’as of Basra.50
b.
Rabi’a the Leader
The hurra, the free Arab woman, played
an important role in the culture of the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods.
Unfortunately, little research
seems to have been done on this subject.
It is surprising, given today’s
widespread interest in Women’s Studies,
that one finds
more references to Arab women of high standing
in studies dating
from the first
half of the twentieth
century than afterwards. Margaret Smith, writing
in 1928, notes “There is little doubt that the free
Arab woman in Pre-Islamic and even early
Islamic times held a more independent and even
respected position than the Muslim woman of today.” She goes on to mention
several notable women who lived in the Pre-Islamic and early Islamic
periods.51 Philip K. Hitti, writing
in 1937, discusses the Prophet Muhammad’s great-granddaughter Sukayna bint al-Husayn (d. 735 CE), who
was a patron not only of fashion
and beauty, but also of literature.52 He notes that many
women of the Caliphal household
under the early Abbasids distinguished themselves as patrons of the literary and intellectual arts.53 In Two Queens of Baghdad, published in 1946, Nabia Abbott discusses the philanthropy of Zubayda (d. 831 CE), the Arab wife of the Abbasid
Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Zubayda
made six pilgrimages to Mecca, endowed
waterworks in that city, and trained 100 slave girls to chant the Qur’an around the clock at the Caliphal
palace in Baghdad.54 Most relevant
to the present discussion are the observations of Ahmad Amin in Duha al-Islam
50 The conflation of reports about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a al-Azdiyya may have started
as early as the publication of Kitab al-ruhban by Muhammad ibn
al-Husayn al-Burjulani in the mid-ninth century CE. The fourteenth-century
biographer Muhammad al-Dhahabi, apparently following Sulami, also makes the
mistake of saying that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was a client of Al ‘Atik. Dhahabi also cites an account about Rabi’a
that Burjulani reported from a member of the Al ‘Atik clan of Azd. This account states that Rabi’a refused to
meet with Sufyan al-Thawri. Since we
know from Jahiz and other sources that Sufyan visited Rabi’a frequently, this
early account by Burjulani is probably also about Rabi’a al-Azdiyya rather than
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Dhahabi, Siyar,
vol. 8, 241
51 See Smith,
Rabi’a (Oneworld), 141 and (Rainbow Bridge),
111. Smith’s praise of the Pre-Islamic and
early Islamic
Arab woman is part of a polemic against Islam’s subjugation of women. The statement quoted above ends with the
contention, “[The Muslim woman’s] present degraded position is due to Islamic teaching
which has prevailed
since the second
and third centuries of the Muslim era, to keep her in
a position of almost complete subordination to the male sex.” Smith goes on to state, “The ultimate
effect of [the Prophet Muhammad’s] legislation was the degradation and
enslavement of Muslim womanhood throughout the centuries up to the present
time” (156).
52 Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs from the Earliest Times to the Present (London: The Macmillan
Press,
Ltd., 1970 reprint
of 1937 first edition), 237-8.
53 Ibid, 333
54 Nabia Abbott,
Two Queens of Baghdad:
Mother and Wife of Harun al-Rashid (Chicago: University of
Chicago
Press, 1974 reprint
of 1946 first edition), 160 and 240-47.
(The Mid-Morning of Islam,
published in 1933),
who notes that although slave-girls were more highly valued as companions than free women were in the early Abbasid period,
a group of high- class Arab women distinguished themselves in the arts and sciences: “We find that many free women employed themselves in the sciences;
however, the majority
of those who employed
themselves in this way were religiously motivated, such as many female Hadith
scholars and Sufis.”55 In one of the few recent articles
on the subject of free women in early Arabia,
Barbara Freyer Stowasser agrees
that the hara’ir of
the Jahiliyya and Early Islamic
periods were honored and respected, but adds the following
caveat: “But this free . . . Arabian woman was also ideologically ensconced in her tribe, from which she derived her protection and to which she
owed all her public activities.”56
If Rabi’a was a hurra,
as Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
indicate, and if she enjoyed
so much respect from her clan that its leaders wanted to buy her a slave at their own expense, then it
is likely that she was one of the high status hara’ir described by Amin and Stowasser. However, we should keep in mind that although women
of high status in the early Islamic
period were likely to have been wealthy, status
and wealth were not necessarily related in Arab society at that
time. It was possible for a woman of high status to devote herself
to a life of asceticism and poverty and retain or even exceed the influence and authority she would have enjoyed had she
been wealthy. As Barbara Stowasser implies, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya would have been a valued asset for the leaders
of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays because she had attained
a high reputation through
her religious vocation. It would also not be unusual
for a tribally protected woman of high status
to attract male religious figures
such as Sufyan
al-Thawri as her students and associates and still
retain her good reputation. From what early sources tell us about Thawri, it is not likely that he
would have come to a lowly, non-Arab
mawlat for instruction. According
to the Sufi biographer Abu Nu’aym
al-Isfahani (d. 1038-9
CE), Thawri refused
to teach Hadith
to the indigenous Aramaic-speaking
people (al-Nabat) of Iraq or to people of the lower classes. He said, “Real Tradition is sought only among the Arabs. If knowledge is disseminated to the Aramaic-speaking people or the lower classes they will pervert
it (fa-qalabu al-‘ilm).”57
Jahiz provides further confirmation of Rabi’a’s high status in Kitab al-hayawan. In this
work, she is classified as one of the “Ascetic
Ritualists and Renunciants among the Prominent Sunni Women of Asceticism and Leadership” (al-nasikat al-mutazahhidat min al-nisa’ al- madhkurat fi-l-zuhd wa-l-riyasa min nisa’ al-jama’a).58 Three terms in this statement
are significant. The first is riyasa, “leadership.” Rabi’a is mentioned
by Jahiz along
with Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya and Umm al-Darda’, Sunni women ascetics
of Basra who were known for their high standards of morality
and ethics. Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE) came from the same
55
Ahmad Amin, Duha
al-Islam (Cairo: Egyptian National Book Organization, 1997 [reprint of 1933
first edition]), 117. Amin’s positive view of the position of the hurra in
early Abbasid society
differs from that of Margaret
Smith, who contends, “Muslim men preferred slaves as wives, because of the
independent spirit of free Arab women.” Idem,
Rabi’a (Oneworld), 155 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 126
56 Barbara Freyer
Stowasser, “Women and Politics in Late Jahili
and Early Islamic
Arabia: Reading
Behind
Patriarchal History,” in Sonbol, ed., Gulf Women, 76.
57 Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 6, 369; according to Pellat, Nabati was
a pejorative term that was applied both to the
native
residents of Basra and its environs, and to the residents of the Sawad marshlands, the ancestors of today’s Marsh Arabs. See Pellat, Le Mileu Basrien, 22.
58 Jahiz, al-Hayawan, vol. 5, 589; for a discussion of the translation of nasik (fem. nasika) as “ascetic
ritualist” and mutazahhid
as “renunciant,” see Chapter 2.
Arab clan as Rabi’a.
As we shall see in Chapter 2, her claim to leadership was based in part on her
founding a school
of women’s asceticism.59 Umm al-Darda’ (d. 699 CE) was a hurra who
spent much of her life in Syria but died in Basra. Known as “Umm al-Darda’ al-‘Alima (The Authority)”, she was the wife of Abu al-Darda’
(d. 651-52 CE), a noted companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Abu al-Darda’ was a member of the committee appointed
by the Caliph ‘Uthman to compile the official version
of the Qur’an.60 Both Mu’adha
and Umm al-Darda’ had impeccable Arab and Islamic credentials and were exemplars
of piety and self-restraint. Including
Rabi’a among them meant that for Jahiz she shared their status and authority as honored bearers
of tradition. In addition, Rabi’a shared with Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya the vocation of teaching, which also confirmed her leadership in her
community.
c.
Rabi’a the Sunni Muslim
The second important term in Jahiz’s
statement is nisa’ al-jama’a, which literally means, “the women of the majority.” This term refers
to the fact that Jahiz
considered Mu’adha al- ‘Adawiyya, Umm al-Darda’ and Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as Sunni Muslims.
The full title of the Sunni
sect in Islam is Ahl al-Sunna
wa-l-Jama’a, “The People of the Sunna and the Majority.” Including Rabi’a among famous
Sunni women meant that she was not considered a heretic and that
her religious practices
were within the bounds of Sunni piety. In al-Bayan wa-l-tabyin Jahiz distinguishes these three women from other women who were either Kharijites (nisa’ al- khawarij) or extremist Shiites
(nisa’ al-ghaliya). Although these
other women were also pious ascetics, they followed doctrines that were unacceptable to the majority.61 Hence, they could
serve as rhetorical models for Jahiz but they could not serve as religious
or moral exemplars.
The final term of significance in Jahiz’s categorization of Rabi’a is nasika,
“female ascetic ritualist.” This term is further qualified by the word that comes
after it, mutazahhida,
“female renunciant.” The Arabic root n-s-k is ambiguous, and carries meanings
related to both worship and sacrifice.62 With regard to worship, it implies a strict adherence to ritual. For example, the rites of the Hajj pilgrimage are known in Arabic as manasik al-Hajj. This sense of
n-s-k is also found in the Qur’an, where it appears in the verse, “My prayer and my ritual sacrifice (nusuki) and my life and my death
are for God, the Lord of the Worlds” (Qur’an
6:162). This Qur’anic verse
became a sort of motto for early Muslim ascetics, because it alludes
to the self- sacrifice that comes from devoting
oneself God. Both Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya and Umm al-
Darda’ were known for their
self-sacrifice. Mu’adha’s husband
Sila ibn Ushaym
al-‘Adawi (d.
694-5 CE) died as a martyr in the wars of the Umayyad Empire against
the Byzantines. Umm al-
59
The earliest extant notice on Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya is in
Muhammad ibn Sa’d (d. 845 CE), al-Tabaqat
al-kubra, ed. Riyad ‘Abdallah ‘Abd al-Hadi (Beirut:
Dar Ihya’ al-Turath
al-‘Arabi, 1985), vol. 8, 483. This
work portrays Mu’adha as teaching a group of women, who sit in a circle around
her.
60 Dhahabi, Siyar,
vol. 6, 336-39
61 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 194
62 For an excellent discussion of the Qur’anic
meaning of n-s-k see
Rosalind Ward Gwynne,
Logic,
Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning
in the Qur’an; God’s Arguments (London and New York: Routledge
Curzon, 2004), 14-16.
Darda’s husband
Abu al-Darda’ died in an epidemic. Umm al-Darda’ also appears in Islamic
texts as an advocate of the spiritual
benefits of visiting
graveyards.63
Although Rabi’a
was never married
and never lost a loved
one in battle, her celibacy
was regarded as a sacrifice for the sake of God. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur is the earliest writer to testify to
Rabi’a’s celibacy. In Balaghat al-nisa’ she is asked, “Marriage is a requirement of God, the Glorious and Mighty. So why do you not marry?” Rabi’a replies: “The requirement of [devotion
to] God prevents me from fulfilling another
of his requirements.”64 Personal sacrifices such as these would have helped make Rabi’a worthy to receive divine favor and would have legitimized
her status as a model of virtue.
Jahiz further reinforces this image in two passages
in Kitab al- hayawan, where Rabi’a’s scrupulousness and self-discipline are cited as examples of the
steadfastness of human nature.65 Her reputation was so spotless
that no one could imagine
her falling victim to ordinary human weaknesses.
d.
Rabi’a the Eloquent
The final important reference to Rabi’a in Jahiz is
in al-Bayan wa al-tabyin, where she appears in a section
titled “Mention of the Ascetic
Ritualists and Renunciants among the People of Bayan” (dhikr al-nussak
wa-l-zuhhad min ahl al-bayan).66 Here, Rabi’a again
appears in the company of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya and Umm al-Darda’. Also as before,
these three women
are distinguished from Kharijite and Shiite women that are included in the same category. In this
passage, however, the names of these women
precede a list of Men of Bayan that
includes preachers, poets, sages,
leaders, and teachers.
Included among the Men of Bayan are “Sufis
(al- Sufiyya) among the Ascetic
Ritualists who are known for the fineness
of their speech
(mimman yujidu al-kalam).”67 Obviously, the term al-bayan was
important for Jahiz and it is significant that Rabi’a is characterized by it. What did Jahiz mean by bayan and what did it mean to include
Rabi’a in this category?
The term al-bayan as
used by Jahiz means
“demonstrative argument.” For Jahiz, this meaning of bayan is derived
from the Qur’an,
where the term is used to designate God’s proofs for his own existence. Muslim exegetes have also understood al-bayan to mean the ability to come
to a clear understanding of the signs (ayat)
of God as expressed in the Qur’an.
Those who prefer this latter interpretation cite a passage
from Surat al-Rahman (The
Beneficent): “[God] created the human being;
He taught him al-bayan” (Qur’an, 55:34). Others have interpreted this
63
See Abu Muhammad ‘Abdallah ibn Qutayba al-Dinawari (d.
889-90 CE), Kitab ‘Uyun al-akhbar (The
Wellsprings of Knowledge), ed. Muhammad al-Iskandarani (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab
al-‘Arabi, 1999), vols. 1- 2 combined, 737. In this passage a man says to Umm al-Darda’: “Verily in my heart I have found a disease for which there is no cure; I have
found great suffering and have lost all hope.”
She replies, “Go up to the graveyard and contemplate the dead.” This account originally came from Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 3, 81.
64 Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,
Balaghat al-nisa’, 204; the person who transmitted this account was Muhammad
ibn Bayan ibn Humran al-Mada’ini (fl. mid-ninth century
CE). Al-Mada’in (The Cities)
is the Arabic name for the
former Persian capital of Ctesiphon, near Baghdad. Mada’ini’s father was a student of Sufyan al- Thawri. Thus, it is possible that Thawri himself
was the original
source of the account. For information on Mada’ini, see Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 2, 95-9.
65 Jahiz, al-Hayawan, vol. 1, 170 and vol. 6, 52
66 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 194
67 Ibid, 195; the “Sufis”
mentioned in this passage are Kilab, Kulayb,
Hashim al-Awqas, Abu Hashim al-
Sufi and Salih
ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil. They will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
passage to mean that God granted
human beings the power of articulate thought
and speech. For example, the modern Qur’an
commentator Muhammad Asad utilizes this meaning of bayan in his English translation of the Qur’an. In a footnote
to Qur’an, 55:34, he explains
that bayan refers to the ability to clarify God’s teachings
conceptually:
The term al-bayan— denoting “the means whereby a
thing is [intellectually] circumscribed and made clear” (Raghib)— applies to
both thought and speech inasmuch as it comprises the faculty of making a thing
or an idea apparent to the mind and conceptually distinct from other things or
ideas, as well as the power to express this cognition clearly in spoken or
written language (Taj al-‘Arus);
hence, in the above context, [the term means]“articulate thought and speech”,
recalling the “knowledge of all names” (i.e. the faculty of conceptual
thinking) with which man is endowed.68
In the opening chapter of al-Bayan wa-l-tabyin, Jahiz defines al-bayan as “the outward expression of the hidden meaning [of a concept]”
(al-dalala al-zahira ‘ala al-ma’na
al-khafi).69 This is not very different
from Asad’s understanding of the term as “the means whereby
a thing is intellectually circumscribed and made clear.”
According to Jahiz,
the connection between
the concept of bayan and
the clarification of meaning was already known
to the Arabs before the revelation of the Qur’an.
It was also known among
certain groups of non-Arabs. Presumably, these non-Arabs included the Greeks, for Jahiz’s discussion of bayan combines Arabic semantics
with Greek logic.70 Jahiz also defines
bayan as “a collective term for anything
that intuitively (dun al-damir) expresses the obscured meaning
[of a concept] and strips
away the veils so that the
hearer arrives at its true understanding.”71
The notion of bayan for
Jahiz is similar
to the pre-Islamic Stoic concept
of the True. For the Stoics,
the most important
truths are not always discovered through formal arguments, but are sometimes revealed
in flashes of insight.72 Thus, the Stoic sage was both a master
of Truth, which is discovered through
demonstration and argument,
and a master of the True, which is the immediate expression of that which is. According to A. A. Long, “[The Stoic sage] represents an ideal
of language and rationality at one with reality, of truth discovered.”73 For Jahiz, the teacher
of bayan serves the same function. The similarities between
the notion of bayan for Jahiz and the Stoic concepts of Truth and the True are striking and deserve further
investigation.74
For Jahiz, bayan involved more than just the
clarification of meaning. As both a hermeneutical and a rhetorical method, it also combined the arts of interpretation and demonstration. 75 Thus, tabyin,
the act of doing bayan, required
both logical analysis
and rhetorical demonstration. For Jahiz, as for the Stoics, the rhetorical arts of proof and persuasion
68 Muhammad Asad,
The Message of the Qur’an (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, 1980),
824 n. 1.
69 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 42
70 See, for example, the discussion of Jahiz’s hermeneutics in Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought, 104-8.
71 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 42
72 The appropriation of the Stoic approach to knowledge by early Sufis may be reflected in the title of Abu
Nasr al-Sarraj’s Kitab al-luma’
fi-l-tasawwuf (Flashes of Insight into Sufism).
73 A. A. Long, “Dialectic and the Stoic Sage,” in The Stoics, ed. John M. Rist (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press,
1978), 114
74 To cite another example,
the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus defined dialectics as “knowledge of
demonstrative procedures,” much like Jahiz’s bayan. See Ibid, 107.
75 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 43
depended on logic, whose
original meaning in Greek was “persuasion with words.”76 The ability
to persuade others with words was seen both as a mark of eloquence
and as a way of revealing the truth.
Similarly, for Jahiz,
the logical processes used in the arts of demonstration (bayan) and persuasion (tabyin) were two sides of the same coin. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, depended on the use of reason
just as formal
proofs did. In order to be effective, both demonstration and persuasion had to rely on logic and
reason.
For Jahiz, the opposite
of bayan was ‘iyy, “inexpressiveness.” This term connotes
a lack of conceptual ability and was used by Jahiz to characterize the discourse of the person
who is unschooled in logic and rhetoric: “Bayan is sight whereas
‘iyy is blindness, just as knowledge
is sight and ignorance is blindness. Bayan is
a product of knowledge whereas
‘iyy is a product
of ignorance.”77 Jahiz saw bayan as consisting of a three-way
relation in which logic (mantiq),
knowledge (‘ilm), and reason (‘aql)
work together to reveal the truth: “Reason
is the motivator of the spirit
(al-‘aql ra’id al-ruh); knowledge
is the motivator of reason
(al-‘ilm ra’id al-‘aql); bayan is the interpreter of knowledge (al-bayan tarjuman
al-‘ilm).”78 Because bayan is
the “interpreter” of knowledge, it requires the application of knowledge in practice, especially with regard to moral conduct and ethics. “The life of virtue lies in truthfulness; the life of the spirit lies in modesty; the life of wisdom lies in knowledge; the life of knowledge lies in bayan.”79
Thus, for Jahiz to say that Rabi’a was one of the People
of Bayan was highly
significant. It meant that she was endowed with reason and possessed the ability to conceptualize and express
important truths. For Jahiz, one who does not possess
both knowledge and reason cannot practice
bayan. In his works,
Jahiz does not discuss Rabi’a’s
educational background. He does not say
whether she studied under a teacher or whether she was self-educated. However, even if she was self-educated, she clearly accumulated enough knowledge of Qur’an, Hadith,
and other Islamic teachings to comment
authoritatively on them.80
Although Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur does not refer to Rabi’a as a Person of Bayan, the image
that he portrays of her is very similar to that of Jahiz. In Balaghat
al-nisa’, she is portrayed as one
of the “Women of Authoritative Opinion” (dhawat al-ra’y).81 This meant that she was considered qualified to give her own, independent interpretation of Islamic doctrines. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
use of the term ra’y tells us that Rabi’a’s
teachings were not based on tradition
alone but were also based on independent reasoning. Her teachings were considered
authoritative, whether or not they were based
on previous examples
or precedents. This is
probably why Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur refers to her as Rabi’a al-Musma’iyya, “Rabi’a the Woman Who
Must Be Heard.” For those who came to her for doctrinal
and ethical advice,
Rabi’a’s
76
See Peter Kingsley, Reality
(Inverness, California: The Golden Sufi Center, 2003), 141-4. The same sense of logic as deriving from “words” (Gr. logoi)
can be found in the Arabic word for logic, mantiq.
The root of this term is n-t-q,
which means, “to utter, enunciate, or express.”
77 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 43
78 Ibid
79 Ibid
80 Margaret Smith assumed that Rabi’a was self-educated (Idem,
Rabi’a [One World], 71 and [Rainbow
Bridge],
47). As we shall see in Chapters
2 and 3, this is contradicted by evidence (albeit
isolated) that she may have had at least one teacher.
81 See Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, Balaghat al-nisa’, 191. In this work, reports
about Rabi’a appear
in the
chapter
titled, “News of the Women of Authoritative Opinion and Their Eloquent Statements” (Akhbar dhawat al-ra’y wa
az-zarf minhunna).
teachings constituted their
own body of authoritative tradition. For
Jahiz, a “woman who must be heard,” and who embodied her own authoritative
tradition, was a “person of bayan.” For Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, these same attributes epitomized Rabi’a as a “woman of ra’y.”
III.
RABI’A THE TEACHER AND THE CULTURE
OF ADAB
Jahiz’s depiction
of Rabi’a as a Person of Bayan and
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s depiction
of Rabi’a as a Woman of Ra’y are not only important
historically. They are also important
because they are relevant
to an important trope about Rabi’a that is in the earliest
sources. This is the
trope of Rabi’a the Teacher.
Rabi’a the Teacher
and Rabi’a the Ascetic are the most important
tropes that appear in the earliest sources.
These tropes are also important for early Sufism.
In his Book of Sufi Women Sulami relies
on two principal informants for reports about
Rabi’a the Teacher. One is Ja’far ibn Sulayman
al-Dab’i (discussed above),
who is the main source
for Rabi’a’s relationship with Sufyan al-Thawri. The other is Shayban ibn Farrukh al-Ubulli
(d. 850- 1 CE), a respected traditionist in the generation after Dab’i.82 Although
Shayban may have met
Rabi’a in his youth, he most often relates accounts
from others who knew her. For example,
he is the source
for the statement in the epigraph
to this chapter
where Sufyan al-Thawri says about Rabi’a: “Take me to the teacher
(mu’addiba). For when I am apart from her, I can find no solace.”83
Sulami’s chapter
on Rabi’a does not contain
either of the terms bayan or
ra’y. However, he supports Jahiz’s
depiction of Rabi’a
as a Person of Bayan and
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
depiction of Rabi’a as a Woman of Ra’y by illustrating her aphoristic style of teaching
and by confirming that she was a source
of both ethical and spiritual advice for Sufyan
al-Thawri. As portrayed by Sulami, most of Rabi’a’s
teachings are ethical
in nature and contain maxims or
principles. This style of teaching
goes back to classical antiquity. Like Jahiz’s concept
of bayan, it was also associated with the Stoics.
According to Pierre Hadot, Stoic teachers taught
lessons in which their students learned
“a fundamental principle
which is formulable in a few words, and extremely clear and simple,
precisely so that it may remain easily
accessible to the mind, and be
applicable with the sureness and constancy of a reflex.”84
The Stoic model of pedagogy described by Hadot is very similar
to Rabi’a’s approach
to teaching, in which
ethical and religious doctrines are expressed in short, to-the-point sayings. In his recent
book on the history of the aphorism,
James Geary lists five “laws of aphorisms” that can be used to describe
Rabi’a’s teaching method:
(1) they are brief; (2) they are definitive; (3) they
are personal; (4) they have a twist;
(5) they are philosophical in nature.85 Rabi’a’s
teachings, like aphorisms in general, were meant to challenge those
who heard them. Each statement demanded a response. This response could either be the recognition of a shared insight or an
outright rejection. In either case,
however, these statements could not be ignored. “Inside
an
82 Dhahabi, Siyar, vol. 11, 101-3.
Shayban was said to have memorized over 50,000 hadiths.
83 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 76; this is the first account to be transmitted with an isnad in
Sulami’s
chapter on
Rabi’a. When I published Early Sufi Women, it was not yet clear
to me that Shayban ibn Farrukh, which is the name found in the isnad of
this report, and Shayban al-Ubulli were the same person.
84 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life,
84
85 James Geary, The World in a Phrase:
A Brief History of the Aphorism (New
York and London:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005), 8-20.
aphorism,” says Geary, “it is minds
that collide and the new matter that spins out at the speed of thought is that elusive
thing we call wisdom.”86 This dialectical view of the aphorism once again
brings to mind Jahiz’s definition of bayan.
In
Arabic, one of the terms for the type of aphorism used by Rabi’a
in her teachings is hikma (pl. hikam), “wisdom-saying.” Rabi’a’s aphorisms were wisdom teachings. The teachings
associated with Rabi’a in early Islamic literature were lessons in both theoretical and practical wisdom. As we shall see in Chapter 3, many of these sayings
concern the love of God. Along
with celibacy and self-sacrifice, the themes of honesty, wisdom,
and love of God provide
the foundation for the image of Rabi’a the Teacher that was to develop in later periods
of Islamic history.
a.
Rabi’a and Sufyan al-Thawri
When Sufayn al-Thawri said to Ja’far
ibn Sulayman al-Dab’i,
“Take me to the teacher,” the word he used was not ustadha, the modern term for a woman teacher
in Arabic, or mu’allima, “female instructor,” but mu’addiba. The term mu’addib (fem. mu’addiba) has a rich history in Arab
culture and identifies Rabi’a not only as a teacher but more importantly as a personal mentor and specialist in ta’dib,
ethical training and character formation. Both mu’addiba
and ta’dib are
related to the Arabic word adab,
which refers most commonly to literature and the arts. However, in Rabi’a’s time adab also included
everything that was relevant to the formation
of a complete personality, including piety, comportment, and ethics. Before discussing Rabi’a’s depiction by Thawri as a mu’addiba and
the implication of the culture
of adab on her role as a
teacher, it is first necessary to look at the circumstances in which these two famous religious
figures may have come to know each other.
Sufyan al-Thawri was a noted jurist and traditionist, and was
highly respected both inside
and outside of early Sufi circles. An indication of his importance to Sufism can be seen in Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani’s Hilyat al-awliya’ (The
Adornment of the Saints), one of the most important works of Sufi tabaqat literature. In the modern
edition of this work, the chapter on Thawri is nearly
180 pages long. For Isfahani, Thawri is an important link in the chain of authorities that connects the Sufi tradition
to the generation of al-Salaf al-Salih. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that Isfahani
portrays him as the quintessential traditionist. He stands
firmly in the ranks of the
Hadith scholars and is devoted
above all to maintaining the living example
of the Prophet Muhammad. “Apart from fulfilling the requirements of religion,” Isfahani
quotes Thawri as saying, “there is no work more meritorious than seeking knowledge
of traditions . . . We will keep
on learning traditions as long as there are traditions left to learn.”87
However, Sufyan al-Thawri was not just a traditionist. He was also a traditionalist. He rejected religious innovations as heretical and felt that the spiritual life depended on a scrupulous adherence to the example
of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions. For Thawri, tradition was not history to be memorized; rather, it was a set of behaviors to be lived.
The bearer of tradition (hamil al-‘ilm) was not only a Hadith
scholar; he or she was also a person who lived
according to the teachings of Hadith. To put it another way, the bearer of tradition
was an activist
86 Ibid, 16
87 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 6, 363
who assimilated, applied, and disseminated the Prophet’s teachings. Thawri’s motto with regard
to this obligation was “Seek,
Memorize, Act, Disseminate.”88 He was a popular teacher
and attracted large crowds
of both men and women
to his lectures. During these
lectures, he explained the meaning of problematical verses of the Qur’an, discoursed on Hadith, and interpreted points of law.89 The “sound-bite” rhetorical style that Thawri
used in such public
gatherings is preserved in Tafsir Sufyan al-Thawri (The
Qur’an Commentary of Sufyan al- Thawri). This work is less a formal exegesis
of the Qur’an than a collection of comments on Qur’anic terms, phrases, and verses by the Prophet,
his Companions, and their followers. Only seldom does one find the personal opinions
of Thawri himself. 90
When
Thawri’s traditionalism is considered along with his asceticism and
uncompromising moralism,
it becomes clear
that he was one of those whom the historian of Islamic civilization Marshall
Hodgson termed the “Piety-Minded”: “Men and women for whom Islamic piety took precedence over any other interest.”91 In the early Abbasid period,
the Piety- Minded formed,
in Hodgson’s words, an “exclusive and austere group” that demanded
“a rigorous standard of public decency
free of luxurious
display or of other concessions to aristocratic culture that might be regarded, from an egalitarian viewpoint, as degenerate social corruption.”92 Transmitters of Hadith,
the founders of early schools
of Islamic jurisprudence, and ascetics such as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya were members of this group.
Basic to their worldview was the
belief that each generation after
the Prophet Muhammad
was more corrupt
than the last and
that the only way to maintain an Islamic way of life was to hold fast to the example of the Prophet and al-Salaf al-Salih. This was certainly
the case for Thawri, whose stubborn adherence
to principle aroused the anger of the rulers
of the day. By the time he supposedly met Rabi’a he had
become cynical of the trappings
of status and authority. His pessimistic moral vision is expressed
in the following letter, whose contents were passed on by his nephew. Clearly, by this point in
his life Thawri had lost his taste
for activism and wanted nothing
more than to be left alone.
[The Prophet’s generation] had knowledge that we do not have and they had a precedence
that we do not have; so how are we to attain this [status] with our little
knowledge, our little patience, our little support for the good, and with all
the corruption among people and deceit in
the world? So make the example (amr) of the first generation obligatory for yourself and hold fast to it; and
require quietism (khumul), for this
is the time for quietism. Require withdrawal from society (‘uzla) and mix with people very little; for [in
normal times] when people meet each other, some learn from others; but today,
this is gone from us and salvation is in rejecting human company, as you can
see. Beware not to befriend or associate with princes and
their affairs; and beware not to deceive, lest you be told to intercede in
matters of corruption or the redress of damages; for this is one of the ruses
of Iblis (Satan); the corrupt reciters of the Qur’an take this upon themselves
without any objection. It used to be said: “Beware
of the ignorant worshipper and the
88 Ibid, 362
89 Ibid, 357
90 See, for example, Thawri’s
exegesis of Qur’an
2:96: Sufyan via a man (‘an rajulin) from al-Hasan [al-
Basri] on the statement
of God, may He be exalted and glorified: “Our Lord, grant us good in this world
and good in the Hereafter.” [Hasan]
said: “Good sustenance and beneficial work in the world;” (“And good in the
Hereafter”) [meaning] “until Heaven” (referring to verse 2:201). Thawri, Tafsir Sufyan al- Thawri, 65
91 Hodgson, Venture of Islam, vol. 1, 250
92 Ibid, 365
corrupt scholar,
for the strife that they cause is the source of all unrest.” Do not take personal advantage from giving
legal opinions and fatwas or compete
with others over them. Be not as one
who desires to be followed in his teachings, who wishes to have his teachings
disseminated, or to have them heard; instead, leave this to the one who is
suited for it. Beware not to love
personal authority (riyasa), for
authority is more beloved to a man than gold or silver. It is a blind alley (bab ghamid); no one can see his way
through it except one with insight
among the most accomplished of scholars and you will lose yourself in it. So live by your intentions, and know that
anything that brings people close to you will lead to such an affair that a man
will wish he were dead.93
The contents of this letter indicate
that when Thawri
may met Rabi’a he would have been a bitter and disillusioned man, which adds meaning to his statement
that when he was apart from
her, he could find no solace.94 Thawri’s
sojourn in Basra was short and took place only in the last
three years of his life. The Hanbalite prosopographer Ibn al-Jawzi
reports that Thawri
“went into hiding” in Basra during
the reign of the Abbasid
Caliph al-Mahdi.95 Since the caliphate of al- Mahdi started in 775 CE, and Thawri died in 778 CE, this meant that he could not have associated
with Rabi’a for more than three years.
The picture that Ibn al-Jawzi
paints of Thawri
is of a man who constantly fears death or torture, who seems to suffer from either kidney
or bladder cancer, and is prone to weeping.96 In Basra, he appears to have had no home of his own but lived off the
generosity of his students.97 He was also known for constantly imploring God to grant him peace and security.98 In several
accounts, he blames
his misfortunes on his status
as a scholar, saying,
“Were I not so learned,
I would not be so sad.”99 Other authors, including Isfahani, confirm
Thawri’s disillusionment with scholarship. In Hilyat al-awliya’ Thawri complains, “He who increases his knowledge increases his pain.” He also said,
“I wanted to escape from this affair [i.e., the politics of scholarship] completely, so that it would neither
harm me nor benefit me.”100
In the period in which he would have known Rabi’a,
Thawri was apparently
at the end of his rope. Why was this so? Why was he in so much trouble? Although
the sources are not
explicit on this matter, a number of clues can be found.
Most sources indicate
that Thawri’s problems were political, and that his outspokenness only added to his misfortunes. The most likely explanation for his political
problems is that they were due to his Shiite sympathies and his
disapproval of the ethical standards of the Abbasid
regime. Some evidence
for Thawri’s pro-
93 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 6, 376-7
94 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
76
95 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 571; this is confirmed by Ibn al-Nadim. See Abu al-Faraj
Muhammad ibn Abi Ya’qub Ishaq al-Ma’ruf
bi al-Warraq, Kitab al-Fihrist li-l-Nadim, ed. Rida ibn ‘Ali ibn Zayn al-‘Abidin al-Ha’iri
al-Mazandarani Tajaddud (Beirut: Dar al-Masira, 1988), 281.
96 Two accounts
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa claim
that Sufyan al-Thawri urinated blood. Ibn al-Jawzi
attributes this to either
his deep thinking
(“Whenever he started
to think, he urinated blood”)
or his deep sadness (“This man has destroyed his liver from sadness”). See idem, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 570.
97 See, for example, Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 6, 371, where Thawri’s
student ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, in
whose house
Thawri died, finds the words, “Allah will suffice for you” written on his
teacher’s body. Another account (Ibid, 364) reports
that in Basra Thawri had a map (kharita) written on his shirt. This may
have helped him find safe houses in which to hide.
98 The original
source for these accounts is Ibn Sa’d, al-Tabaqat
al-kubra, vols. 5-6, 538-9; see also,
Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 76,
99 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 569
100 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 6, 363
Shiite sympathies can be found in the text of Tafsir Sufyan
al-Thawri. Although this work
contains commentaries by many prominent
Sunni Muslims, a few commentaries come from figures primarily
associated with Shiism,
such as Imam Muhammad al-Baqir
(d. 731 CE). During Thawri’s lifetime, the Abbasids were in a bitter dispute
with the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
If Thawri had truly been a supporter
of the Abbasids as is claimed by Isfahani and other Sufi writers, it would have been unusual
for him to report traditions from a Shiite Imam whose descendants were rivals of the Abbasids. One also gets the impression that the Hanbali scholar
Ibn al-Jawzi’s unflattering portrayal of Sufyan al-Thawri was due to his
mistrust of Thawri’s professed loyalty to Sunni Islam.
The
tenth-century CE bibliographer Muhammad ibn al-Nadim,
who was a Shiite, claimed
that Thawri belonged to the Zaydi sect of Shiism.101 He also reports
that many traditionists of the early Abbasid
era were Zaydi as well.102 Zaydi Shiites came in many varieties and are difficult
to classify doctrinally. The main principle of Zaydism was that the leadership of Islam should
be limited to the descendants of the Prophet’s
daughter Fatima (d. 633 CE) and her husband ‘Ali through either of their sons Hasan
(d. 669 CE) or Husayn
(d. 680 CE). Any descendant of ‘Ali and Fatima
who was learned,
pious, and who raised his banner in defense of justice had the right to
claim leadership over Islam. Zaydi Shiism
was named after Zayd ibn ‘Ali (d. 740 CE), a son of the fourth Shiite Imam ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin (d. 717 CE). Zayn al-‘Abidin was the only male
survivor of the massacre at Karbala in which his father Imam Husayn was killed. He lived quietly in Medina and did not take part in political disputes. However, his son Zayd led an unsuccessful revolt against the Umayyads. Unlike other Shiite groups, the Zaydis did not reject the Caliphs Abu Bakr (d. 634 CE) and ‘Umar (d. 644 CE). Although they felt that ‘Ali was better
suited for leadership, they accepted
the first two Sunni Caliphs
because ‘Ali himself
had chosen not to oppose them.103 In most of their doctrines, the Zaydis were little different
from the Sunnis. In their practice of jurisprudence and adherence to tradition they shared much in common
with the piety-minded Sunni scholars discussed above.
In
the early Abbasid
period, Zaydi Shiism provided an opportunity for the
descendants of Imam Hasan to assert their claims to leadership. The Hasanids claimed
that in coming to power the Abbasids had usurped
the rights of the Prophet’s immediate family. This dispute came to a head
during the Caliphate of Abu Ja’far
al-Mansur (r. 754-775
CE), and led to the arrest of many
Hasanids, including ‘Abdallah
al-Kamil (The Perfect),
who died in prison in 761 CE. Over
the next two years,
al-Mansur was forced
to deal with ‘Abdallah al-Kamil’s sons, who swore
revenge for the death
of their father.
Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (The Pure Soul) revolted against
al- Mansur in Medina and died in 762 CE; his brother Ibrahim
was killed the following year and his other
brother Idris escaped
to Morocco, where he received
the allegiance of the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) people. Idris was eventually killed by assassins
sent by the Caliph Harun al-
Rashid (d. 809 CE).
101 Dodge, Fihrist, vol. 1, 443; see also the Arabic edition of al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist, Tajaddud edition, 226.
102 Ibid, 444, Arabic edition, 226
103 For an introduction to Zaydi doctrines, see William Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of
Islamic
Thought (Oxford: Oneworld
Publications, 2002), 162-6. This work was originally published in 1949 as
Free Will and Predestination in Early
Islam.
Sunni sources that discuss
Sufyan al-Thawri’s career
ignore Ibn al-Nadim’s claim that he was
Zaydi. However, since the Zaydi revolts occurred
near the end of Thawri’s
life, they provide a
likely context for the enmity
of the Abbasid caliphs toward
him. Thawri’s opposition to the Abbasids is unmistakable in the following account, which indicates that he was already under suspicion when he and his colleague, the Syrian jurist
Abu ‘Amr al-Awza’i (d. 773 CE) visited
Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage.
Mufaddal ibn
Muhalhal said: I went to perform the Hajj with Sufyan, and when we went to
Mecca, al-Awza’i joined us. Awza’i
and Sufyan gathered with us in our house. At
that time ‘Abd al-Samad ibn ‘Ali al-Hashimi was responsible for the pilgrimage. He knocked at the door of the house and we said, “Who is it?” “The Emir,” he replied. Then Thawri got up and went into the
antechamber. Awza’i rose and greeted
[the Emir] and ‘Abd al-Samad ibn ‘Ali said to him, “Who are you, oh Shaykh?” He said, “I am Abu ‘Amr al-Awza’i.” “May God make you live long and in peace!”
he said. “Your letters have already
reached us and we have seen to your needs. But
what has Sufyan al-Thawri done?” “He
has gone into the antechamber,” Awza’i replied. Then he went in after him and said, “This man wants only you.” Sufyan came out with a frown on his face
and said, “Peace be upon you. How are you?” ‘Abd al-Samad ibn ‘Ali said to him: “Oh Abu ‘Abdallah, I have
come to you so that I might record the proper rituals [of the
pilgrimage] from you.” Sufyan said to
him: “Why don’t I show you something that is better for you?” “What is that?”
he asked. “Say what you really want.” He said: “What am I to do about the
Commander of the Believers Abu Ja’far [al-Mansur]?” Thawri replied: “If you really desire God, then God will take
care of Abu Ja’far for you.” Then
Awza’i said to him, “Oh Abu ‘Abdallah. These
men are from the tribe of Quraysh and they don’t want anything but praise from
us.” Thawri replied: “Oh Abu ‘Amr. Verily we cannot beat them, so we have to
train them (fa innama nu’addibuhum)
in the way that you see.” Mufaddal said: Then I turned toward Awza’i and he
said to me: “Let’s get out of here. For
I am sure that this one will send someone to put a rope around our necks.” And what
I predicted actually happened.104
Other accounts confirm
that Thawri’s opposition to the Abbasids
caused him to be in danger
of losing his life. Al-Khatib
al-Baghdadi (d. 1071 CE) reports
that in 775 CE the Caliph
al-Mansur resolved to go to Mecca, where Thawri was then living,
and crucify him for sedition. The carpenters had already
started to construct
the platform on which he would be executed.
According to Baghdadi’s account,
when Thawri was called to present himself
to the authorities, his head was in the lap of Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad and his feet were in the lap of Sufyan
ibn ‘Uyayna. “Oh Abu ‘Abdullah,” they said to him, “Fear Allah and do not allow the enemy to deceive us.” Thawri said, “We do not have to worry
about Abu Ja’far
[al-Mansur] ever entering
Mecca.” When Thawri was later told that al-Mansur had died before he could travel to Mecca, he denied
that he had predicted the caliph’s death.105
The person in whose
lap Thawri rested
his head was the famous
ascetic Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad
(d. 807 CE), of the Banu Tamim tribe of Kufa. He was born,
however, in Central
Asia. Most accounts about Fudayl claim that he was a highwayman earlier
in life. Yet even as a
highwayman, he was of a noble disposition. He would not rob a poor person
or a caravan that
contained a woman. After repenting
and becoming an ascetic, he went first to Kufa and then to
104 Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 9, 160 Although Awza’i
eventually made peace with the Abbasids he was closely associated with the last
rulers of the Damascus-based Umayyad dynasty of Caliphs, and lived under
suspicion until the end of his life.
105 Ibid
Mecca, where he spent
the last decades
of his life.106 Although Fudayl
was not a Shiite, his concern for the poor was a hallmark of early Shiism.
Thawri’s attitude toward
the poor was more
equivocal. Despite Isfahani’s claim that he refused to teach Hadith
to Aramaic-speaking Iraqis and the lower classes,
other reports say that he favored the poor over the rich in his teaching
sessions. According to one account
recorded by Isfahani,
a person who attended Thawri’s sessions said: “I have not seen the rich more reviled
than at the session of Sufyan al-Thawri; and I have not seen the poor more glorified than at the session of Sufyan al-Thawri.”107
The person in whose
lap Thawri rested his feet was Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna (d. 814
CE), a mawla of the Banu Hilal tribe of Qays. Ibn ‘Uyayna
was born in Kufa. His father was a client of
the Umayyad governor of Iraq,
and he was forced to move to Mecca after his father’s
patron was overthrown. Of probable Jewish
origin, he was a major
source of Jewish
apocryphal accounts (Isra’iliyyat) that served as supplements to Qur’an and Hadith.108 In the Fihrist, Ibn al-Nadim
identifies Ibn ‘Uyayna
as a Zaydi Shiite along
with Thawri.109 This claim is indirectly supported by his birth in Kufa, which was traditionally a Shiite city, although Sunnis
could be found there
as well. Sufyan al-Thawri was also from Kufa. However,
although Thawri was sympathetic to the Shiites and may have been a Zaydi, he rejected the extremism of many Shiite groups and spoke
out forcefully against
them. At one point, he complained that the Rawafid (Shiite rejecters of the first three Sunni caliphs) had gone so far in their extremism
that he was ashamed even to
mention the virtues of Imam ‘Ali.110
The above biographical
information about Sufyan al-Thawri adds an important level of context to the depictions of his encounters with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. For example, when Thawri
and Dab’i go to Rabi’a in one account related
by Sulami, Thawri
raises his hands
and prays, “Oh God,
grant me safety!” Isfahani corroborates that this was a common
habit of Thawri’s. When he does this in Rabi’a’s
presence, however, she weeps. “What makes you weep?” Thawri
asks. “You make me weep,” she replies. “How?”
he asks. She says, “Have
you not learned
that true safety from the world
is to abandon all that is in it? So how can you ask for such a thing
while you are still soiled with the world?”111 Some readers would probably interpret
this statement as a
comment on the virtues of the ascetic
life. However, we can now see that it may have meant something quite different. Because
of Thawri’s opposition to the Abbasid
regime, he may have
been asking God for safety from those who sought to persecute
him. Thus, Rabi’a may have wept
out of real compassion for Thawri’s misfortunes. Because they were nearly the same age when
they knew each other, Thawri is depicted
as seeking solace from Rabi’a
as he would from a sister, and found comfort
in her concern for his misfortunes. Nevertheless, Rabi’a does not spare
Thawri the “tough love” that he needs.
She informs him that the real tragedy
is that he has
brought his misfortune upon himself.
Even in this desperate situation, he is soiled
with the affairs
106 On Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad
see Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 8, 84-139
and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 237-47. He was one of the most famous
proto-Sufis and can be found in many other sources as well.
107 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 6, 365
108 See Isfahani,
Hilya, vol. 8, 270-318
and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 231-7.
See also, Morony,
Iraq after the Muslim
Conquest, 81, and Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad, 75-6.
109 Dodge, The Fihrist
of al-Nadim, vol. 1, 443; Tajaddud Arabic edition 226
110 Dhahabi, Siyar,
vol. 7, 253
111 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
76
of
the world. His political activism
and confrontational attitude
have made him vulnerable to suffering, despite his denial of the world through
his asceticism and high ethical
standards.
In another account reported
by Sulami, Thawri comes to Rabi’a and asks, “What is the best way for
the slave to come close to God, the Glorious
and Mighty?” Rabi’a weeps again and replies: “How can the likes of me be asked such a thing? The best way for the slave to come close to God Most
High is for him to know that he must not love anything in this world or the Hereafter other than God.”112 In another account,
Thawri comes to Rabi’a and complains, “How sorrowful I am!” Again, Rabi’a
cures his self-pity by rebuking him: “Do not lie!” she says. “Say instead:
‘How little is my sorrow!’
If you were truly sorrowful, life itself would not please you.” “My sorrow,” explains Rabi’a, “is not from feeling sad. Rather, my sorrow is from not feeling sad enough.”113
Some of Rabi’a’s statements in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women may be read as
covert or indirect moral lessons for Thawri. In one such account, she comes across
the body of a man who
has been crucified for immorality. She says to the corpse:
“Upon my father! With that tongue you used to say: ‘There is no god but God!’”
A narrator named
“Sufyan” (it is unclear whether Sufyan al-Thawri or Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna
is intended) adds, “Then she mentioned the good works that the man had done.”114 This lesson may have been meant as a consolation for Thawri. In effect, Rabi’a is saying
that no matter
how bad one’s end may be, or for what crime one is
convicted, a person’s good works
will be remembered after him. It also recounts the popular
belief among Muslims that the mere act of saying
the Shahada, “There is no god but God,” leaves
the door open to salvation, even for the worst criminals.
Sulami relates a similar
account about Rabi’a
and Salih al-Murri
(d. 792-93 CE), another
ascetic from Basra.115 In this story, Murri comes to Rabi’a and paraphrases a famous saying of
Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:7-8):
“He who persists in knocking
at the door will have it opened for him.” Rabi’a replies: “The door is already open. But the question is, who
wishes to enter it?”116 In another version
of this account
that appears in Sulami’s Kitab ‘uyub al-
nafs wa mudawatiha (Book of the Faults
of the Soul and Their Cures), Rabi’a
is much harsher with Murri: “The door, oh worthless one (ya battal), is open, but you run away from it! How will
you arrive at a goal whose path has been laid out for you from the first step? How is the slave to
save himself from the faults of his soul when his own desires have caused them? And how is one to save himself
from following his desires when he cannot
avoid acting in a contradictory manner?”117 Rabi’a’s
message is clear: The door to your salvation is open. If you really
want to enter, you know what
to do.
b.
Ta’dib: The Art of Character
Formation
112 Ibid, 80
113 Ibid
114 Ibid
115 On Salih al-Murri see Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 6, 165-77.
On his knowledge of the Qur’an see ‘Abdullah
ibn Mubarak
al-Marwazi (d. 797 CE), Kitab al-zuhd
wa yalihi Kitab al-raqa’iq, ed. Habib al-Rahman al- ‘Azmi (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, n.d.). Ibn Mubarak
studied briefly under Sufyan al-Thawri and transmitted many of Thawri’s exegetical comments on the
Qur’an.
116 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
80
117 Pourjavady, Majmu’at Sulami (Kitab ‘uyub al-nafs), 72-73
The style of teaching
that Rabi’a used with Sufyan
al-Thawri and Salih
al-Murri was called ta’dib: literally, “training.” This concept
is also used by Thawri
in the account from Tarikh
Baghdad where he explains to the jurist Awza’i how he intended
to train the Abbasids by putting
them in their place: “Verily we cannot beat them, so we have to train them”
(fa innama nu’addibuhum). The teacher
of ta’dib was a mu’addib, literally, “a trainer.” In the Umayyad
and early Abbasid periods,
this type of teaching supplemented other, more formal
types of education. Sometimes, the term ta’dib was
used to describe
the type of training that comes from experience:
what today would be called
“the school of hard knocks.”
This is illustrated in the statement used in the second epigraph of this chapter,
where the Abbasid
Caliph Harun al-Rashid
remarks: “He who is not educated
by virtue (man lam yu’addibhu al-jamil) is reformed by tribulations.”118 It can also be observed
in the Arab saying, “Time suffices as a teacher;
reason suffices as a guide (kafa bi-l-dahri mu’addiban wa bi-l-‘aqli murshidan).”119 The key verb in these
aphorisms, addaba, is an Arabic cognate with mu’addiba, the word used by Thawri to describe
Rabi’a the Teacher. Rabi’a al-Mu’addiba is thus a female trainer,
a woman who teaches adab. In the
Umayyad and Abbasid periods, adab stood for an entire
culture of conduct
that combined Arab, Persian, and Greek ideals.120
According to the lexicographer E. W. Lane,
the basic meaning
of adab is “discipline of the mind and good qualities and attributes of the mind or soul.”
Adab “invites men to the
acquisition of praiseworthy qualities and dispositions, and forbids them from acquiring
such as are evil.”121 Under the influence
of the courtier Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (d. 759 CE), who wrote two
treatises on adab, the term eventually came to be understood as an ethic
of self-presentation, which included
the virtues of eloquence, courtesy,
prudence, and self-restraint.122 For Ibn al- Muqaffa’, adab stood
more for the character that one earned and the honor that one achieved
than the position into which one was born. “If people
honor you for money or power, it should not please you,” he said, “for honor can be lost with the loss of these things. Instead,
it should please you only if they honor you for religion
or for adab.”123 In his books on adab and
advice to rulers, Ibn al-Muqaffa’ created a model of self-presentation that sought to combine the best
characteristics of Persian
aristocratic culture and the more individualistic culture
of the Arabs. In subsequent generations, books on various
types of adab were
written following Ibn al-Muqaffa’s
model: there was an adab for
princes, an adab for
court officials, an adab of literature, and even
118 Abu ‘Umar Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Rabbih
al-Andalusi (d. 940 CE), Kitab al-‘iqd
al-farid
(The Unique Necklace), ed. Ibrahim al-Abyari (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab
al-‘Arabi, 1990), vol. 5, 61
119 Ibid, vol. 2, 237
120 In The Attainment of Happiness (Tahsil al-Sa’ada) the philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi (d. 950 CE) uses
the term ta’dib to describe the training of the
Young Guardians in Plato’s Republic. Here the term also means “character formation” and is contrasted with “instruction” (ta’lim). According
to Joshua Parens,
for Farabi, “the hallmark of ta’dib
is ‘habituation’ (ta’awwud).’ See Joshua Parens, An islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Itroducing Alfarabi (Albany,
New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), 32-33.
121 Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, vol. 1, 35
122 See Michael
Cooperson, “Ibn al-Muqaffa’,” Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 311: Arabic
Literary Culture,
500-925, 156-8.
123 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, al-‘Iqd al-farid, vol. 2, 412
an
adab for seekers on the Sufi path (adab al-sufiyya). The Persian Sufi Sulami, who created the trope of Rabi’a as the quintessential Sufi woman, wrote one of the first Sufi treatises
on adab.124
In his discussion of adab in The Venture
of Islam, Marshall
Hodgson stresses the non-
Arab roots of the culture
of the adib, the courtly practitioner of adab.
Hodgson viewed adab as
a form of secular
culture; it drew heavily on Pre-Islamic models of conduct
that came from Greek
philosophy and Sasanian Persian aristocratic traditions. According to Hodgson,
the secular culture of the adib was
opposed by the Piety-Minded, who “looked to the moralistic and populistic strains in the Irano-Semitic background” for their
models of behavior.125 For Hodgson,
the ideals of religion and adab stood at opposite poles.
Religion represented the moralism of Islam’s Semitic origins, whereas
adab represented the urbane and literate
traditions of non- Semitic peoples, such as Greeks, Persians, and Indians.
Hodgson’s view of adab works only if one conceives of adab in terms of high culture and
belles-lettres. Writers such as Ibn
al-Muqaffa’, who translated Indian works into Arabic, or Jahiz, who was a master stylist
and was strongly
influenced by court
fashions, fit such a pattern.
However, Hodgson’s emphasis on the non-Arab origins
of adab caused him to overlook
the important role that adab played in Arab society,
both before and after the coming of Islam. Most importantly, his emphasis on the secular
nature of adab culture caused him to ignore the importance of this concept
among the Piety-Minded. Sources such as Isfahani’s Hilyat al-awliya’ and other early works on the ascetic tradition of Islam reveal
that the Piety-Minded had their own version of adab culture. The trope of Rabi’a the Teacher, which comes from the culture
of the Piety-Minded, draws heavily on Arab and pietistic notions
of adab. The adab of
the religious teacher-trainer (mu’addib) may not have been the same as the adab of
the litterateur (adib) as Hodgson imagined, but it was still part of the culture
of adab. A more accurate picture of adab in the late Umayyad and early Abbasid
periods emerges when one realizes
that the language
of adab was multivalent: a single term could have different meanings. While both the courtier and the
teacher-trainer cultivated adab through the pedagogy of ta’dib,
the type of adab that was taught
in each case was different.
c.
Adab
and the Virtues: Muruwwa and Hilm
In Pre-Islamic Arabia, adab was
associated with a concept of virtue known
as muruwwa.126 In Arabic,
muruwwa means “manliness;” hence, the term reflected a notion of virtue
that was based on the ideal behavior
of the mature male. Pre-Islamic muruwwa put
a high value on the virtues
of courage and loyalty, particularly toward one’s clan or kin group.
However, these virtues were not to be expressed
rashly. Instead, they needed to be tempered
with the good judgment
that came from maturity and experience. The key to good judgment was sound reason (‘aql).
In the words of the Prophet Muhammad: “He who does not have adab does
not have reason (‘aql).”127 The set of virtues associated with muruwwa and the use of sound
124 See Sulami,
Jawami’ adab al-sufiyya, ed. Nasrollah Pourjavady (op. cit.).
125 Hodgson, Venture of Islam, vol. 1, 451-2
126 On the concept of muruwwa in Pre-Islamic Arabia, see Reynold
A. Nicholson, A Literary
History of the
Arabs (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969 [reprint of 1914 first edition]), 82-100.
This term may also be
transliterated as muru’a.
127 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, al-‘Iqd al-farid, vol. 2, 415
reason was expressed by the Arabic term hilm. The halim,
the possessor of hilm,
was a person who exercised good judgment, had a calm and balanced
mind, and practiced self-restraint. The
opposite of the halim was the jahil,
the ignorant and impetuous person,
who was driven
by passion and was heedless of the consequences of his behavior.128
In the early Islamic
period, the moral
concepts of adab, muruwwa, and hilm were
assimilated to the Islamic religious concept of faith (iman).
For the Japanese scholar of Islam
Toshihiko Isutzu, hilm was
so important to the Islamic
understanding of morality
that he regarded the term as “the pre-religious, pre-Islamic form of
the concept of islam itself.”129 Although
it connoted an ethic of restraint,
hilm was not a passive quality.
In Isutzu’s words: “There can be no hilm where
there is no power. It is essentially a quality of a man who governs
and dominates others, and not of those who are governed
and dominated.”130 In the Qur’an,
God is called al- Halim. This attribute means
that God, although
He is all-powerful, restrains Himself
from acting as a tyrant. In most places
where this term is used in the Qur’an, the attribute al-Halim is accompanied by the attribute
al-Ghafur, “The Forgiving” (cf. Qur’an, 2:225).
According to the Andalusian litterateur Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (d. 940 CE), the person of faith (mu’min)
is also a person
of hilm: “Three things
complete one’s faith.
When one is angry, his anger does not take him
beyond the bounds of the truth. When he is pleased, his pleasure does not lead him toward oppression or immorality. When he has power he does not try to possess that which does not
belong to him.”131 What is true of hilm is
similarly true of muruwwa. Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih
quotes the Prophet Muhammad
as saying, “There is no religion (din) without
muruwwa.”132
Virtues such as muruwwa and hilm were not just individual qualities.
They were also
seen as hereditary possessions that were acquired
from one’s ancestors, and certain tribes
or clans were known for specific
virtues. Among some groups of Arabs, such as the Pre-Islamic Christian town-dwellers of Hira in Iraq, the store of virtues might include piety
and asceticism. The Christian Arabs of Hira were known collectively as al-‘Ibad, literally “Slaves of God,” and distinguished themselves by producing
the oldest recorded
poetry in the Arabic language.133 Rabi’a’s clan, ‘Adi ibn Qays, were known for their asceticism as far back as the time of the
Prophet Muhammad. In Sifat al-safwa, Ibn al-Jawzi reports
that a contemporary of Rabi’a,
the Basra traditionist Abu Sawwar al-‘Adawi, boasted: “The people
of Banu ‘Adi are the most
rigorous ascetics in this land! Here is Abu al-Sahba’ [Sila ibn Ushaym
al-‘Adawi], who did not
sleep during the night and did not eat during the day, and here is his wife Mu’adha
bint ‘Abdallah [al-‘Adawiyya], who did not look up at the sky for forty years!”134 This account implies
that the historical Rabi’a
would have been honored among her clan not only because of her personal
piety and asceticism, but also because
her religious practices conformed to a clan-based tradition
of
128 Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran:
Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung (Salem, New
Hampshire: Ayer Company, 1987), 205; this work is a reprint of the 1964 first
edition (Tokyo: The Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies).
129 Ibid, 204
130 Ibid, 207
131 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, al-‘Iqd al-Farid, vol. 2, 264
132 Ibid, 276; Ibn Qutayba,
‘Uyun al-akhbar, vol. 2, 340, attributes this saying to al-Hasan al-Basri.
133 Nicholson, Literary History
of the Arabs, 138
134 Ibn al-Jawzi,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 22; this passage is translated in the Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi
Women, 264.
asceticism. Paradoxically, her celibacy and asceticism, the characteristics that set her apart from other women of her day, were also “traditional” because they followed
long-standing customs among her own people.
Some clans produced
kings, some clans produced poets;
the clan of Banu
‘Adi ibn Qays produced ascetics.
This last point is an important reminder of the cultural
differences that separated the late
Umayyad and early Abbasid periods
in which Rabi’a lived, from later eras of Islamic
history.
This is especially important for the study
of Sufism, because
later Sufi writers
tended to project the terminology and doctrinal
usage of their
own times back onto those,
such as Rabi’a, who were seen
as the founding figures of the Sufi tradition. It is also important to remember that Rabi’a
lived in a time when the term, “Sufism” (tasawwuf) was little known
and when important Sufi technical terms, such as al-tariqa (the
way) were still
unknown (see Chapter
4). Perhaps the clearest example of this difference can be found
in the popularity of the term muruwwa in
early Sufism. Within two centuries after Rabi’a’s death, this ethical
term of Arab origin would be
replaced by futuwwa, an Arabized concept
of Persian origin.
Although the Arabic term fata
(“youth”) was often
used in speech
and appears once in the Qur’an (Qur’an,
21:60), the technical term futuwwa appears to be an Arabized version
of the Persian javanmardi, “young manliness.”
The introduction of the term, futuwwa, paralleled the growing influence of Persian culture in Abbasid society. Its adoption by Sufis seems
to have symbolized the replacement of an Arab cultural ethic that saw virtue embodied
in maturity and the wisdom
of experience with a Persian cultural ethic that saw virtue embodied
in the ideals of youth and noble
innocence. Although Sufi traditions trace the use of the term futuwwa as
far back as the Shiite
Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq
(d. 765 CE), it did not come into historical notice
until the ninth
century CE and it was not used frequently until the tenth
century CE. 135 It did not become firmly
established as a Sufi concept until after the publication of Sulami’s Kitab al-futuwwa at the end of the tenth century.136
d.
Rabi’a’s Way of Ta’dib
In order to view the figure
of Rabi’a the Teacher in the context
of her own time and place, we must be careful not to project
later Sufi terms
and practices back onto the past. Instead, we should view the teachings attributed to Rabi’a in the context
of the culture of adab that
existed in the late Umayyad and early Abbasid
periods. This culture
retained many of the notions
of Pre- Islamic Arabia,
including the notion
that the purpose
of adab was to build character. This view
of adab as a means of character development was prominent among the Umayyads,
who sent their princes
to the Syrian Desert for moral and physical training. In the second half of the
Umayyad period, from the caliphate
of ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (d. 705 CE), the mu’addib or
personal mentor became
a common figure
at the Umayyad court. According
to Philip Hitti,
the traits that the Umayyads sought to acquire
from ta’dib were courage,
endurance, respect for the
135 On the origins
of futuwwa, see Muhammad
Ja’far Mahjub, “Chivalry and Early Persian
Sufism,” in Classical Persian Sufism: from its Origins
to Rumi, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London and New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi
Publications, 1993), 549-81.
136 For an English translation of this work, see Muhammad
ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami, The Book of Sufi
Chivalry: Lessons to a Son of the Moment, Futuwwah,
trans. Sheikh Tosun
Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti (New York: Inner Traditions
International, 1983).
rights of neighbors, manly virtue (muruwwa), generosity, hospitality, respect for women, and the
fulfillment of promises.137
Among the Piety-Minded, the religious aspect
of adab was epitomized in a statement that has often been attributed to the Prophet
Muhammad, although it does not appear in the six canonical Hadith collections: “Verily
Allah has trained
me and has ennobled my character” (inna
Allaha addabani fa ahsana ta’dibi).138 Sulami cites as a source for this saying not the Prophet
but the early Sufi Shaqiq al-Balkhi (d. 810 CE), a contemporary of Rabi’a and a noted
ascetic of Afghanistan and Central Asia.139 For specialists in ta’dib such as Rabi’a and Shaqiq, the Prophet
was a “beautiful example” (uswa hasana, Qur’an, 33:61) whose
adab provided a model
for Muslims to follow. The early Sufi treatise Kitab al-luma’
by Abu Nasr al-Sarraj contains
a chapter titled, “The Book of the Example
and Emulation of the Messenger of God” (Kitab al- uswa
wa-l-iqtida’ bi-Rasul Allah). In this chapter,
Sarraj encourages Sufis to follow
the Sunna of the Prophet as completely as possible, taking
special care to acquire the Prophet’s moral and
spiritual states and inner consciousness.140 It was necessary for Sufis to pattern their conduct on the
adab of the Prophet
because, in the words of a famous
hadith from Sahih Muslim, “Verily the morals of the Messenger
of God were of the Qur’an; he approved what it approved
and he disliked what it
disliked.”141
Two
centuries after Sarraj, the elements
of the Prophet’s adab were summarized by the
Andalusian jurist
Qadi ‘Iyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi (d. 1150 CE) in Kitab al-Shifa’
bi-ta’rif huquq al-Mustafa (The
Antidote in Knowing
the Rights of the Chosen
One). The author
of this work was one of the foremost
traditionists of the Islamic West and Chief Justice (qadi al-jama’a) of the cities of Granada in Spain and Sabta (Ceuta)
in Morocco. His goal in writing this book was to
restore ethical values
by reorienting believers
toward the practices
of the early Muslim
community. Thus, this work provides
important details about
the qualities and traits that were
prized among early Muslims, including
those in Rabi’a’s
time. For Qadi ‘Iyad, the chief
significance of the Prophet’s example—
apart from his purely religious role— was in the
excellence of his character (husn al-khuluq). This was reflected
in his “equanimity in strength
of spirit” (al-i’tidal
fi quwwat al-nafs), a trait that was seen as fundamental to the concept
of muruwwa. The practical wisdom
(hilm) of the Prophet
was revealed in his moderation (tawassut) and in his ability
to prioritize issues
and put them in their proper place. Other traits that made the
adab of the Prophet a good example
for Muslims also resulted from muruwwa. These included
forbearance, generosity, bravery,
fellowship, sympathy, humility,
dignity, justice, and the
renunciation of worldly
possessions. Assimilating these Prophetic traits,
said Qadi ‘Iyad, promises “eternal happiness to the person
who patterns his conduct on them and makes them his
own, for they are a portion of prophethood.”142
137 Hitti, History of the Arabs, 253
138 Sulami, Jawami’ adab al-sufiyya, 343; another version
of this hadith
states: “Verily Allah has trained
me and has ennobled my adab”
(inna Allaha addabani fa ahsana adabi).
139 On Shaqiq
al-Balkhi see Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 8, 58-73.
140 Sarraj, Kitab al-luma’, 93-5
141 See Sahih Muslim, Bab al-Musafirin, 139 for the first half of this hadith. Both the first and second
portions
of the hadith can be found in al-Qadi Abu al-Fadl ‘Iyad al-Yahsubi, al-Shifa bi-ta’rif huquq al- Mustafa (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1979), vol. 1, 96.
142 Ibid, 96-106
Acquiring virtues
such as these
was the goal of the training that Rabi’a would
have imparted to her students such as Sufyan
al-Thawri. For the Piety-Minded, adab was
built on religiously based
moral qualities that when properly
applied gave rise to the ethical maturity
of muruwwa. The assimilation of the virtue of muruwwa led
to hilm, the combination of justice,
forbearance, and dignity
that epitomized the mature Islamic
personality. The final goal of ta’dib as character formation was the attainment of wisdom (hikma), which was expressed through the behaviors
associated with muruwwa and hilm.
The view of the way of ta’dib that is attributed to Rabi’a
agrees with Toshihiko Isutzu’s view of ethics
in early Islamic
society. For Isutzu,
this method of training “has in itself
a latent possibility of being developed
and elaborated philosophically into something close to the Hellenistic view of ‘non-perturbation’ based on the cultivation of autarchy” (i.e.,
a fully independent self).143 Much like the teachings of the Hellenistic philosophers, the way of ta’dib
that Rabi’a used to train
her students was a complete
method of character formation. It was based
on a regime of disciplines that led to the cultivation of religious and social virtues,
moral uprightness, and wisdom.
In later generations, Sufis would call such a regime al-Tariqa, “the Way.” However, for Rabi’a,
who lived before
the development of institutional Sufism,
the term tariqa in this sense was unknown. For Rabi’a, her ta’dib was her tariqa.
In other words, the
ta’dib
taught by Rabi’a
the Teacher constituted the Tariqa before the Sufi tariqa.
The individual lessons of Rabi’a’s way of ta’dib were
made up of masa’il (sing.
mas’ala), literally “topics” or teachings. This is what Sulami referred
to when he stated that Sufyan al-Thawri sought masa’il from
Rabi’a.144 These masa’il were
lessons in life,
ethics, and spirituality that Thawri learned
from Rabi’a in the form of aphorisms and other wisdom teachings. Numerous accounts from early Islam confirm that the term mas’ala commonly bore a
pedagogical meaning and that it was often used to designate lessons
or exercises of a moral or
ethical nature. In Hilyat al-awliya’, the teachings of Rabi’a’s contemporary Shaqiq al-Balkhi are also
referred to as masa’il. In the pedagogical terminology of early Islam, masa’il were
stepping- stones or stages on the path of ethical and spiritual development. Eventually, Sufis would use the term
maqam (“stage” or “station”) to designate such levels of formation. In Rabi’a’s time, however, the stages of ta’dib were expressed
conceptually as masa’il. Shaqiq al-Balkhi
summarizes the process of ethical
formation as a five-step program
of masa’il. He said, “One
should not sit at the feet of any person
of knowledge unless
he teaches him how to advance from five masa’il to five masa’il:
1.
From
doubt to certainty
(min al-shakk ila al-yaqin);
2.
From
enmity to constructive advice (min al-‘adawa ila-l-nasiha);
3.
From
arrogance to humility
(min al-kibr ila-l-tawadu’);
4.
From
vanity to sincerity
(min al-riya’ ila al-ikhlas);
143 Isutzu, God and Man in the Koran, 211; Rabi’a’s concept
of the independent, spiritually mature
self will be discussed in Chapter 4.
144 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 74-5; In the Introduction to my edition
of this work, I stressed
the
jurisprudential meaning of the term
masa’il
and characterized Rabi’a
as teaching fiqh al-mu’amalat (the jurisprudence of interpersonal behavior), 63. I have now revised my opinion and believe
that the term mas’ala is best
understood in a pedagogical sense, as referring to the individual elements of
Rabi’a’s teachings.
5.
From
desire to awe (min al-raghba ila-l-rahba).”145
As
a program of Islamic character
development, the way of
ta’dib
combined the wisdom tradition of Pre-Islamic Arabia
with the spirituality of the Qur’an
and the Sunna.
Culturally, the pedagogical method
of early Muslim
religious teachers such as Rabi’a
and Shaqiq al-Balkhi was part of a Pan-Mediterranean tradition
that put Islam in dialogue
with early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, and even (as we have already seen) with Greek philosophy. Early Muslim
writers were aware of the similarities among
these traditions. For example, Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih,
an Andalusian litterateur who lived a century and a half after Rabi’a,
associates ta’dib with the self-
education of Jesus: “It was asked of Jesus the Son of Mary, ‘Who trained you (man addabaka)?’
‘No one trained me.’ Jesus
answered. ‘Rather, I saw that ignorance (jahl) was bad so I avoided it.’”146 In another aphorism,
Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih cites the Greek philosopher Diogenes (Ar.
Dijanis). “Diogenes was asked, ‘What traits are most useful at the end of one’s life?’ He replied: ‘Faith in God, the Glorious and Mighty, the righteousness of one’s parents,
love for the scholars,
and the acceptance of adab.’”147
Despite the anachronistic content
of this saying,
Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s
citation of Diogenes (d. 323 BCE) is important because
this famous Cynic philosopher was reputed to be an originator
of the aphoristic style of teaching used by Rabi’a
and other early
Sufis.148 The Greek
word for “training” was askesis. Likewise, the Arabic word ta’dib also
meant “training.” For philosophers
such as the Stoics, who followed a disciplined regime
of character formation, philosophy was a form
of askesis, a method
of training for a complete
way of life. Pierre Hadot summarizes the philosophical view of askesis in
a way that closely resembles the notion of ta’dib as understood by Rabi’a and her contemporaries: “In their view, philosophy did not consist
in teaching an abstract theory— much less in the exegesis of texts— but rather in the art of living.
It is a concrete attitude and determinate life-style, which engages the whole of existence.”149
The Stoic philosopher Musonius
Rufus (d.101-2 CE) defined askesis as
“the learning of the
lessons appropriate to each and every excellence; practical training must follow invariably, if indeed from the lessons we have learned
we hope to derive any benefit.”150 A similar
view of pedagogy characterized the late Umayyad
and early Abbasid
approach to ta’dib as
character development. In his treatise
On Askesis, Musonius describes
the character traits of the fully
trained Stoic in terms that bring to mind the early Islamic
notions of adab, hilm, and muruwwa. These traits included moderation, temperance, self-control, and detachment from worldly affairs. Much as Rabi’a the Teacher might
have stated about ta’dib,
Musonius described askesis as
“a mental and moral discipline, a matter of knowledge and ethics that consists in training the mind to discern true good from true evil and to act accordingly.”151
145 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 8, 72
146 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, al-‘Iqd al-Farid, vol. 2, 438
147 Ibid, 415
148 Geary, The World
in a Phrase, 52-5
149 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life,
83
150 James A. Francis, Subversive Virtue:
Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World
(University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1995), 11
151 Ibid, 13
In Hilyat al-awliya’ Shaqiq al-Balkhi states, “Befriend people
the same way that
you befriend fire. Take what benefits
you from them, but beware
lest you get burned by them.”152
Diogenes the Cynic could have made the same comment.
In Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women
Rabi’a says, “I ask God’s
forgiveness for my lack of truthfulness in saying, ‘I ask God’s forgiveness.’”153 The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (d. ca. 135 CE) could have said the same
thing.154 Many other
examples can be found to suggest that the aphoristic style of early
Muslim sages such as Rabi’a and Shaqiq was the product
of a pedagogical culture that shared much in
common with that of their Greek and Roman predecessors. This has long been known to be the
case for late antique Christianity and Judaism, so why should it not be the case for early Islam as
well? The similarities between the pedagogical methods
of askesis and ta’dib provide an important bridge between
the cultures of antiquity and early Islam. In historiographical terms, this hypothesis supports Garth
Fowden’s contention that the end of late antiquity should
not be equated with the coming
of Islam. Instead,
late antiquity should
be seen to last at least through the early Abbasid period
of Islamic history.
As Fowden states,
“Although Islam brought
new wine, the universality of Muhammad’s message
ensured that this fresh vintage
could be poured even into wineskins as old as Jerusalem, and rejuvenate them.”155 As far as ta’dib and askesis are concerned, one need only replace the “Jerusalem wineskins” of Fowden’s metaphor
with other “wineskins” from the philosophical centers of Gondeshapur in Iraq or Alexandria in Egypt.
Fowden’s approach
to the historiography of late antiquity has important implications for the history of Sufism and its relationship to pre-Islamic civilizations. Rather than seeing
Sufism as unique to Islam, or sharing elements
with only the monotheistic religious traditions, his
approach opens the door to new comparisons between the traditions of early Sufism
and the practices of Classical philosophies such as Stoicism
and Platonism. However,
just because some pagan philosophers or Hellenized Christians practiced a type of spiritual training
that was similar to the ta’dib of early Muslim sages
like Rabi’a, this does not necessarily mean that early Muslims
copied pagan or Christian models
of spirituality as Margaret Smith and others
have supposed. 156
Such similarities do not prove that early Muslims founded
their practices of character formation on exactly the same principles as their late antique predecessors. However, the parallels between
152 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 8, 73
153 See Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 78. The earliest
example of this statement is by the Sufi theorist
Abu
Bakr al-Kalabadhi
(d. 990 CE). See Abu Bakr Muhammad
ibn Ishaq al-Bukhari al-Kalabadhi, Kitab
al- ta’arruf li-madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf, ed. A. J. Arberry (Cairo:
Maktabat al-Khanji, 1994 [reprint of 1933
first edition]), 64.
154 Epictetus is famous for the saying,
“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” See Geary, The World in a Phrase, 62-5.
155 Garth Fowden,
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
(Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 143; Fowden dates the end of late antiquity and the
beginning of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the tenth
century CE, when the Abbasid
Empire started to decline and a commonwealth of independent states
and independent interpretations of Islam put an end to the political ideal of
Islamic universalism.
156 “It was inevitable that Christianity should have its effect upon the religious development of Islam,
and
Christian
elements were to be found even in the time of Muhammad, and in the Qur’an
itself, as well as in the Traditions, and in the rules for religious
observances accepted by the orthodox as having the authority, or being in
accordance with the precepts, of the founder of their faith.” Margaret Smith, Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East (Whitefish, Montana:
Kessinger Publishing Company,
n. d. [reprint of 1931 first edition]), 125
certain late antique and early Muslim
practices are striking
and should be taken seriously. In light of these developments, it is important to ask the following questions: If the Umayyad
and early Abbasid concept
of ta’dib is equivalent to the Hellenistic notion of askesis, how might this affect
our thinking about the ascetic
tradition of Islam? How might Fowden’s attempt
to extend the world
of late antiquity
into the Abbasid
period affect our understanding of Rabi’a the Ascetic?
These questions will be explored in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 2 RABI’A THE ASCETIC
“I am ashamed to ask for the world
from the one who owns the world.
So how can I ask for the world
from one who does not own it?”
—
Rabi’a in Jahiz, al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin and
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, Balaghat al-Nisa’
Rabi’a
was asked, “Have you ever performed any work (‘amal) that you knew would be accepted by God?”
She replied, “If there were anything, it would be my fear that my works would
be held against me.”
—
Rabi’a in Jahiz, al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin
For most Muslims today, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is a lover of God. In the Sufi tradition,
she is famous as the founder of Islamic Love mysticism. However,
as we have seen in the last chapter, the Rabi’a of the earliest
narratives is not the same as the Rabi’a of later narratives. We shall see in Chapter 3 how the trope of Rabi’a the Lover developed from a single quote by Muhasibi into a theology
of Love. Eventually, it stood for a romantic
legend that had little to do
with the historical Rabi’a. In fact, the trope of Rabi’a the Lover does not become important in the
Rabi’a narratives until
200 years after
her death. As we shall see in Chapter 3, this was due to the
Sufi theorist Abu Talib al-Makki
(d. 996 CE) who made Rabi’a the Lover a central figure
in his doctrinal work Qut al-qulub (The
Sustenance of Hearts).
By contrast, for Jahiz, Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, and early prosopographers such as Burjulani, Rabi’a was an ascetic. Jahiz describes her in Kitab al-hayawan as
one of the “ascetic ritualists and renunciants among the Sunni women of asceticism and leadership.” In al-Bayan
wa-l-tabyin, he calls
her one of “the ascetic
ritualists and renunciants among the People of Bayan.” At this early stage in the development of her story, the
sources have much to say about Rabi’a the Teacher
and Rabi’a the Ascetic but they are mostly
silent about the trope of Rabi’a the Lover.
I.
Conceptualizing Asceticism in Early Islam
a.
The World/Nonworld Dichotomy
Margaret Smith, the most important writer
on Rabi’a in the English
language, characterizes her as “an ascetic
of extreme other-worldliness.”1 Early accounts about Rabi’a also agree that she focused
more on the world to come than on the here-and-now. The ascetic
worldview is based on what anthropologist Jacques
Maquet has termed the “World/Nonworld Dichotomy.” For Maquet, the World/Nonworld Dichotomy
is a cultural universal that is at once
conceptual, behavioral, and institutional.2 The “world” in this dichotomy refers to the social and economic networks along which
human society is organized. It also refers
to a set of values
that
1 Smith, Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge), 82 and (Oneworld), 105
2 Jacques Maquet,
“The World/Nonworld Dichotomy,” in The Realm of the Extra-Human,Volume 2 Ideas
and Actions, Agehananda Bharati, ed. (The Hague: Mouton,
1976), 56
are considered worldly. Comparing
discussions of asceticism in Christian, Hindu,
and Buddhist texts, Maquet notes that worldly values are the same regardless of the culture
in which they appear: “pleasure and wealth,
prestige and power.”3 The “Nonworld,” by contrast, is an alternate worldview that liberates the ascetic from economic and social constraints and from the pursuit of worldly values.4 Maquet’s model of the World/Nonworld Dichotomy
applies very well to
asceticism in early Islam. As we shall see below,
the concept of asceticism as both a form of mastery over worldly life and a path of personal liberation was important for Rabi’a and other
Muslim ascetics. As Rabi’a says to Sufyan al-Thawri in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women,
“Liberation from the world is to abandon
all that is in it (al-salama
min al-dunya tarku
ma fiha).”5 Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 778 or 790 CE), a famous
contemporary of Rabi’a
stated, “There are three
types of asceticism: asceticism as an obligation (fard), asceticism as a virtue
(fadl), and asceticism as liberation (salama).”6
Although Maquet did not include Islam in his essay on the World/Nonworld Dichotomy,
this worldview has long been present
in Islam, where it is expressed by the dichotomy
of al- dunya (the World)
versus al-akhira (the Afterlife or Nonworld).7 This dichotomy is based on a
fundamental opposition of values, just as Maquet
found it to be for Christianity, Hinduism,
and Buddhism. The following
verses of the Qur’an reflect
this opposition of values and exemplify the World/Nonworld Dichotomy in Islam:
Alluring to human
beings is the love of worldly
desires for women, children, weight
upon weight of gold and silver, for branded horses, cattle, and tillable
land. These are the pleasures of the
life of al-dunya, but the most
beautiful of all goals is with God. (Qur’an,
3:14)
Oh you who
believe! What is the matter with you
that when you are called to go forth in the Way of God, you cling heavily to
the world (al-ard)? Do you prefer the life of al- dunya to that of al-akhira? The pleasure of the life of al-dunya
is but a paltry thing when compared with the life of al-akhira. (Qur’an, 9:38)
The life of al-dunya compared to al-akhira is nothing but a fleeting
pleasure. (Qur’an, 13:26)
What is this life
of al-dunya but an amusement and a
game? Verily, the house of al- akhira is the true means of
livelihood, if only they knew. (Qur’an,
29:64)
Nay, but you love
this fleeting existence (al-‘ajila)
and avoid al-akhira. (Qur’an, 75: 20- 21)
3 Ibid, 57
4 Ibid, 58
5 See Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 76-7. In my edition of this work, I originally translated salama as
“safety.” I now believe
that “liberation” from the world is a more meaningful translation of this term.
6 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 8, 26
7 The Andalusian traveler and geographer Ibn Jubayr (ca. 1185 CE) called Muslim
ascetics rijal al-akhira
(“Men of the Afterlife”). See Josef Dreher,
“Étude sur l’Origine
et le Sens du Mot ‘Uzla dans la Littérature
ascétique et mystique,” Mélanges de
l’Institut dominicain d’Études orientales du Caire (MIDEO), number 23,
1997, 199-200.
As these verses indicate,
Muslim ascetics did not have to go beyond the literal meaning of the Qur’an to find support
for their renunciation of the World.
The Qur’an is full of verses
warning against the World and prescribing renunciation of it. Real life is the life to come, whereas the World is but a fleeting pastime. God has charged
His Messengers with the mission of informing humanity of the mercurial
nature and false pleasures of the World. God’s message, as portrayed in the Qur’an, warns believers to avoid the World’s temptations and cautions against the assimilation of worldly
values. The Muslims
who took the concept of the World/Nonworld Dichotomy most to heart were those whom Marshall
Hodgson called the “Piety-Minded”:
worshippers, ascetics, and traditionists, “for whom Islamic
piety took precedence over any other interest.”8 As Hadith transmitters, jurists, and theologians, the Piety-Minded sought to maintain public conformity to key beliefs, standard
rituals, and elementary morality, and protected
the integrity of Islam from outside
influences.9 However, as ascetics the Piety-Minded also went
further by making the Nonworld
a true vocation. By interiorizing scripture and tradition, they attempted to develop
a new Islamic identity, an ascetic self that replaced
the World with the
Nonworld according to the teachings of the Qur’an
and the Sunna
of the Prophet Muhammad.10
Whoever the real person was behind the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic, she surely inhabited
this Nonworld dimension and advocated its values.
However, merely to say that the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic has to do with the Nonworld
is not enough to describe the asceticism that the “real”
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya may have practiced. Detaching oneself
from the World and attempting to inhabit the Nonworld is a complex
process that requires a variety of attitudes and forms of behavior. In the early
Islamic period, each stage
of this process was conceptualized differently and was designated by a specific
term that expressed a particular approach
toward the construction of an ascetic
identity. For this reason,
before discussing the asceticism that Rabi’a may have practiced
in detail, it is first
necessary to examine the key terms
of early Islamic
asceticism in order
to arrive at a clearer
understanding of the concepts
that lay behind
the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic. However,
until now there
has not been a systematic study
of asceticism in Islam, as has been attempted for early Christianity.
Therefore, before discussing the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic, it is necessary
to map the conceptual
terrain of asceticism in early Islam.
In the section that follows, I will attempt
to draw the preliminary outlines
of such a map, by identifying the most important
ascetic practices in Rabi’a’s time. Only after this task is
completed will it be possible
to assess the ascetic practices
that Rabi’a herself
may have followed. As we shall see below, saying that someone
was an ascetic in Rabi’a’s
time meant more than just one
thing. For example,
the zahid concentrated on the practice
of renunciation in general. The wari’ took
special precautions to avoid ethical
failings. The nasik used
a ritualized approach
to asceticism to attain specific goals. These types of ascetic also lived in a state of faqr, poverty,
as a general condition of their lives
and practices. The concept of Rabi’a the Ascetic included
all of these notions and
more.
8 Hodgson, The Venture
of Islam, vol. 1, 250; see also the discussion of the Piety-Minded in Chapter 1 above.
9 Ibid, 251
10 This perspective agrees with that of Gavin Flood, who considers the ascetic self “formed by tradition and
internalizes tradition
and its goals.”
See Gavin Flood,
The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition (Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3.
b.
The Problem
of Asceticism as a Theoretical Category
The terms “ascetic” and “asceticism” come from the Greek word askesis, which literally
means, “training,” as in the training of an athlete.
In the Classical traditions in which this term
appears, asceticism comprises both a philosophy of life and a culture
of practices that are
“ascetic.” We saw at the end of Chapter 1 that the concept of askesis among Greek and Roman Stoics was less a reactionary mode of renunciation than a regime of character
formation that sought to instill the virtues of moderation, temperance, self-control, and detachment from worldly affairs. In this regard, askesis was
similar to the early Islamic
concept of ta’dib, which also
meant character formation. As we saw in the previous chapter,
in Rabi’a’s time,
the Arabic terms hilm and
muruwwa stood for the virtues of patience, self-control, and detachment from worldly
affairs that ta’dib was
meant to develop.
The ta’dib associated with the trope
of Rabi’a the Teacher was a set of practices
that trained the student for ethical and spiritual maturity.
Because ta’dib and
askesis resulted in the formation of similar values,
I suggested that early Islam continued the culture of ethical training
that it inherited from late antiquity.
Another issue that linked
Rabi’a and her contemporaries to the worldviews of antiquity and late antiquity was the idea that an ethical philosophy was not just a set of teachings
but a way of life, a concept stressed
by the French historian of philosophy, Pierre
Hadot. Classical philosophers used the Greek
term bios (“life”) for this concept,
whereas early Christians used the Greek term hodos (“way” or “path”).11 The notion of a spiritual
path as a way of life provides
a bridge, not only between Rabi’a
and her non-Muslim predecessors, but also between Rabi’a
and the Sufis who wrote about her in later generations. The fact that the ascetics
of early Islam saw
themselves as following a path of training
for the spiritual life was a major reason why systematizers of Sufism such as Sulami and Isfahani
considered them “Sufis,”
even if most early
Muslim ascetics did not use this term themselves. Furthermore, because this path was based on
moral and spiritual development rather
than on mysticism, it was also respected by those who were
opposed to Sufism,
such as the Hanbali scholar
Ibn al-Jawzi. Despite
the centrality of mystical doctrines in Sufism,
the development of moral character has always been important to the
Sufi Way. The Sufi systematizers of the tenth
and eleventh centuries CE saw piety
and ethics as the core values of Sufism
and considered them the most important link between Sufism
and the Sunna of the Prophet
Muhammad. 12 This is why I concluded at the end of Chapter
1 that the discipline of ta’dib associated with the trope
of Rabi’a the Teacher amounted
to “the Tariqa (the Sufi Way) before the Sufi tariqa.”
The culture of asceticism and personal training described above
corresponds closely to Pierre Hadot’s
notion of philosophy as a way of life. Unfortunately, this notion has not been accepted universally by the academic discipline of philosophy and remains mostly
unknown in the field of Islamic
Studies. In general,
the lack of an adequate
theoretical framework for
11 Gail P. Corrington-Streete, “Trajectories of Ascetic Behavior,” in Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard
Valentasis, eds,, Asceticism (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 119
12 For a discussion of Sufi ethics based on the writings
of Sulami, see Kenneth Lee Honerkamp, “Sufi
Foundations of the Ethics of Social Life in Islam,” in Vincent J. Cornell General
Editor and Virginia
Gray Henry-Blakemore ed., Voices
of Islam, Volume Three, Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society (Westport,
Connecticut and London: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 181-96.
comparison has held back the study of asceticism in Islam. Even outside the study of Islam,
asceticism is seldom viewed as a philosophy; instead, it is seen as a (usually
extreme) set of ritual
practices within a religion. It has only recently
become an object of comparative study in the field
of Religious Studies
and its main concepts are still not sufficiently understood. Before the publication of the edited
volume Asceticism in 1998 by Vincent
L. Wimbush and Richard
Valentasis, the only other treatment
of the subject that was comparative across
all major religions was the survey of asceticism by James Hastings
in the 1909 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.13 In her book Reading Renunciation, Elizabeth A. Clark notes
that despite numerous meetings
throughout the 1980s, the Society
of Biblical Literature Group on Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity
could never reach a consensus
on the definition of
asceticism. She reports,
“Group members disagreed
as to whether they should
stress deprivation, pain, and the ‘shrinking of the self’ as definitive components of asceticism— or, conversely, the liberation of true ‘human nature.’”14 Participants in this group finally settled
on a definition of ascetic behavior
rather than of asceticism per se, retreating, as Clark says,
from the “thing-in- itself” to the safety of
observable practices.
However, this retreat into the notion of practice
has not solved the conceptual problem of
asceticism. The most concise summary
of the Group on Ascetic
Behavior’s conclusions is Walter
O. Kaelber’s definition of asceticism in the current
edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion.
“[Asceticism is] a voluntary, sustained, and at least partially systematic program of self-discipline and self-denial in which
immediate, sensual or profane gratifications are renounced in order to attain a higher spiritual
state or a more thorough
absorption in the sacred.”15 This definition, which fits the trope
of Rabi’a the Ascetic fairly
well, views asceticism as a religious act and
differentiates asceticism from other forms of disciplined training, such as athleticism or body-
building.16
In partial opposition to this definition is the model proposed by Geoffrey Galt Harpham, who views the “ascetic
imperative” as a universal human trait. Harpham
compares the ascetic imperative to a computer
operating system whose purpose is to form an autonomous self within a particular cultural context: “[Asceticism is] a kind of MS-DOS
of cultures, a fundamental
operating ground on which the particular culture,
the word processing program itself, is overlaid.
Where there is culture there is asceticism.”17 It is unclear
whether Harpham means by this metaphor that certain cultures
are more ascetic
than others or whether asceticism is everywhere.
Whichever the case, however, his model of asceticism is of little
help in understanding the trope of Rabi’a
the Ascetic. With Harpham, one cannot help but feel that theory
has become an end in itself and that his theorizing about asceticism has taken the concept far from how it was
13 Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valentasis, “Introduction,” in idem, Asceticism, xxii
14 Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture
in Early Christianity (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1999),
14
15 Walter O. Kaelber, “Asceticism,” The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade
(New York and
London:
Macmillan & Co., 1987), vol. 1, 441, cited in Clark, Reading Renunciation, 15
16 See, for example, the section titled “Athletes Are Not Ascetics,” in Flood, The Ascetic
Self, 216-18.
17 Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Ascetic
Imperative in Culture
and Criticism (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press,
1987), xi
understood by its premodern practitioners.18 To paraphrase a point made about ritual
by Catherine Bell, “Rather
than impose categories of what is or is not [asceticism], it may be more
useful to look at how human activities establish and manipulate their own differentiation and purposes— in the very doing
of the act within the context of other ways of acting.”19
In heeding Catherine Bell’s
advice, the student
of early Islamic
asceticism should above all
be careful to avoid falling
into the trap of anachronism, not only with respect to postmodern
discourses but also with respect
to later Sufi discussions of asceticism. Just as with Sufism in general, the Sufi concept
of asceticism was not fully
systematized until the beginning of the
eleventh century CE. For this reason, it is best for students
of asceticism in early Islam to adhere closely to the statements of early ascetics
but avoid as much as possible the formulations of later
theorists. The works of noted Sufi theorists
such as Abu Nasr al-Sarraj
(d. 988 CE), Abu Bakr al-
Kalabadhi (d. 990 CE), Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Sulami (d. 1021 CE), and Abu al-Qasim
al- Qushayri (d. 1074 CE) provide
a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they offer some of the earliest discussions of Sufi concepts
and practices, including
discussions of asceticism. On the other hand, however, their authors
tended to impose
their own understanding of Sufi doctrines
and practices on the past. By doing so, they created
the impression that the concept
of asceticism never changed
and that the asceticism of early ascetcs
such as Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya was little different from later expressions of asceticism. This reworking of concepts is a normal part of doctrinal formation. As Gavin Flood has observed, “Tradition is not passively
received but actively reconstructed in a shared imagination and reconstituted in the present
as memory.”20
However, anachronistic reconstructions of the “chains
of memory” that constitute the tradition of Islamic asceticism may undermine
the results of historical inquiry
by bestowing a false coherence on diverse concepts and
practices.21
For this reason, if one hopes to accurately map the conceptual boundaries of Islamic asceticism in Rabi’a’s time,
one must focus
on the key terms by which early
Muslim ascetics characterized their own ascetic
practices. The four most important of these terms will be discussed below. Two of these terms,
zuhd (renunciation) and wara’ (ethical precaution), remained in use throughout the history of Islam and denoted acceptable ascetic practices both within and outside of Sufism. One term, nusk (ascetic ritualism) was a characteristic of early
Islamic asceticism but fell out of favor
in later periods.
The fourth term, faqr (poverty), denoted the condition of the ascetic life,
but was not regarded as a formal
Sufi practice until
more than a century after Rabi’a’s death. Eventually, this term became
so popular that it is now a metaphor
for the Sufi Way itself.
18 By contrast,
for Gavin Flood true asceticism can only be part of a religious worldview: “The residues of ascetic practice in our culture
have become mere technique without
the accompaniment of tradition
and an articulated idea of transcendence.” See
Idem, The Ascetic Self, 1.
19 Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual
Practice (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press,
1992),
74; it should be
noted in this regard that ascetic practices are also ritual forms of behavior. Thus, we can read Bell’s comment as a warning
against the philosophical, “thing-in-itself” definition of asceticism
that Elizabeth A. Clark advocates. As
Bell points out, definitions of religious practices that are not based on
actual behaviors frequently impose concepts that are either alien or out of
context.
20 Flood, The Ascetic Self,
8
21 The term, “chains of memory,” comes from D. Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans.
Simon
Lee (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2000), 86-7 and cited in Flood, The
Asccetic Self, 8.
II.
Terms of Early Islamic Asceticism
a.
Zuhd
(Renunciation)
Zuhd is the Arabic term most commonly
defined as “asceticism.” It is also the broadest and most general term for asceticism in Islam, since other terms for asceticism are often regarded as subcategories of zuhd. The term zuhd is
derived from the Arabic root z-h-d,
which means, “to shun, avoid, abandon, or abstain.” The practitioner of zuhd is called a zahid (“one
who avoids or abstains”) or a mutazahhid (“one who makes himself
avoid or abstain”). The meaning of zuhd thus revolves around the idea of renunciation, whether
it is active renunciation through
avoidance or passive renunciation through abstention. In short, the zahid is a renunciant, who rejects the World, avoids it, abstains
from it, or holds it in little
regard. This understanding of zuhd is
supported by the Qur’an, where
in Surat Yusuf (Qur’an, 12:20) the Prophet
Joseph’s brothers sell him
as a slave for a paltry price,
thus demonstrating how little they value him (wa kanu fihi min
al-zahidin, “They held him in little regard”).
As a religious concept,
zuhd reflects the values of the World/Nonworld Dichotomy discussed above. As a ritualized separation from worldly life,
zuhd is, to quote
Jonathan Z. Smith, “an assertion of difference above all else.”22 In other words, the life and worldview
of the zahid are fundamentally different from those of the ordinary person.
A common synonym
for zahid in premodern Islam was munqati’, “one who is cut off [from the World].” Often,
the renunciant who cut herself off from the World also practiced ‘uzla, physical
withdrawal or separation from the World and its affairs. This is not quietism, but an active and self-empowered form of renunciation.23 A contemporary of Rabi’a, ‘Abdallah ibn Mubarak (d. 797 CE), devotes
several chapters of his book, Kitab al-zuhd wa al-raqa’iq (The
Book of Renunciation and the Refinements of Worship), to a discussion of the concept
of asceticism in terms of the
World/Nonworld Dichotomy. The ascetic doctrines
covered in this work include
the renunciation of the World (al-‘ard min al-dunya), making little of the World (al-taqallul
min al-dunya), disrespect for the World (hawan al-dunya), and the condemnation of the pleasures
of the World (dhamm al-tana’um fi-l-dunya).24
All of these concepts are covered by the term zuhd.
In the words of the proto-Sufi Fudayl Ibn ‘Iyad,
“If evil were a house,
the key to it would be desire
for the World. If good were a house,
the key to it would be renunciation of the World (al-zuhd fi-l-
dunya).”25
Numerous statements of early Muslim ascetics
relate zuhd to the theological concept
of
al-thiqa bi-llah
(also called tawakkul), complete trust in divine providence. Margaret Smith’s
description of the practitioner of tawakkul
(al-mutawakkil ‘ala Allah) as the “true dependent” that
22 See Ibid 102; see also, Jonathan
Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward
Theory in Ritual
(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987), 109.
23 The comparative study of asceticism has conclusively demonstrated that whatever else it may be,
asceticism is without doubt an active
form of self-discipline. Thus, Margaret Smith’s
contention that early Sufism “consisted of asceticism
carried to the point of quietism” is both conceptually wrong and historically
inaccurate. See Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 100 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 76.
24 Ibn Mubarak,
Kitab al-zuhd, 15-21, 175-7,
177-94, 262-81
25 Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, ed. Nur al-Din
Shurayba (Cairo: Maktabat
al-
Khanji,
1986), 13
“knows that his Lord’s provision for him is better than his own for himself”
is a useful way to conceive of this concept.26 Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad
said, “The root of zuhd is
satisfaction with whatever comes from God.”27 The relationship between the concepts
of providence and destiny as reflected in this statement were understood by ascetics throughout the Mediterranean region and
even in Central Asia. Rabi’a’s contemporary Shaqiq al-Balkhi attributes his practice of tawakkul to a lesson about destiny that he learned
from a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Shaqiq states that in his
youth he was a merchant
among the Turks
in what is now Afghanistan. On one of his trading journeys, he came across a group he called “The Specialists” (al-khususiyya), who were
distinguished by their beardless faces,
shaved heads, and red robes. This description fits the Buddhist monks
of Tibet, who in the eighth century
CE were consolidating their power
over Tibetan society.28 The highest rank of Tibetan
society was occupied
by monks who specialized in study
and meditation. After Shaqiq mocked their idolatry, one of the monks said to him, “You
traveled all the way out here to seek your provision. Do you not know that the source
of your provision out here is the same as your provision back there? So relax and let go of your worries.”29 Struck by this admonition, Shaqiq returned home to Balkh
and became, in the words of
the Sufi prosopographer Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani, “the quintessential renunciant” (al-zahid al- haqiqi). Shaqiq’s path of asceticism recalled
the Buddhist model in its emphasis on mendicant
wandering, the abandonment of financial
means of support,
and complete trust in divine providence.30 He stated, “No one is able to practice zuhd without trust in God (illa bi-l-thiqa bi- llah).”31
Many
statements about zuhd in early Islamic
literature support the contention of Vincent
Wimbush and Richard Valantasis that the root of asceticism is ethical formation, which is achieved through
a regime of personal development.32 This links the concept of zuhd to the early
Islamic concept of ta’dib,
since the practice
of zuhd was part of a wider regime of moral training.
In this sense, the trope
of Rabi’a the Teacher might
be said to require the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic. This realization highlights an important point
that is often overlooked by critics of asceticism, whether they are secularists, Protestant Christians, or Muslim
modernists: ethical self- discipline cannot be achieved
without the practices of renunciation and withdrawal. All self-
discipline requires withdrawal in some sense.
This might be in the form of a physical
separation from worldly life, or it might be in the form of avoidance of what is harmful to the body or the spirit. In this sense, all cultures
advocate asceticism to some degree.
This is the truism on which
26 Smith, Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge), 80 and (Oneworld), 104
27 Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, 10
28 Robert A. F. Thurman,
“Tibetan Buddhist Perspectives on Asceticism,” in Wimbush and Valentasis,
Asceticism, 113-17
29 Isfahani, Hilya’, vol. 8, 59; the Buddhist
monk in this story is probably referring
to the concept of
karma, which
Shaqiq most likely
understood to refer to destiny
(Ar. qada’ and qadar).
30 Ibid, 58; It would depart from the focus of this
study to go into a detailed discussion of the possible links between Buddhist
practices and those of early Sufis in Afghanistan and Central Asia. However, it is important to point out that
the story of Shaqiq al-Balkhi and the Buddhist monk does not in itself prove a
Buddhist influence on early Sufism.
Instead, it just as easily
confirms Jacques Maquet’s
contention that the World/Nonworld Dichotomy is a cultural
universal. Shaqiq was able to learn
from Buddhist monks because the
notion of the World/Nonworld dichotomy was similar in both Buddhism and Islam.
31 Abu al-Qasim
‘Abd al-Karim ibn Hawazin
al-Qushayri, al-Risala
al-Qushayriyya fi ‘ilm al-tasawwuf,
eds. Ma’ruf Zurayq and ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Hamid Baltarji (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1990),
117
32 Wimbush and Valentasis, “Introduction” in idem, Asceticism, xxix
advocates of universal asceticism such as Geoffrey
Galt Harpham base their arguments. One of the lessons
conveyed by Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was
that even within the anti-monastic ethic of Protestantism, a strong sense of asceticism continued to govern
the Protestant worldview.33
An anti-monastic attitude can also be found in Islam,
where the Qur’an states that the
Christians invented monasticism (rahbaniyya) for themselves despite
the fact that God did not
prescribe it for them (Qur’an,
57:27). The verb used in this Qur’anic
verse to describe
the Christian invention of monasticism is ibtada’a, which comes from the same root as bid’a,
the term used in Islam to characterize the unauthorized
innovation of religious practices or doctrines.34 It is common today for Muslim reformists to say that zuhd is
an unauthorized innovation in Islam since,
like monasticism, it is not enjoined on believers in the Qur’an.
However, premodern
commentators on Qur’an
and Hadith largely
agreed that the prohibition of monasticism applied to celibacy
but it did not apply to asceticism in general.35 Furthermore, Qur’an 57:27 and the verse that follows it make it clear that despite the Qur’anic criticism of monasticism, believers are still expected
to maintain some of the most important religious attitudes associated with asceticism. These include the awareness of God’s presence
(taqwa) and observance of the rights due to God (haqq al-ri’aya) (Qur’an,
57:28). For early Muslim ascetics such as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, observance of the rights of God was fundamental both to their ethical outlook and to their practice
of renunciation. This is the basis of Rabi’a’s famous statement: “I am ashamed
to ask for the world
from the One who owns the world.
So how can I ask for the
world from one who does not own it?”
b.
Wara’ (Ethical Precaution)
The pious caution expressed in the above
statement is an example of wara’,
a concept that stood for the ethical aspect of asceticism in early Islam.
According to Jahiz,
Rabi’a was a noteworthy exemplar of wara’ and
subsequent writers continued to affirm this claim.36 The term
wara’ comes from the Arabic root w-r-‘, which means “to pause, to hesitate, to be cautious, to refrain, to abstain.” Thus, the concept
of wara’ adds the notions of precaution and avoidance to the
concept of zuhd as
ascetic renunciation. Abu Sulayman al-Darani (d. 830 CE), who founded an early school of Sufism in Syria but lived in Basra while
Rabi’a was alive, regarded wara’ as
33 See Chapter
4, “The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism” in Max Weber,
The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons with Introduction by
Anthony Giddens (London and New York: Routledge & Co., 1996 [reprint of
1930 first edition]), 95-154.
34 See Umar F. Abd-Allah, “Creativity, Innovation, and Heresy in Islam,” in Voices of Islam, Volume Five:
Voices of Change, Vincent
J. Cornell General
Editor, Omid Safi Volume Editor (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger Publishers, 2007), 1-22.
35 Ibid; this was the opinion, for example, of the Hadith
transmitter Abu Dawud
al-Sijistani (d. 888-89 CE),
the compiler of Sunan Abi Dawud.
36 See, for example, Jahiz, al-Hayawan, vol. 1, 170. Margaret Smith does not discuss the important
concept
of wara’ in her treatment of Rabi’a’s asceticism in Rabi’a the Mystic. This is a curious omission, both because of the importance
of this practice and because it is mentioned by Jahiz, one of the earliest
writers on Rabi’a. One wonders
whether Smith omitted wara’ because
it did not lend itself to easy comparison with Christian asceticism.
fundamental to the practice
of asceticism (al-wara’ awwal
al-zuhd).37 As an early Islamic
ascetic practice, wara’ was most often expressed
as a ritualized form of avoidance: specifically, the avoidance of substances, actions, or possessions that had the potential of being ethically
polluting. The wari’,
literally “the abstemious person,” often went to great lengths to avoid contact
with anything that was ethically questionable.38
As an asceticism based on the ritualized avoidance of pollution, wara’ was
often enacted through the body. It was through
this form of ascetic practice
that the concepts
of purity and impurity intersected with the concepts of the sacred
and the profane.
In the culture of wara’ the notions of ritual purity
and ethical purity
were seen as interrelated. For early Muslim
ascetics, the practice of wara’ marked the believer’s commitment to the pure world of the sacred and the abandonment of the impure world of the profane.
The Iranian Sufi ‘Ali al-Hujwiri (d. 1071 CE) described this commitment as a “double
purification” because ethical
awareness combined “the tongue’s observance with the heart’s belief.”39 Reflecting both the ethical
values of wara’ and the concern of early
ascetics for ritual
observances, Abu Bakr al-Shibli (d. 945 CE) stated,
“Whenever I neglect any rule of purification, some vain conceit
always arises in my heart.”40
Sufi women were particularly likely to regard
the practice of wara’ as
an act of pollution
avoidance. The wara’ of Sufi women was based
on the belief that the body of the ascetic
was a vessel for the divine presence. This attitude was also shared by early Christians. According
to Peter Brown, in early Christianity it was based on the notion of the body as a microenvironment.
“It was a vehicle through
which the spirit
adjusted to its present material
environment as a whole.”41 In this microenvironment, body and soul were in a state
of delicate balance.
Upsetting the body could
upset the soul and vice-versa. Muslim practitioners of wara’ had a similar view of
body and soul. A major danger for the soul, especially for women, was the defilement of the soul’s inner
purity through the body’s contact
with the World. Thus, the practice of wara’ among
Sufi women included rituals of avoidance that were designed
to protect the soul from sources of ethical pollution that came from the outside. As a subtle yet dramatic response
to the challenges of the World,
the practice of wara’ by Sufi women can be seen as a form of “dramatic play” that
inscribed the ethical boundaries of the World/Nonworld Dichotomy on the ascetic body.42
Although the Islamic view of
the ascetic body was similar in some ways to the Christian view of the body as a temple for the Holy Spirit, the Islamic concept
of wara’ actually had more
in common with late antique
philosophical notions of purification by means of avoidance (Gr.
37 Qushayri, al-Risala, 110
38 The Lutheran
Bishop and Orientalist scholar Tor Andrae
saw wara’ as an expression of religious anxiety
rather than of
precaution. For this reason, he
translated the term al-wari’un as
“anxiously pious ones.” According to Andrae’s
own account, this interpretation was a consequence of his personal
experiences with “Old Pietist”
Lutheran traditionalists in Sweden, whose acts of “pious anxiety” reminded him
of early Sufis. See Andrae, In the Garden of Myrtles, 40-41.
39 ‘Ali B. ‘Uthman al-Jullabi al-Hujwiri, The Kashf al-Mahjub, the Oldest Persian
Treatise on Sufiism,
trans.
Reynold A. Nicholson
(London: Luzac and Company Ltd.,
1976 [reprint of 1911 first edition]), 292
40 Ibid, 293
41 Brown uses the term, “microclimate” rather
than microenvironment. See Peter Brown, The Body and
Society:
Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), 170-71.
42 On asceticism as a form of “dramatic play,” see Corrington-Streete, “Trajectories of Ascetic Behavior,”
119.
hagneia) than with Christian attitudes.43 Peter Brown describes
hagneia as “a visceral
reflex of avoidance, by which the pious strove
to preserve charged
boundaries between their
bodies and all forms of polluting, anomalous
mixture.” 44 In his discussion of this concept,
Brown cites as an
example the Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry
(d. 305 CE), but his description could apply just as
well to the early Muslim practitioner of wara’. A key difference between Christian and Islamic views of purity
had to do with where
impurities entered the body. For early Christians, impurities were believed to enter the body through
the sexual organs.
By contrast, Muslim practitioners of wara’,
along with the Neo-Platonist Porphyry,
believed that impurities were more likely to enter the body through
the mouth.45 Thus, early Muslim
ascetics tended to be more concerned with food pollution
than with sexual pollution.
Early ascetics in Islam believed
that the ascetic body could become
unfit for the divine presence through
neglect of worship
or through contact
with ritual or ethical impurities. Major sources of impurity
were desire (shahwa) and greed (tama’). Desire
and greed were linked to the
appetites both literally and metaphorically. The mouth was seen as a source
of impurity because it was through the mouth that the most basic appetite,
the appetite for food, was gratified. Eating food that was ritually
or ethically impure
was believed to pollute the body inwardly, making it unfit for worship. This belief is reflected in the following
statement by one of Rabi’a’s
most famous predecessors among
the women ascetics
of Basra. Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya, the founder
of the Basra school
of women’s asceticism, admonishes her student
Umm al-Aswad not to spoil the
pure breast-feeding she had given her as a child by taking forbidden substances into her mouth.
She scolds, “Do not spoil the breast-feeding I have given you by eating forbidden
food (akl al- haram), for when I was nursing
you I made every effort
to eat only what was lawful (akl al- halal). So make every effort after
this to eat only what is lawful.
Perhaps you will succeed in your
service to your Lord and in your acceptance of His will.” Upon recounting this story, Umm al-Aswad said, “I would not eat anything suspicious lest it cause me to miss either a prescribed prayer or an extra invocation.”46
To
use a concept developed by Catherine Bell, the wara’ of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya and
other early Muslim ascetics “ritualized” the Islamic legal distinction of lawful versus unlawful
(halal
vs. haram) in terms of the World/Nonworld Dichotomy. The unlawful or impure binds the
soul to the World, whereas
the lawful or ethically pure releases the soul to seek its home in the
Nonworld. Bell’s concept
of ritualization allows
the student of Islamic asceticism to contrast wara’ with renunciation by defining wara’ as
the ritualization of ascetic renunciation in ethical terms.47 As the ritualization of ethical difference, wara’ drew
a distinction between
actions and substances that were lawful,
pure, and sacred
and those that were unlawful, impure, or profane.
In
the asceticism of avoidance that characterized wara’, the legally forbidden
was regarded as
43 In early
Christianity, the term hagneia denoted celibacy. In early Islam,
celibacy as a sign of purity was more important for women than for
men. See Giulia Sfameni Gasparo,
“Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and
‘Double Creation’ in Early Christianity,” in Wimbush and Valentasis, Asceticism, 127.
44 Brown, The Body and Society, 182
45 The Sufi Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896 CE) said, “When one eats that which is forbidden, the members of his
body become
disobedient, whether he wants it so or not. But when one eats only permitted food, his
members become obedient and disposed to do good.” Andrae, In the Garden of
Myrtles, 38
46 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 166
47 On the concept of ritualization, see Bell, Ritual Theory,
Ritual Practice, 88-93.
unclean and hence was untouchable as a source
of pollution. Contact
with the unclean
was believed to rub off on the person who was exposed to it in the way that a disease could be
transferred from one person to another. This meant that for the Muslim ascetic
who was committed to both inward
and outward purity,
even things of doubtful origin (shubuhat) had to be avoided, lest they make the ascetic
impure in both body and spirit. For the practitioner of wara’, what was unlawful or ethically impure was more than just polluting; it was also toxic for the
development of a spiritual way of life.
In stories about Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, the clearest
illustration of how an ethically polluting substance affects both inward and outward purity is in Farid al-Din al-‘Attar’s (d. 1220
CE) Ilahi Nama (Divine Book or Book of Theology). In this story, al-Hasan al-Basri
comes to visit Rabi’a
in the wilderness. He finds her surrounded by mountain goats,
gazelles, and other animals. But when the animals see Hasan, they immediately take fright and run away. When
Hasan asks Rabi’a why the animals are afraid of him but not of her, she asks what he has had to eat. “Onions fried in animal fat,” he replies. “You have eaten the fat of these poor creatures,” she says, “so how could they not run away from you?” Then Rabi’a proceeds
to admonish Hasan and
tells him that if he ate just a little
like an ant— perhaps one date each day— his body would be
safe from the worms of the grave. She says: “Nothing are you, oh man, without
the latrine and the
kitchen. Has your heart not been taken away by these two hells? From one hell to another you go; from the latrine to the kitchen
you go . . . You were told to purify your soul, but you are always filling your body. You must always respect
the inner (batin), yet you only serve the outer
(zahir).”48
Major sources of ethical
pollution in premodern
Islamic society were Bedouins and the
state. Trade with Bedouins was suspect because
Bedouins often obtained
their goods by raiding
and stealing from others. If the food given to an ascetic
came from a Bedouin, it might have been
obtained illegally. The same concern
applied to governmental officials and to the state in general. Governments were often seen as sources
of extortion and oppression and governmental officials were constantly looking for new sources
of revenue. It was widely felt that the state was unjust
by nature and that ethical
persons should avoid governmental service.
Consequently, Muslim
hagiographical collections are full of stories about
noted religious figures
that refuse to serve in legal
or administrative positions when called upon to do so. Here, the practice
of wara’ reveals a potential for political dissidence. However, one should
be careful before
concluding that every practitioner of wara’ was a dissident. In most cases,
complaints about the lack of governmental
ethics in Muslim hagiographical narratives are generic and are not directed against
specific regimes or individuals. An example of this can be seen in one of the few instances
where the Sufi theorist Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri mentions Rabi’a in his Risala. In this account,
Qushayri states that Rabi’a once tried to mend her torn garment by the light of a public lantern
(fi daw’ sha’lat al- sultan). “She lost her heart for a time until she realized why. Then she tore her garment and
48
Shaykh Farid al-Din ‘Attar Nishapuri, Ilahi nama, Fu’ad Ruhani, ed. (Tehran: Intisharat Zavvar, 1961),
96-7; translation by Vincent J. Cornell. See
also, John Andrew Boyle, The Ilahi-nama
or Book of God of Farid al-Din ‘Attar
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 115-16.
Some modern observers see this story as proof that Rabi’a was a vegetarian. On the vegetarian web site Compassionate
Spirit, a shortened and altered version of this story states that Hasan ate
meat but Rabi’a ate dried bread: “The animals recognized that Rabi’a was a
vegetarian and that Hasan was not.” http://www.compassionatespirit.com/spiritual-trends-and-veg.htm
found her heart.”49 In this anecdote, the term, “heart,”
stands for moral
equilibrium or spiritual balance. What caused Rabi’a to lose her equilibrium was the possibility that the money used by the government to install and maintain the public lanterns
may have been obtained by unlawful
means.50
Unlike the term zuhd, wara’ does
not appear in the Qur’an.
However, later Sufi writers
tried to portray wara’ as in agreement with Qur’an and Sunna by tracing it back to the Prophet Muhammad and al-Salaf al-Salih. For example, the Sufi ‘Abd al-Malik al- Kharkushi (d. 1016
CE) justifies the practice of wara’ with the following hadith:
“The excellence of knowledge is better than the excellence of worship; the excellence of your religion
is wara’.”51 In Qushayri’s Risala, the Prophet
says, “Be a practitioner of wara’ and you will be the most devout among people.”52 A hadith with a similar
meaning is also related by Abu Bakr al-Sarraj in Kitab al-
luma’. “What is truly yours of your religion (malaku dinikum) is wara’.”53
According to Louis Massignon, the establishment of wara’ as a form of Islamic religious practice was due to the influence of al-Hasan al-Basri
(d. 728 CE), a noted
theologian and ascetic who is often depicted
as Rabi’a’s companion
in Sufi legends.54 Hasan’s interest
in wara’ was in agreement with his ethical
view of piety,
which held that a life of honesty
accompanied by prayer is
better for salvation
than prayer alone.55 Kharkushi
similarly describes Hasan’s
understanding of wara’ as based on the virtues of absolute truthfulness and sincerity.56 Later the Sufi Qushayri
stated that Hasan learned from one of the Shiite
Imams that the essence of religious practice
is wara’. Hasan is so impressed with this teaching
that he proclaims, “A grain’s
weight of pure wara’ is better than a hundred-weight of fasting and prayer.”57
One of the most important exponents
of wara’ in the generation after Rabi’a was al-
Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857 CE). Muhasibi, who was born and raised
in Basra but later moved to
Baghdad, seems to have been in many respects Rabi’a’s
doctrinal successor. As we saw in
Chapter 1, his citation of a statement
on love by Rabi’a is the earliest
reference to Rabi’a in any
49 Qushayri, al-Risala, 114
50 Other accounts
attribute this story to Mukhkha
(Marrow or Essence),
the sister of the early Sufi Bishr al-
Hafi (The
Barefoot) of Baghdad (d. 840 CE). These
accounts claim that Mukhkha supported herself by spinning wool, and that she
would continue spinning by the light of the moon even after the lamps of
Baghdad had gone out. The earliest
example of this story that I am aware of can be found in the chapter on wara’ in ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Kharkushi (d. 1016 CE), Tahdhib al-Asrar, Bassam
Muhammad Barud ed. (Abu Dhabi: al-Majma’ al-Thaqafi, 1999), 108. Kharkushi’s work comes from the same
region as Qushayri’s but predates it by nearly fifty years. Later the Hanbali scholar Ibn al-Jawzi
attributed this story to Mudgha (Embryo), another sister of Bishr al-Hafi. See idem, Sifat al-Safwa, vol. 2, 525-6 and the Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 324. On Kharkushi’s Tahdhib al-asrar, see Chapter 3 below and Sara Sviri, “The Early
Mystical Schools of Baghdad and Nishapur or: In Search of Ibn Munazil,” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005), 451-6; Sviri calls Kharkushi
“Khargushi.”
51 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-Asrar, 108; this hadith does not appear in the six canonical collections. Its
earliest
mention may have been by Ahmad ibn Hanbal. See idem, Kitab al-Zuhd, ed. ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Qasim (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1976), 108.
52 Qushayri, al-Risala, 110
53 Sarraj, al-Luma’, 44
54 Massignon, Essay,
131
55 Ibid, 129; see also, Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic
Thought, 79-81.
56 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 109
57 Qushayri, al-Risala, 112
extant Sufi work. Rabi’a’s
notion of essential asceticism, which will be discussed
below and in Chapters 3 and 4, found its fullest expression in Muhasibi’s concept
of muhasaba, from which his
name was derived. Muhasibi defines
muhasaba as a “contract
with the conscience” (al-‘aqd bi-l- damir) in which the ascetic resolves
to examine all actions critically before they are performed.58
This process of critical self-examination shares much in common with the notion
of wara’ as ethical precaution. Muhasibi wrote a treatise on wara’ titled, Kitab al-makasib wa-l-wara’ wa-l-
shubha wa bayan mubahiha wa mahzuriha wa akhlaq al-nas fi-talabiha wa-l-radd
‘ala al- ghalizin fi-ha
(Treatise on Earnings, Precaution, and Doubt with an Explanation of What is Permissible about Them, What is Forbidden
about Them, the Ethics of Seeking Them and a Refutation of Those Who Are Excessive in Seeking Them).59 In this work, he defines
wara’ as “the avoidance of everything that God dislikes,
whether in speech or in action or in the heart or the
limbs; and caution
against neglecting what God has made obligatory for either the heart or the
limbs.”60
The
relationship of muhasaba
to wara’ is that of a means to an end. For
Muhasibi, muhasaba is the most effective technique by which the ascetic can practice wara’ in
daily life. Muhasibi’s most famous work was al-Ri’aya li-huquq
Allah wa-l-qiyam biha (The Care for and Establishment of the Rights of God). The importance of wara’ to the ascetic life is discussed
in the final chapter,
“The Training of Disciples” (ta’dib al-muridin). Muhasibi’s use of the term ta’dib in both al-Ri’aya and
al-Makasib demonstrates that this was still the way that early Sufis
conceived of spiritual training in the generation after Rabi’a’s death.
In al-Makasib Muhasibi
refers to ta’dib as
al-ta’dib li-l-nafs, “the training
of the soul.”61 This indicates
that like Rabi’a
he viewed ta’dib as a regime of spiritual and ethical training. For
Muhasibi, wara’ is an important
aspect of ta’dib because it fosters self-awareness and prevents moral
backsliding. It is especially
important in business (tijara)
and the marketplace (suq). The marketplace is so full of ethical pollution that “those who seek purity
in their actions”
(ahl al-safwa min al-a’mal) are enjoined to use
wara’ as a type of moral
armor whenever they enter a place where
goods are sold.62
However, the mere avoidance of ethical impurity
is not enough by itself
to make ascetics immune from the World.
Besides putting on the armor of wara’, ascetics
must also conduct
an active defense against
ethical pollution through
the remembrance and invocation of God (dhikr
58
See al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, Kitab al-Makasib in al-Masa’il
fi a’mal al-qulub
wa-l-jawarih wa al-Makasib wa
al-‘Aql, ed. ‘Abd al-Qadir Ahmad ‘Ata (Cairo: ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1969), 200.
59 This work is available
in two Arabic editions. The full title of the work as given above comes from a
photograph of the
title page of the manuscript in the University of Cairo Library. See al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, al-Rizq al-halal
wa haqiqat al-tawakkul ‘ala Allah (Lawful Gain and the Reality of Trusting
in God), Muhammad ‘Uthman
al-Khisht ed. (Cairo:
Maktabat al-Qur’an, 1984), 25. The editor of this work changed the original title to fit his
view of the contents. A more
trustworthy version can be found in a collection of three of Muhasibi’s works
by ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Ata, the premier editor of Muhasibi’s writings. See al-Masa’il fi a’mal al-qulub wa-l-jawarih wa
al-Makasib wa al-‘Aql, 171-234.
60 Muhasibi, al-Makasib in al-Masa’il, 200; for a summary of the contents
of this work see also Smith, An
Early Mystic,
50-52.
61 Muhasibi, al-Makasib in al-Masa’il, 225
62 See the discussion in Abu ‘Abdullah
al-Harith ibn Asad al-Muhasibi, al-Ri’aya li-huquq
Allah, ed. ‘Abd
al-Qadir Ahmad ‘Ata (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, fourth printing, n.d,); for Kitab ta’dib al-muridin,
503-19. The phrase, “those who seek purity in their actions”
comes from idem, al-Makasib in al-Masa’il, 222.
Allah).63 For Muhasibi,
the invocation of God creates
a sort of spiritual force field that shields the God-fearing person from the pollution of the World.
The addition of ritual formulas
of remembrance to the practice of asceticism takes asceticism out of the domain of wara’ as ethical avoidance and into the domain of nusk,
asceticism as a form of ritual practice.
c.
Nusk
(Ascetic Ritualism)
Nusk was the most visible
form of ascetic
practice in Rabi’a’s
time. However, this practice is often overlooked in studies of Islamic asceticism because the term nusk is commonly equated with zuhd.
One of the reasons for this is that while the nasik, the practitioner of nusk,
is often mentioned in early Islamic
texts, one seldom
finds discussions of nusk as a concept.64 For example, when Jahiz describes
Rabi’a as a renunciant (mutazahhida), he also describes
her as a nasika but
he does not say what this means.
Clearly, for Jahiz,
the concept of nusk was self- evident. Although he devotes
an entire chapter
of his book al-Bayan
wa al-tabyin to
the subject of zuhd, he gives no such attention
to nusk.65 Apparently, the nasik was such a common figure in early
Islamic society that writers did not feel the need to explain
what the term signified. The present-day student of early Islamic asceticism is thus faced with a dilemma. Although
nusk was an important concept
of early Islamic
ascetic practice, its meaning is hidden within its historical context. It is important that this concept
be clarified if we are to understand the trope of Rabi’a
the Ascetic.
As
discussed in Chapter 1, n-s-k, the Arabic root of the word nusk, is ambiguous, and
carries meanings
that range from rituals of worship to ritual sacrifice, and even to reclusion.66
The common element in all of these definitions is the concept of ritual. Most of the verses of the Qur’an
that contain the root n-s-k deal
with ritual observances. For example, one verse states:
“Our Lord! Put us in a state of submission to you; make of our children a community that submits
to you; show us the rites we are to perform (wa-arina manasikana), and redeem us (wa tub
‘alayna)” (Qur’an, 2:128).
The term manasik in
this verse refers
to Islamic rituals
and sacrifices, such as the rituals
of the Hajj pilgrimage and the sacrifice at Mina that is one of the concluding
acts of the pilgrimage. In her study
of the logic of the Qur’an, Rosalind
Gwynne defines the central meaning of n-s-k as the ritual fulfillment of God’s covenant.
She draws this conclusion
from the use of this root in another Qur’anic
verse, “My prayer and my ritual sacrifice
(nusuki) and my life and my death
are for God, the Lord of the Worlds” (Qur’an,
6:162). This verse comes after a passage
in the Qur’an (6:151-2) that describes the ritual observances (manasik) required by God and ends with the command
to fulfill God’s
covenant (wa bi-‘ahdi Allahi
ufu).67
63 Muhasibi, al-Ri’aya, 513
64 Early Islamic
religious texts that are still
extant today include
works on ritual
practices (manasik) written
by Hadith
specialists, such as Kitab al-Manasik (The
Book of Ritual Practices) by Sa’id ibn Abi ‘Uruba
(d. 773 CE) and Kitab al-Manasik
al-Kabir (The Big Book of Ritual Practices) by Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855
CE). However, the contents of these
works consist only of descriptions of ritual practices, not discussions of nusk as a concept.
65 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 3, 81-122
66 Gwynne, Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qur’an, 15
67 Ibid 14-15
Gwynne’s definition of nusk as the fulfillment of covenantal responsibility provides an important link between the ascetic understanding of nusk in Rabi’a’s
time and the related term nusuk, meaning
ritual sacrifice, that appears in the Qur’anic
verse quoted above. Both
nusk and
nusuk involve the fulfillment of God’s covenant
by means of ritual acts. In fact, the correct performance of ritual is so important in Islam that it is said to comprise half of the Shari’a.68
Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) is divided into fiqh al-mu’amalat, which deals with social actions, and fiqh al-‘ibadat, which deals with rituals of worship. Early legal works such as al-Muwatta’ (The Trodden Path) by Malik ibn Anas (d. 795 CE) discuss the root n-s-k primarily in terms of ritual sacrifice and prescribe
rituals of expiation (fidya, literally “ransom”) for neglecting their observance.69
However, the meaning of this term became broader
in later centuries. For example, the medieval Arabic dictionary Lisan al-‘Arab
(The Tongue of the Arabs)
by Jamal al-Din
ibn Manzur (d. 1321 CE) defines nusk as “anything
that brings a person close to God.” It defines the
nasik broadly as a “worshipper of God” (‘abid). However,
when Lisan al-‘Arab gives
examples of nusk,
most of these
examples involve the observance of rituals.70 In the most suggestive
passage for the use of this term among early Muslim ascetics, Ibn Manzur says that the sincere
worshipper of God is called a nasik because he purifies himself
from the pollution
of sin in the same way that gold or silver is purified
by extracting the pure metal from impure
alloys.
Following this analogy, the nasik is an ascetic who purifies himself
by performing ritual acts to signify his renunciation of the World.71 Thus, when we put Ibn Manzur’s definitions into modern
theoretical terms, we can say that nusk is the ritualization of Islamic asceticism, either in terms of
renunciation (zuhd) or ethical
precaution (wara’),
or both.
Ibn Manzur’s understanding of nusk as a form of ritual purification is similar to that of the
eleventh-century Iranian Sufi ‘Ali al-Hujwiri, who as we saw above,
gave great importance to the concept of ritual purity.
For Hujwiri, the most important
form of nusk was
mujahada, which literally means “disciplined struggle.” Although this term is commonly
defined as “self- mortification,” it would be a mistake
to think of it in this way without qualification. For Hujwiri, mujahada
as a type of nusk entailed any form of ritualized discipline, from rituals designed
to develop the ascetic
self to rituals required for the practice
of Islam in general. He said, “The most
important act of mujahada
is to observe
the outward rules
of discipline (Pers.
adab-i zahir) assiduously in all circumstances.”72 To illustrate this point, Hujwiri
cites the example
of Rabi’a’s contemporary Sufyan al-Thawri, who suffered from rectal discharges during his final illness.
Once, he performed sixty
ablutions before a single prayer,
saying, “I shall at least be clean
when I leave this world.”73 Similarly, the early Sufi Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 874 CE) said, “Whenever
68
The Prophet Muhammad stated: “If there is something
defective in [a believer’s] prayers, the Lord (glorified and exalted be He)
will say, ‘See if my servant has any supererogatory prayers with which may be completed that which was defective in his obligatory prayers. Then the rest of his actions
will be judged in like fashion.’” Forty
Hadith Qudsi, translated and selected by Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys
Johnson- Davies (publisher’s information and date not given), 26-7.
69 See, for example, Malik ibn Anas,
Kitab al-Muwatta’, ed. Faruq Sa’d (Beirut:
Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida,
1981), 345-49.
70 Ibn Manzur,
Lisan al-‘Arab, vol. 10, 498
71 Ibid, 499
72 Hujwiri, Kashf al-mahjub, 292
73 Ibid, 293
the thought of the World comes to me, I perform
an act of ritual purification (tahara) and whenever the thought of the Afterlife
comes to me, I perform
a full ritual ablution (ghusl).”74 For Abu
Yazid, the contemplation of the Afterlife required a ritual
washing because it was like a
preparation for death.
Just as a corpse requires
a full washing to cleanse
it of impurities before
burial, the body of the ascetic also requires a ritual washing
to prepare it for the renunciation of the World and the acceptance of God’s
presence.75
The covenantal meaning of nusk highlighted by Rosalind Gwynne suggests an interesting
parallel with Syrian Christianity. Early Muslim ascetics
were in frequent contact with Aramaic-
speaking Christians and certain Muslim practitioners of nusk were even called “monks” (ruhban).76 In the early Syrian
Church, lay ascetics
belonged to a group that was known in
Western Aramaic as bnay qiyama, “children of the covenant.” These men and women pledged themselves to Christ at the time of their baptism and lived distinctive lives in their communities.
The key member of the bnay qiyama was
the ihidaya (Syr.), the “single, solitary,
or unique one.” This person was “singled
out” from the majority of believers by practicing celibacy, living separately from the opposite sex, and practiced the imitation of Christ through
various forms of self-sacrifice.77 The Western Aramaic
term ihidaya is close
in meaning to the Arabic
term munfarid, which similarly denoted
the “unique” or “solitary” ascetic
who was singled
out from the multitude
because of his ascetic practices. Rabi’a the Ascetic
is typically portrayed
as a munfarida. Like the Syrian Christian ihidaya, she practiced celibacy, lived separately from the
opposite sex, and followed a regime of ascetic disciplines.78
The
most characteristic practice
of the Syrian Christian ihidaya was
abila, a Western Aramaic term that means “sorrow” or “mournful penitence.”79 In Islam, the penitent (Ar. ta’ib, literally, “the one who turns toward God”) similarly
practices repentance (tawba) and performs
ritual acts of prayer and self-sacrifice in the hope of receiving
forgiveness. 80 Redemption, the divine acceptance or favor that is the fruit of the forgiveness of sins, is depicted in the Qur’an as a bargain
that depends on the notion of reciprocal “turning.” In other words, God turns toward the
74 Ibid
75 For a description of the cleansing
ritual of the dead in Islam, see Rkia E. Cornell, “Death
and Burial in
Islam,” Voices of Islam Vol. 3, Voices of Life:
Family, Home, and Society, Vincent J. Cornell, General Editor and Virginia Gray Henry-Blakemore, Volume Editor (Westport, Connecticut and London:
Praeger Publishers, 2007), 163-67
76 The root of the word ruhban (r-h-b) connotes
fear or trepidation. Thus, the Arabic term for monk, rahib,
literally means
“God-fearing.” The early Qur’an
commentator Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767 CE) stated that whenever Muslims hear
the term ruhban they should
understand it to mean, “believers who practice their religion with zeal”
(mujtahidun fi dinihim). See Massignon, Essay, 98-9. Massignon also notes that the scholar of Hadith Darimi (d.
857-58 CE) was called “The Rahib of
Kufa” (Ibid, n. 33).
77 On the bnay qiyama and
ihidaya, see Sidney H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church
of Syria: the
Hermeneutics of Early Syrian
Monasticism,” in Wimbush
and Valentasis, Asceticism, 238.
78 ‘Abd al-Wahid
ibn Zayd (d. 793-94 CE), an associate of Rabi’a and founder of a hermitage for ascetics
at ‘Abbadan
in what is now Iran, stated in verse, “The way of truth is solitary/ and those who enter the way
of truth are alone and unique (afrad).” See Massignon, Essay, 148.
79 Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church
of Syria,” 234-5
80 The Greek term for repentance, metanoia, also means “turning”
or “redirection.” According
to the
Greek Orthodox
writer John Chryssavgis, “The whole of the Christian life (is) a repentance;
(the Greek word ‘meta-noia’) implies reorientation and redirection from death
to life, from sin to grace.” Cited in
Hannah Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings
of the Early Syrian and Byzantine
Fathers (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004), 33.
worshipper to the extent
that the worshipper turns toward God. “Show us the rituals
(manasik) that we must perform
and grant us redemption” (tub ‘alayna, literally “turn for our sake,”),
says the Qur’an (2:128).
The use of the term manasik in this verse implies that ritual acts in Islam are outward signs of the “turning toward God” that must take place before redemption is granted.
Later on in the same Sura, the Qur’an
also states that penitence requires
ritual purification: “Verily God loves the penitents (tawwabin) and those who make themselves pure (mutatahhirin)” (Qur’an, 2:232).
The Sura of Repentance (Qur’an 9, al-Tawba) in the Qur’an depicts the relation between repentance and redemption as a contract
of sale (bay’) (Qur’an
9:111-12). In this Sura, certain specified categories of believers
“sell” the World to God in return for the Nonworld: these are
penitents (ta’ibun), worshippers (‘abidun), praisers
(hamidun), wanderers
(sa’ihun), bowers (raki’un), prostrators (sajidun), commanders of the right and forbidders of the wrong (al-amiruna bi-l-ma’ruf wa ql-nahuna ‘an al-munkar), and those who observe the limits set by God (al- hafizuna li-hudud Allah). The twelfth-century Andalusian Sufi Abu Madyan
(d. 1198 CE) quotes
Rabi’a as describing the penitent
in a similar way: “The signs of true repentance are remorse and a
heart that is fearful, pure, and submissive— one that is a dwelling
place for obedience.”81
In Rabi’a’s time, the term nasik was
used for all who made a vocation
of the ritual practices mentioned in the Qur’anic
passage quoted above. The penitents, the worshippers, the praisers, the wanderers, the bowers and prostrators, people
whose hearts are dwelling places
of obedience to God’s command— all were regarded
as nussak (plural of nasik).
Social activists who added
the requirement to command the right and forbid the wrong and by doing
so, helped maintain the legal and ethical boundaries of Islamic morality
were considered to be nussak as well. However, this latter group can also be seen as practitioners of wara’,
the ethical aspect of
Islamic asceticism. The close relationship between the concepts
of nusk and wara’ is
one reason why it has been so difficult for contemporary scholars
to discern a clear meaning
for the term nusk in
early Sufi texts. Both nusk and
wara’ involved the ritualization of practices associated with asceticism. However, whereas
nusk primarily involved the ritualization of Islamic practices of worship and symbolic
acts of renunciation, wara’ involved the ritualization of social behavior. The importance of nusk was
that it added
an extra dimension of care and observance to the rites that were required for every Muslim.
Wara’ accomplished much the same for the observance of moral distinctions. Thus, nusk may be summarized as the ritualized outward form (zahir) of Islamic asceticism whereas wara’ can
be summarized as the ritualized inward form (batin) of Islamic asceticism.
According to Gavin Flood,
“The ascetic self is constructed through ritual and
entextualizes the body through
ritual.”82 This statement helps us understand why the concept
of asceticism in general
(zuhd) in early Islam was conflated
with nusk. Ritual practice
was one of the most important connections in early Islam between
asceticism and the scriptural traditions of religion. As Flood
explains, every act of asceticism is a ritual
performance, “but a performance
entails a particular kind of competence or cultural knowledge
that flows through
the
81 Vincent J. Cornell, The Way of Abu Madyan: Doctrinal
and Poetic Works of Abu Madyan Shu’ayb
ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (c. 509/1115-15—594/1198) (Cambridge, U. K.:
The Islamic Texts Society, 1996), 108-9
82 Flood, The Ascetic Self,
214
generations.”83 In the ascetic culture of early Islam, nusk “entextualized” the values of the
Qur’an through ritual acts of worship and self-denial. Since the actions of the nasik
were visible for all to see, one could say that the nasik was the “performance artist”
of Islamic asceticism.
Sometimes taking their practices
to extremes, early Muslim nussak concentrated on the dramatic aspects
of ritual performance and sought God’s
favor by exerting
themselves beyond the minimum of the required
forms of worship.
The nussak of early Islam practiced
a form of asceticism that was goal-directed and instrumental and viewed their devotions as an investment of spiritual capital. As Eliezer Diamond
states about the ascetics of rabbinic Judaism,
the nussak of Rabi’a’s time saw their exertions “as an investment in a spiritual
bank account, as it were,
being held in one’s name.”84 The slogan of the nasik was
the famous “Hadith
of Supererogatory Devotions” (Hadith al-Nawafil): “My slave continues
to draw near to me with supererogatory devotions so that I shall love him. When I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his foot with which he walks.
Were he to ask [something] of me, I would surely give it to him and were he to ask refuge of Me, I would surely
grant it.”85 A similar notion
of spiritual capital
is expressed in a statement by Rabi’a to Sufyan al-Thawri: “You are but a numbered
set of days. When one day goes, a part of
you goes as well. And when the part is lost, the whole is sure to be lost too.”86 In other words, the ascetic self is defined by acts of devotion to God, which are limited
in number. Losing
days from one’s devotion
to God is like losing
part of oneself.
One
of the early accounts attributed to Rabi’a expresses a similarly instrumental ethic.
This account appears in Masari’ al-‘ushshaq (Battlefields of the Lovers)
by Ja’far ibn Ahmad al- Sarraj of Baghdad (d. 1106 CE). It recounts
the story of a dream in which Rabi’a is chastised by a houri of Heaven for neglecting her nighttime prayers
and night-vigils (tahajjud and
qiyam al- layl). These nightly
devotions are so often associated with the nasik in
early Islamic literature that they can be regarded as typical markers
of ascetic ritualism:
Rabi'a
al-'Adawiyya said: "I was struck by an illness that prevented me from
doing my night vigils. So, instead, I
read a section of the Qur'an during the daytime for some days, for it is stated
that reading a section (juz’) of the
Qur'an every day is equivalent to performing night vigils.”
She continued:
“Then Allah Most High and Exalted, granted me my health. During the period of my sickness, I became accustomed to reading
a section of the Qur'an [every day]
and found solace in doing so. I
stopped my night vigils, and one night during my sleep I had a vision in my
dream, as if I were lifted up to a green garden (rawda) with palaces and beautiful vegetation. While I was walking around it and
marveling in its beauty, I saw a green bird and a slave-girl (jariyya) chasing the bird, as if she wanted
to catch it. Her beauty preoccupied
me from the bird’s beauty and I said to her, ‘What do you want from him? Leave him alone, by God, for I have never
seen a bird more beautiful than
this!’
“’Indeed!’ the girl replied.
Then she took me by the hand and led me around the garden
83 Ibid, 215
84 Eliezer Diamond,
Holy Men and Hunger
Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture
(Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 60
85 Ibrahim and Johnson-Davies, Forty Hadith Qudsi, 68. This hadith
can also be found in Bukhari.
86 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 278-79;
this account comes from one of the sources used by Sulami,
but it
was reported in Sifat al-safwa by
Ibn al-Jawzi.
until we reached
the door of the palace within. She
asked for it to be opened, and it opened for her. Then she said, ‘Open for me the House of Vision (iftahu-li bayta lamqa)!’” [Rabi’a said]: “A door opened for her from
which emanated brilliant rays, whose light illuminated what was in front of me
and what was behind me. Then the girl said to me, ‘Enter!’ And I entered a house whose brilliance and
beauty bewildered the sight. I do not
know of anything in this World comparable to it. As we were walking around the house, a door rose before us that
opened into an enclosed garden (bustan). The girl descended toward it and I with
her. We were met by maidens (wusafa') with faces like pearls, holding
braziers in their hands. The girl
asked them: ‘What is your
destination?’ They said, ‘We are
seeking someone who died as a martyr at sea.’
The girl said, ‘Will you not anoint this woman [meaning me] with your
incense?’ They replied, ‘She had the
chance to receive it but she gave it up.’ Then
the girl let go of my hand, turned toward me, and said in verse:
‘Your prayers
are light when people are asleep,
‘But your sleep is the sworn enemy of prayer.
‘Were you to think
for just a moment, you would see your life as a treasure,
‘Eternally moving, departing, and passing away.’
[Rabi’a said]:
“Then she disappeared from my sight, and I awoke at the appearance of dawn. By God, each time I recall her or imagine
her, I lose my mind and hate myself.” Then Rab'ia fell into a faint. 87
In
this account, the ascetic self is defined by acts of devotion to God,
which are limited in number and can be lost forever.
Nightly vigils and prayers are portrayed as an investment that produces definite and tangible rewards.
If Rabi’a ceases to make deposits into her spiritual account, she cannot hope to
profit from it.
The balance sheet of ritualized acts that characterized the practices of the nasik
symbolized the instrumental aspect of Islamic
asceticism. The nasik performed ritualized ascetic
acts with specific goals in mind. According
to Catherine Bell,
ritual practice is by nature
both situational and strategic: “It is a ceaseless play of situationally effective schemes, tactics,
and strategies.”88 The nasik was
constantly in search
of effective schemes,
tactics, and strategies in order to earn God’s favor. This search was often visible to the public.
As the performance artists of Islamic
asceticism, nussak were regarded
in the popular imagination as the “monks”
(ruhban) of Islam. Like the Syrian Christian
ihidaya, they often exhibited
a mournful demeanor
and were sometimes called
“weepers” (bakka’un) for making the ritualized expression of sorrow part of
their path. Many nussak also ritualized the practice of struggle against
the ego (mujahada, also called ijtihad or
juhd). Displaying a literalistic understanding of mujahada (the
term is related in meaning to jihad),
they put their bodies on the line as ascetic
“warriors” in God’s service, and
87
Abu Muhammad Ja’far ibn Ahmad b. al-Husayn al-Sarraj
al-Qari’, Masari’ al-‘ushshaq (Beirut:
Dar Sadir, n.d.), vol. 1, 207-8; this account
is attributed to “Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya the Sufi.” However,
because it is supposed to
have come from Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Burjulani via a source from Aleppo
this leaves open the possibility that it is really about Rabi’a bint Isma’il of
Syria (d. before 845 CE). For more on
this figure see the discussion below and in Chapter 4.
88 Bell, Ritual Theory,
Ritual Practice, 82; I disagree
with Bell’s opinion
that ritual practice
always
involves a lack of intentionality or a misrecognition of what it is meant to accomplish. While this may be
the case for other religious rituals, the ritualization of ascetic practice is
both conscious and intentional.
sometimes subjected themselves to personal mortifications or died on the battlefield against unbelievers.89
One such ascetic warrior
(mujahid mujtahid) was ‘Utba ibn Aban al-Ghulam, a disciple
of al-Hasan al-Basri who lived
in Basra during
Rabi’a’s time. Like the Syrian
Christian ihidaya, he was noted for his penitence and sorrowful demeanor
and mortified his flesh by fasting and binding himself in chains.
In the end, he attained
his desire to be a witness to God’s truth (shahid)
by being martyred in battle against the Byzantines.90 Perhaps because of the instrumentality and zeal of nussak such as ‘Utba al-Ghulam, the rationalist theologian Jahiz distrusted such ascetics
and tended to regard them as extremists. Although he admired
Rabi’a’s reputation, by discussing her and other female Sunni ascetics along with Kharijite and Shiite women who had met their deaths through gruesome
forms of execution, he implies that the
practices of the nussak sometimes went beyond the limits of what was religiously appropriate.91
For Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, nusk was the most characteristic form of asceticism practiced by Rabi’a’s female predecessors and contemporaries. For Sulami,
nusk was the outward sign of the spirituality of Sufi women. His Book of Sufi Women is full of nasikat, and in one case, even the elusive term nusk itself appears.92 For Sulami, as for the lexicographer Ibn Manzur, the designation of a Sufi woman as ‘abida (“worshipper”) or muta’abbida
(literally, “one who acts like a slave”) indicated
that she was also a nasika. For example, in Sulami’s book a
woman from Jerusalem named Lubaba is called both muta’abbida
and nasika.93 She is described as a specialist in nusk and ascetic
self-discipline (mujahada), and is portrayed
as a ritual specialist who prescribes prayers for men the way a doctor might prescribe
medicine. The instrumentality of Lubaba’s approach
to spirituality is revealed in her statement that the objective of making invocations to God is that “[God]
will be pleased
with you, that He will make you attain the station of those who find their satisfaction in Him, and that He will magnify
your reputation among His protégés (awliya’).”94 However,
Lubaba was not only an outward ritualist. Like Rabi’a, she also had an inner dimension
that was revealed
by her practice of wara’ and
her sense of shame at being preoccupied with anything other than God: “I am ashamed lest God see me
preoccupied with anything
other than Him.” For Sulami,
this was a sign that Lubaba had attained ma’rifa, the knowledge of God. However, like other nasikat, her spiritual method
was not one of contemplation but of action.
According to Sulami’s
depiction of Lubaba,
it is only in action where
she finds her repose: “The more I am a mujtahida
in worship, the more comfortable I become with its practice. When I become
weary of human
company, [my mujahada] allows
me
89 A similar
understanding of asceticism as a form of spiritual warfare could also be found
in Syrian Christianity, where ascetic practice was discussed as a “struggle,”
“fight,” “battle,” or “war.” See
Arthur Voobus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian
Orient (Louvain, Belgium:
Catholic University of America and Catholic University of Louvain, 1958),
vol. 1, 13.
90 Massignon, Essay, 114 and n. 158; there is no clear death date for ‘Utba al-Ghulam
in the sources.
91 See, for example, Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 194.
92 This is in the second of Sulami’s notices
on Lubaba al-‘Abida
(or al-Muta’abbida) of Syria. See the
discussion below and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 124-5.
93 Ibid, 82-3 and124-5
94 Ibid, 82
to
find intimacy in the invocation of God. When I get tired of talking to people, I find rest in my dedication to God and in fulfilling my
service to Him.”95
d.
Faqr
(Poverty)
The concept of faqr (“poverty” or “need”) has become so important to Sufism that Annemarie Schimmel characterized it as “the central attitude
in Sufi life.”96 Words that express this concept, such as the Arabic term faqir (“fakir”) or the Persian
term darvish (“dervish”) have also
come to stand
for the Sufi in European
languages. The image
of a life of poverty
and self- denial has become so important to the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic
since the twelfth
century that one could just as well call her “Rabi’a
the Faqira.” As Margaret
Smith stated, “Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya was an ascetic who followed the path of poverty and self-denial with unwavering
steps to the end.”97 In the prosopographical collection Sifat al-safwa, Jamal
al-Din ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201 CE) includes
a striking description of Rabi’a the Ascetic that confirms her reputation as a person who lived in extreme poverty.
Muhammad ibn ‘Amr
said: I visited Rabi’a when she was an old woman of eighty years of age. She looked like a shrunken, old water-skin
and appeared to be on the verge of collapsing.
In her house, I saw a worn rectangular mat and a clothes rack made of Persian reeds, extending about two spans
up from the floor. The door to the
house was covered by a skin, perhaps made from mullet. There were also a jar, a mug, and a piece of felt that served as her bed and prayer
rug. On the clothes rack made of
reeds, she had hung her burial shrouds.98
The Arabic term faqr, “poverty,” comes from the root f-q-r, which means, “to pierce, to bore
[holes in something], to perforate.” Thus, when faqr is
used as a term for poverty, it connotes both affliction and need. In other words, the poor person (faqir) is like a sieve: “pierced full of holes” by the affliction of poverty, the faqir has nothing
and cannot possess
anything. It is from
this sense of the root f-q-r that Sufis derived the meaning of faqr as an existential state of
insufficiency or need. This is the way faqr is expressed in certain verses
of the Qur’an as well.
In several verses of the Qur’an,
humanity is portrayed
as poor or needy (fuqara’). “Poor” humanity is contrasted with God, who is “The Self-Sufficient” (al-Ghani, literally, “the one who needs
nothing”). One of the clearest
Qur’anic verses that links poverty
to humanity’s need for
God is the following: “O humanity! You are in need of God (antum al-fuqara’ ila Allah) but God
is the Self-Sufficient (al-Ghani), the Praiseworthy (al-Hamid)” (Qur’an,
35:15). Clearly, it was
not a major step for Sufis to define faqr as existential neediness
rather than as mere physical
or material deprivation.
95 Ibid, Arabic
text 83; I have changed
the translation of this statement
somewhat from what is in the original version.
96 Annemarie Schimmel,
Mystical Dimensions of Islam
(Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North
Carolina
Press, 1986 reprint
of 1975 first edition), 120
97 Smith, Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge), 20 and (Oneworld), 40
98 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 711 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 276-7; this account
cannot be taken as a first-hand empirical description of Rabi’a’s physical
condition because there is no chain of transmission (isnad) to support its attribution to
“Muhammad ibn ‘Amr.”
However, given
the close connection in the Qur’an
between the concept
of poverty and humanity’s need for God, it is surprising that the intentional cultivation of poverty
as a spiritual path does not seem to have been widely acknowledged in Rabi’a’s time. Although this assertion
may seem surprising, since some early ascetics
such as Ibrahim ibn Adham were famous for
giving up their wealth for a life of poverty,
a close examination of early Muslim
sources on asceticism indicates
that those who intentionally cultivated poverty were the exception rather
than the rule. Also the treatises
of early Sufi theorists such as Sarraj
and Kalabadhi, who discuss
poverty as an important aspect of Sufism,
cite virtually no one as an authority on the spiritual path of poverty who lived in the first two centuries
of Islam. In their works,
one finds citations
of the Qur’an such as those reproduced above and traditions of the Prophet
or his Companions that
discuss the poverty of early Muslims; however,
few citations from Rabi’a’s time can be found
that equate asceticism with the intentional cultivation of poverty.99 This curious lacuna in the sources requires an explanation.
Statements attributed to Rabi’a also follow this pattern. For example, Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur reproduces an account
of Rabi’a going
to an ‘Id prayer with al-Hasan al-Basri’s student Muhammad ibn Wasi’. Ibn Wasi’,
who was wearing his finest
clothes for this occasion, asks Rabi’a, “What do you think of my attire?”
“What should I say to you?” Rabi’a
replies. “You go out
among people to revive the Sunna and eliminate innovation. However, I see by your boasting
about God’s grace that you have caused harm to the poor person (adkhaltum 'ala al-faqir
madarratan).” 100 In this statement, Rabi’a’s
reference to the poor is about the economically
poor, not about those who have made themselves poor for spiritual reasons. She tells
Ibn Wasi’ that by dressing in his finest
clothes he has made the poor feel ashamed for their poverty.
In later centuries, both the content
and the meaning of Rabi’a’s
rebuke of Ibn Wasi’ were
changed from Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
version of the story. For example, in Mir’at al-zaman
(Mirror of the Times) by the Hanbali
historian Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1257 CE: the grandson
of Jamal al-Din Ibn al-Jawzi), Rabi’a’s
concern for the feelings of the poor is replaced
by a comment on the hypocrisy
of religious figures
that claim piety while displaying wealth. “You displayed a love of luxury and soft living
and thereby you brought humiliation upon the Muslims.”101 The story changes
even more dramatically in Sufi hands.
In Kalabadhi’s Kitab al- ta’arruf, which was written
at the end of the tenth century
CE, the figure of Rabi’a disappears
from the story entirely. Instead, the subject of the story is the male Sufi Abu al-Husayn
al-Nuri (d. 907-8 CE), who recites a poem about the existential meaning of poverty (faqr) as it came to be
understood in later Sufi doctrine.102
As
in the account from Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur’s Balaghat al-nisa, the earliest works on
Islamic asceticism tend to discuss
poverty as material
rather than as spiritual. For example,
99
Similarly, the Persian Sufi Kharkushi opens his chapter on
poverty and wealth in Tahdhib al-asrar with
the following hadith: “Everything has two keys. The key to heaven is love for the poor (al-masakin). The
persevering poor (al-fuqara’ al-subar)
will sit with God Most High on the Day of Judgment.” This tradition praises
those who love the poor and who are already
poor, but it does not call for the cultivation of poverty as a way of life.
Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar,
154
100 Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,
Balaghat al-nisa’, 210
101 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 42 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 22. The repetition of the same story about Rabi’a
by Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and later writers supports
the contention made in Chapter
1 that Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s “Rabi’a al-Masma’iyya” is
the same person as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
102 Kalabadhi, al-Ta’arruf, 67 and Arberry,
The Doctrine of the Sufis, 87
whenever the subject of poverty comes up in early works of asceticism, the discussion is literal
rather than theoretical. In other words, poverty
is discussed as a state
of material privation rather than as a spiritual practice. In addition, the traditions used to extol poverty describe
poverty more as an opportunity to practice patience
(sabr) than as an intentional practice
of deprivation.
Perhaps most importantly, the infliction of physical pain through poverty,
which some scholars have seen “as part of the very definition of asceticism,” is largely absent
from early ascetical works in Islam.103
The most characteristic attitude that one
finds in early Muslim
discussions of poverty is
patient acceptance of God’s will. For example, Ibn Mubarak opens his chapter
on poverty in Kitab al-zuhd
by quoting the Prophet Muhammad’s Companion ‘Abdullah ibn Mas’ud (d. 653
CE): “The two most hateful
things are death and poverty,
but what is more of God than wealth
and poverty? I have no idea which of them I should reject because
God has ordained an obligation for each. In the case of wealth,
it is compassion and in the case of poverty,
it is patience.”104 One of the lessons
of this tradition, which sets the stage for the discussion of poverty in Ibn Mubarak’s book, is that there is little value
in seeking poverty
for its own sake. Rather, one must accept either poverty
or wealth as God’s will and be prepared to fulfill the moral
responsibilities required for each.105 A statement by Ibn Mubarak
cited by Kharkushi makes the same point: “The appearance of wealth in poverty is better than poverty itself”
(izhar al-ghina’ fi- l-faqr
ahsan min al-faqr).106
The relation between poverty
and patience that characterizes Ibn Mubarak’s treatment of poverty brings
up another observation about this concept
in early Islam. To the extent
that poverty was viewed
as part of asceticism, it was only one of several indicators of the ascetic
life. Poverty was undoubtedly common among early
Muslim ascetics, but it was not seen as the quintessence of zuhd.
Although the term faqir (“the poor one”) eventually became a synonym
for sufi, it does not appear originally to have been a synonym
for zahid, “ascetic.” As we saw in the previous section of this chapter, the zahid in early Islam was more often equated with the nasik,
the ascetic ritualist. This understanding is reflected in one of the most important early works on Islamic asceticism, Kitab al-zuhd (The
Book of Renunciation) by Abu Mas’ud al-Mu’afa
ibn ‘Imran (d. 801 CE).
Mu’afa was a student
of Sufyan al-Thawri and knew Ibn Mubarak. He was born in Mosul
in northern Iraq and died in the same year as Rabi’a.
His book provides
one of the clearest available pictures
of Islamic asceticism in Rabi’a’s time. For Mu’afa,
poverty as an aspect of asceticism consisted primarily in avoiding the moral pitfalls
of wealth and in traveling
lightly through life (khiffat al-hal).107 The proper attitude
toward poverty was to regard oneself as God’s
slave (mamluk) and submit
to God’s will with patience
and humility. However,
if God decreed
103 See, for example,
Elizabeth A. Clark,
“The Ascetic Impulse
in Religious Life,”
in Wimbush and Valentasis, Asceticism, 507.
104 Ibn Mubarak, Kitab al-zuhd, 199
105 Similar teachings
can also be found in Eastern Christian
asceticism. The late fourth-century CE woman
ascetic Amma
Theodora said that neither renunciation, nor vigils, nor self-induced suffering
are able to save one’s soul. Only
sincere humility can do so. See
Benedicta Ward trans., The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers (Kalamazoo, Michigan
and Oxford, U. K.: Cistercian Publications and A. R. Mowbray,
1984), 84.
106 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 157
107 Abu Mas’ud
al-Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran
al-Mawsili, Kitab al-zuhd, ed. ‘Amir Hasan
Sabri (Beirut: Dar
al-
Bashir al-Islamiyya, 1999), 202
that one was to be rich,
this was also to be borne with patience and humility. The chief value
of poverty was that it made it easier
for the ascetic
to resist temptation. The less one possessed, the less
one would be called to account for one’s moral
failings (la hisaba ‘alayhi).108 When Mu’afa
cites a hadith from the Prophet stating,
“The poor (al-fuqara’) among
the believers will enter
heaven forty years before the rich,” the point of the lesson
is not to advocate material
poverty per se. Rather,
it is to remind the reader of the moral burdens of wealth and power.109
Ascetic fasting—
the systematic inducement of hunger as part of the path of
renunciation— was an important aspect of poverty
for early Christian anchorites. However, this practice only rarely appears
in early Islamic
discussions of asceticism. Some early Muslim ascetics are depicted as practicing severe
forms of fasting,
but this is most often discussed as part
of ascetic ritualism (nusk).
For example, in the book Kitab al-makasib, Muhasibi
describes some ascetics in Basra as practicing what he calls “preventive hunger”
(ju’ al-man’). This involved
the periodic abstention from food in order to prevent desire
or foster humility.110 According
to Muhasibi, other ascetics
in Basra also cultivated hunger
as a means of training
the soul (al-ta’dib
li-l-nafs).111 It is possible that Rabi’a belonged
to this latter group. However,
even these Basra ascetics should not be confused with Christian anchorites. Some early Muslim
writers criticized
Christian-style ascetic fasting
for endangering the health.112 In Kitab al-makasib, Muhasibi strongly criticizes ascetics who practice extreme
fasting and likens Christian-style anchoretic fasting to suicide. For Muhasibi, such practices are immoral because
they are contrary
to human nature. In a statement
that goes against
later Sufi practices, he asserts, “One who encourages people to fast disobeys
God, for he knows that hunger kills.”113
Much
like Muhasibi, ‘Abdallah
ibn Mubarak associates poverty with hunger
but he does not advocate fasting
as a method for inducing
poverty through hunger.
Instead, he is most
concerned about overeating. In one of the more humorous accounts
in Kitab al-zuhd, the Caliph
‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (d. 644 CE) is making the Hajj pilgrimage with the future Umayyad Caliph Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan
(d. 680 CE). During their journey, ‘Umar
criticizes Mu’awiya for having a stomach so big that it “almost
touches the sun.”114 The point of this story is to contrast
‘Umar’s ascetic simplicity with the gluttony
of Mu’awiya, whose Umayyad successors were criticized for their
love of luxury and the pleasures of the World. Ibn Mubarak
praises abstention from food as a sign of simplicity, but not as a means to induce spiritual poverty
through hunger. Significantly, there is no chapter on fasting in his book. Although Ibn Mubarak encourages Muslims to follow a life of abstinence and simplicity, he does not advocate fasting
to induce a
108 Ibid, 202-3
109 Ibid, 204
110 Muhasibi, al-Makasib in
al-Masa’il, 226-7
111 Ibid, 226
112 The ascetic
al-Aswad b. Yazid
ibn Qays (d. 694-5 CE) of Kufa was said to have mortified his flesh so
severely from fasting that it became
“green and yellow.”
He also became
blind in one eye as a result
of his fasting. For this practice, his contemporaries
called him “one of the monks” (rahib min
al-ruhban). His uncle, the
traditionist ‘Alqama ibn Qays al-Nakha’i (d. 682 CE), criticized al-Aswad for
these practices because they harmed his health. See Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 2, 102-5 and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat
al-safwa, vol. 2, 507-8.
113 Muhasibi, al-Makasib in
al-Masa’il, 227
114 Ibn Mubarak, Kitab al-zuhd, 203
state of permanent hunger
or poverty. This appears to be because
he viewed fasting
primarily as a ritual
observance.
Ibn Mubarak’s view of
fasting as a ritual observance follows
that of the Qur’an. In one
Qur’anic verse, fasting
is described as a means of instilling awareness of God’s power: “Oh you
who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you even as it was prescribed for those before you, so that
you may become aware of God” (Qur’an,
2:183). After the tenth century
CE, Sufis would use
this verse to justify fasting
as a means to attain spiritual poverty.
However, fasts are more often described in the Qur’an
as having a ritual value: they are mandated as expiations (kaffara) for sins,
such as the two-month fast for involuntary manslaughter (Qur’an, 4:92), or the three-day fast for
breaking an oath (Qur’an, 5:98).
The Qur’an also mentions fasting
as part of a vow, such as when
the Virgin Mary vows a fast to God in order to avoid having to speak to men during her pregnancy (Qur’an, 19:26). Other ritualistic fasts are mentioned
in the Hadith, such as fasting
three days out of every month, fasting
on alternate days (which the Prophet called
the “Fast of David”), fasting on the Day of ‘Arafa during the Hajj pilgrimage, and fasting on Mondays and Thursdays.115
Qur’anic verses and Hadith
accounts also insist on moderation in rituals concerning food,
which further distances the practice of fasting from its use as an inducement to poverty. For example, the Qur’an alludes
to Jewish Kosher
regulations when it criticizes the People of the
Book for being excessive in their religious
practices (la taghlu fi dinikum) (Qur’an,
2:171). Similarly, the Prophet
Muhammad specifically forbade
continuous fasting, saying,
“Your wife has a right over you, your visitor
has a right over you, and your body has a right over you.”116 Thus, despite
the fact that some Muslim ascetics practiced extreme forms of fasting, it was
difficult for them to justify
this practice in the face of stipulations in Qur’an and Hadith that argued for moderation. Because
they strictly adhered
to these scriptural teachings, Ibn Mubarak and other mainstream ascetics
primarily conceived of fasting as one of the ritual
obligations of Islam. To the extent that fasting had anything
to do with asceticism, it was as part of nusk, ascetic
ritualism.
The relationship between
fasting and asceticism was to change significantly in later centuries, when some Sufis adopted ritualized fasting as a way of inducing a greater sense of
God-consciousness. For example,
the twelfth-century Andalusian Sufi Abu Madyan considered
fasting so important to the Sufi Way that he begins his Sufi manual Bidayat al-murid (Basic Principles of the Sufi Path) with a discussion of this practice. Abu Madyan required
his disciples to perform
a fast called “The Fast of Intimate
Union” (sawm al-wisal), whose origins he traced to the
Prophet Moses. This was a set of ritualized ascetic practices (i.e.,
manasik), lasting
up to forty days, which combined
retreat, ascetic fasting,
and the constant practice of invocations.117
115 See, for example,
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
al-Nisaburi, Sahih Muslim, trans.
‘Abdul Hamid Siddiqi
(New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1978), vol. 2, 548-53 and 561-70.
116 Ibid, 562-63
(hadiths 2587 and 2588)
117 See V. Cornell, The Way of Abu Madyan, 30-31.
The Fast of Moses that Abu Madyan
refers to was
based on the
forty-day fast performed by Moses on Mount Sinai before he received the divine
revelation of the Ten Commandments. However,
according to the scholar of Jewish asceticism Eliezer Diamond, “Moses’
abstention from food was not a true fast; it appears not to have been a
decision taken consciously on his part but rather was a natural result of his being in God’s presence”
(Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger
Artists, 95). Diamond’s view of
abstention from food as a byproduct of God-consciousness is similar to that of
early Muslim ascetics. A more fitting
biblical precedent for Abu Madyan would have been the fast
To justify this fast, Abu Madyan cites Rabi’a as an advocate of hunger as a spiritual
practice. “Someone asked Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, ‘By what is the Intimate united
to God Most High?’ ‘By hunger,’ she replied. Then she was asked, ‘So what is hunger?’ She said, ‘Hunger
is the act of keeping oneself
away from worldly
delights. One who keeps away from the delights of the
World attains his goal in the Hereafter.’”118
Abu Madyan’s depiction of Rabi’a as an advocate
of hunger does not appear in any other
extant source. Although on the surface this account seems to confirm
that Rabi’a was one of Muhasibi’s hunger artists of Basra, one could also argue that Rabi’a is not advocating the literal practice of hunger, as Abu Madyan
thought she was. Rather, she is saying
that all acts of
renunciation are metaphorically a form of hunger, since they conform
to the World/Nonworld Dichotomy. A similar
sentiment can be found in Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran’s Kitab al-zuhd, which was written during Rabi’a’s lifetime.
In this work, Mu’afa quotes an early ascetic of Basra named ‘Amir ibn ‘Abd Qays (d. ca. 680 CE), who states
that the World
consists of four desires: money, women, sleep, and food. ‘Amir claimed
to have completely removed women and money from his life
by renouncing them outright. However,
sleep and food were another
matter. They were so
necessary for life that he could not decide which of them was more harmful. ‘Amir’s
solution to this problem
was to do the opposite
of whatever his body desired.
“My self-discipline (juhdi) is that
when it is night I stand [in prayer] and when it is day I sleep and fast.”119 ‘Amir was one of
the minority of early Muslim ascetics who seems to have practiced
a combination of poverty,
celibacy, and ascetic fasting as integral aspects
of his asceticism. However, none of these
practices was an end in itself. Rather,
like the fast of Abu Madyan, they were ritualized stages on the path to
God-consciousness.
III.
Schools and Traditions of Women’s Asceticism in Basra
In Essay on the Origins
of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, Louis Massignon calls the eighth century
CE the high point of Islamic asceticism.120 During this period, which coincides with Rabi’a’s
life, the asceticism of the Piety-Minded became deeply embedded in the social life of the urban centers
of Iraq and Syria, especially Basra and its environs. In my
book Early Sufi Women, I identified a tradition of Muslim women’s
asceticism in Basra
that flourished in this period.121 In this work,
I proposed that the use of educational terms such as tilmidha (“female student”) or mu’addiba (“female mentor or trainer”)
in accounts about Rabi’a
and her associates could be taken as circumstantial evidence
for the existence of schools of women
ascetics in the Basra region.122 In other words, as the representative of a century-long tradition of female ascetics, the historical Rabi’a
would not have been unique
in her asceticism.
Similarly, it is also not accurate to think of her as the founder of women’s spirituality in Islam.
of Elijah in I Kings 19, who
modeled his practice after that of Moses
as well, but fasted
for forty days with the explicit intention of obtaining
a vision of God (Ibid, 182 n. 23).
118 V. Cornell, The Way of Abu Madyan, 60-61
119 Ibn ‘Imran
al-Mawsili, Kitab al-zuhd, 312
120 Massignon, Essay,
113
121 R. Cornell,
Introduction to Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 60-63
122 See Ibid and the notice on Unaysa bint ‘Amr al-‘Adawiyya, 102-103. These terms are also discussed at
length
in Chapter 1
above.
Rather, in the tropological guise of Rabi’a the Ascetic,
she is more accurately described
as the foremost exemplar
of women’s asceticism in Basra. As such,
she stands on the threshold between the Proto-Sufism of her contemporaries and the more developed Sufism of her successors. We shall see in Chapter
4 that Rabi’a’s interiorization of the ascetic
path marked an important transition between Proto-Sufism and Sufism. However,
before discussing the path of asceticism that is associated with Rabi’a, it is important
first to understand the wider tradition
to which she would have belonged.
As noted previously, this tradition does not start
with Rabi’a but goes back to the first decades of
Islam.
a.
The Legacy of ‘A’isha
An important inspiration for the Basra tradition of women’s asceticism was ‘A’isha bint Abi
Bakr (d. 678 CE), the widow of the Prophet
Muhammad. ‘A’isha herself
did not found
this tradition. However, Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya, who founded
the school of women’s asceticism in Basra, was ‘A’isha’s
companion and is mentioned by Muslim historians as a transmitter of Hadith reports through
‘A’isha. ‘A’isha established a political base in Basra
in the months before the Battle of the Camel in 656 CE. During this period,
she and another widow of the Prophet,
Hafsa bint ‘Umar, called
on related clans and allies
to support Talha and Zubayr,
Companions of the Prophet who opposed the murder of the Caliph ‘Uthman (d. 656 CE) and the accession to the
Caliphate of the Prophet’s cousin
and son-in-law ‘Ali (d. 661 CE). The Battle of the Camel took
place in December 656 CE and is named after the camel from which
‘A’isha directed an attack
against ‘Ali’s forces.123 Among her strongest supporters in this battle were Rabi’a’s clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays. The Banu ‘Adi were also related to Hafsa and her father
the Caliph ‘Umar.124 In this
battle, ‘A’isha and the rebels of Basra were defeated
by the forces of ‘Ali and Talha and
Zubayr, the pretenders to the Caliphate, were killed. After the battle,
‘A’isha retired to Medina
where she spent the rest of her life. However, many of those who supported
her in Basra remained active in that city.
‘A’isha was noted for
asceticism during the final
twenty years of her life. Although
she spent this period
in Medina, her legacy remained
in Basra through
the influence of Mu’adha al- ‘Adawiyya. Denise Spellberg, the author of an important
study of ‘A’isha’s
legacy in Islam, sees
the tropes of ‘A’isha “the sage” and Rabi’a “the saint” as exemplifying “the two main paths of faith
in medieval Islam.” 125 However,
Spellberg does not specify what these tropes entailed.
Simply labeling ‘A’isha a sage and Rabi’a a saint is of little use because both women are honored
123
For a good synopsis of historical accounts of the Battle
of the Camel and ‘A’isha’s career after the death of the Prophet, see Nabia
Abbot, Aishah the Beloved of Mohammed (London:
Al Saqi Books, 1985 reprint of 1942 first edition), 82-176. Allen L. Fromherz calls ‘A’isha an
“Islamic Lady of Victory” because he sees her as repeating in the Battle of the
Camel a pre-Islamic Arab tradition in which noble women were used as guarantors
of honor and bravery: “The battle would rage around these women until the day was decided and the feud was lost or won. The capture
of a chief Lady of Victory meant
the end of the battle. No man with a vestige of honor would allow a rival tribesman to
approach his Lady of Victory without fighting him to the death.” Allen Fromherz, “Tribalism, Tribal Feuds,
and the Social Status of Women,” in Sonbol, ed., Gulf Women, 50-53
124 Ibid, 160
125 Denise A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender,
and the Islamic Past: the Legacy of ‘A’isha Bint Abi Bakr (New
York:
Columbia University Press,
1994), 58
as both sages and saints in the Islamic
world. In addition,
Spellberg neglects to compare
‘A’isha’s and Rabi’a’s asceticism. On this subject,
she instead compares
‘A’isha’s asceticism after the Battle of the Camel with the Virgin Mary’s
distress in giving birth to Jesus. According to Spellberg, “Both Maryam
and ‘A’isha wish for complete
oblivion during moments
of personal trial: Maryam
in the throes of childbirth ([Qur’an,] 19:23) and ‘A’isha at the end of her life.”126
This is all that Spellberg has to say about ‘A’isha’s asceticism.
By contrast, Nabia Abbot’s
biography of ‘A’isha, which was written 50 years before Spellberg’s study, provides a fuller account
of ‘A’isha’s asceticism. Abbot observes that numerous traditions “bear witness
to the almost ascetic simplicity of [‘A’isha’s] life.”127 She notes that ‘A’isha wore patched clothing
and sometimes rebuked
the Prophet’s Companions for their extravagance. During her time in Medina,
she was noted for “tearful
readings of the Qur’an
and long periods of fasting
and prayers.” At the end of her life, says Abbot, “she could not bear
to live in comfort, let alone luxury,
as long as she remembered the hardships and poverty of Mohammed’s life.”128 However, Abbot
undermines the ascetic
image that she constructs of ‘A’isha by casting doubt
on its authenticity. She remarks,
“Aishah neither stinted
herself on worldly goods nor allowed
her piety to curtail her social freedom.”129
This statement is odd because many accounts contrast
‘A’isha’s asceticism with the
behavior of her co-wife Hafsa,
who was fond of comfort
and luxury.130 Although
Abbot paints a contradictory picture of ‘A’isha’s
commitment to asceticism, she admits that “Moslem traditions came in time to draw a picture of an ascetic
and devout Aishah
whose guiding principle in life was to live in the faith,
hope for its rewards, and practice freely
its charities.”131 Muhammad
ibn Sa’d (d. 845 CE), who wrote one of the most influential tabaqat works
in early Islam, quotes
‘A’isha as telling her father,
the Caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634 CE), that her only desires
are for God, the Prophet, and the Afterlife (al-dar al-akhira).132 The question
left unanswered by such reports is whether the asceticism that ‘A’isha practiced at the end of her life was a consequence of her remorse for causing the disaster of the Battle of the Camel or whether she advocated asceticism as part of a new approach
to spirituality in general. Ibn Hanbal lends
support to the remorse
hypothesis by quoting ‘A’isha as saying after the battle,
“I wish that I were a barren
tree and had
126 The Qur’anic statement of Mary in the throes of
childbirth, “Would that I had died before this and had been forgotten without a
trace“ (ya laytani mittu qabla hadha wa kuntu nasiyyan mansiyyan), is
almost identical to a statement reported of ‘A’isha after the Battle of the
Camel: “I wish that I had been forgotten without a trace” (wadidtu anni kuntu nasiyyan mansiyyan). See Ibid, 167-8. For the original version
of this account, see Ibn
Hanbal, Kitab al-zuhd, 164.
127 Abbot, Aishah,
212
128 Ibid; Abbot’s
references to ‘A’isha’s asceticism are taken from Ibn Sa’d. See idem, al-Tabaqat al-
kubra, vol. 7, 271-84.
129 Abbot, Aishah,
213
130 See, for example, Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran,
Kitab al-zuhd, 279, where Hafsa urges her father the Caliph
‘Umar to take
better care of himself. This account
may be contrasted with another from the same source (287), where ‘A’isha testifies to the simplicity of the Prophet
Muhammad’s dress and demeanor. See also,
Ibn Hanbal, Kitab al-zuhd, 116, where
Hafsa asks her father to allocate a greater share to his family from the public
treasury.
131 Abbot, Aishah,
213-14
132 Ibn Sa’d al-Tabaqat
al-kubra, vol. 7,
277
never been born!”133 By contrast, both Ibn Mubarak
and Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran— who were Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s contemporaries— mention ‘A’isha as the source
of a teaching on sincerity that later traditionists such as Ibn Hanbal attributed to the Prophet
Muhammad: “Do not show off in
your acts of worship. Instead,
practice humility, for humility is the most excellent act of
worship.”134
b.
The School
of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya and Instrumental Asceticism
As noted in Chapter
1, the first school of women’s asceticism in Basra appears
to have been founded
by Mu’adha bint ‘Abdallah al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE). Mu’adha was the wife of
Sila ibn Ushaym al-‘Adawi (d. 694-5 CE), a noted
ascetic and mujahid who
died as a martyr
along with their son.135 In her younger days, Mu’adha was a companion
and political supporter of ‘A’isha in Basra
and transmitted Hadith
reports from ‘A’isha
to important male religious
figures such as al-Hasan al-Basri. Along
with Umm al-Darda’ al-‘Alima (“The Authority,” d. 699 CE), Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya are the most famous female religious figures of Basra. As her name indicates, Mu’adha
belonged to the same clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays
as Rabi’a. An account in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa
states that she and her husband were early exemplars of the tradition of asceticism for which the clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays was
famous.136 My theory
that the group
of female ascetics
who gathered around
Mu’adha made up a
school of ascetics is based on Sulami’s
notice on Mu’adha’s disciple Unaysa bint ‘Amr al- ‘Adawiyya (d. ca. 720 CE). In this account,
Unaysa is called
Mu’adha’s “student” (tilmidha).137
The image of a school
that this appellation implies is reinforced by an earlier
account in Ibn Sa’d’s al-Tabaqat al-kubra, where Mu’adha is depicted with her legs drawn up (muhtabiya) and teaching a group of women, who sit in a circle around her.138
Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya also appears to have been responsible for introducing the way of
disciplined servitude (ta’abbud) that for Sulami epitomized the spiritual path of women’s
Sufism. As befits an early leader
of the Piety-Minded, her approach
to religion was highly moralistic and her spiritual practices stressed prayer and the performance of night-vigils. She is depicted
as praying 600 prostrations in a twenty-four hour period and reading the Qur’an at night in a
standing position.139 The importance given to such practices indicates
that Mu’adha was a
nasika, a practitioner of ascetic ritualism. Her name, Mu’adha, may be symbolic
because it refers to the custom of seeking divine
protection (isti’adha) against external enemies
such as Satan.
The use of symbolic
names also appears
to have been common among
her followers. Ghufayra al-‘Abida (d. after 720 CE), who was one of Mu’adha’s most noted disciples, also had a symbolic
name. The term ghufayra refers to the forgiveness of sins (ghufran), while the term ‘abida means
133 Ibn Hanbal, Kitab al-zuhd, 164
134 Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran, Kitab al-zuhd, 249-50 and n. 4; Ibn Mubarak’s version
is slightly different: “Verily
you forget that the most excellent form of worship
is humility.” See idem, Kitab al-zuhd, 122.
135 Ibn al-Jawzi,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 707; see also, Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 266-9.
136 Ibid, 22 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 264
137 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 102-103
138 Ibn Sa’d, al-Tabaqat
al-kubra, vol. 8,
483
139 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 707 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 264
“worshipper.”140 Likewise,
the name of Mu’adha’s disciple
Unaysa al-‘Adawiyya means “Little
Female Intimate [of God].” 141
The most important doctrinal
characteristic of Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya and her students
was their instrumental approach to asceticism. The term instrumental asceticism was first coined by Eliezer Diamond to characterize the ascetic practices of rabbinic Judaism.
These practices involved “the passionate commitment to a spiritual quest so consuming that one feels
it necessary to minimize
or eliminate worldly
pursuits and pleasures
because they detract
from or distract
one from one’s godly objectives.”142 What makes the rabbinic attitude
toward asceticism instrumental is that ascetic practice
is focused on specific objectives. Likewise, in early
Islam, the practice
of asceticism was most often in pursuit of specific and identifiable goals. Muslim instrumental ascetics sought to obtain a specific
result for their ascetic practices
as part of a bargain
or transaction with God.143 The instrumentality of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya’s asceticism is apparent in the following statement that she made to her disciple Umm al-Aswad bint Zayd al-‘Adawiyya: “By God, my daughter! My desire to continue living in this world is neither for the sake of
luxury nor of relaxation. By God, I desire to continue living
only so that I may get closer to my Lord
the Glorious and Mighty through
acts of worship,
in the hope that He would grant
me the pleasure of joining [my husband] Abu al-Sahba’ and his son in heaven.”144 In this account, Mu’adha explains that she practices asceticism mainly for the purpose of convincing God to let her join her husband and son in the
Afterlife.
Also
like Eliezer Diamond’s rabbinic ascetics, Mu’adha
and her disciples rejected the
World not only because it was
a source of temptation and sin, but also because worldly affairs distracted
them from worship. Mu’adha was noted
for minutely managing her day in order to leave little time for anything but
religious practices. According to
Sulami, she did not lift her gaze up to the sky for forty years. She did not eat during the day and did not sleep at night.
When
told that she was causing
harm to herself with these
practices, she excused
herself by saying, “I have merely
postponed one time for another.
I have postponed sleep from night until day and have postponed
food from day until night.”145 In other words, Mu’adha used ascetic
ritualism (nusk) to turn the daytime
fasts and nighttime prayers that are normally associated with the month of Ramadan into a daily routine. If she was overcome by the need for sleep during her
140
In the edited version of Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa (vol. 2, 714) and other
sources, Ghufayra’s name is given as ‘Afira
or ‘Ufayra. Since the Arabic word ‘affara means “dusty,” ‘Uffayra
might mean “The Little Dusty One.” However,
this does not seem to be a likely appellation.
Ghufayra is a more probable
name, in that it derives from the well-established Islamic notion of ghufran (forgiveness). The literal meaning of Ghufayra
is “The Little
Woman Who Grants
Forgiveness.” This fits Ibn al-Jawzi’s description of Ghufayra as a person who was sought out by people
for intercessory prayers. The
apparent mistake in rendering her name could have been the result of an early
copyist eliminating a single dot, which marks the
difference between the letter ‘ayn (for
‘Ufayra) and the letter ghayn (for
Ghufayra).
141 Of course,
these names could also have been tropes
bestowed by early
writers. If this were the case,
they would still have been important as symbolic references.
142 Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger
Artists, 12-13
143 Instrumental asceticism also existed in early Christianity. In Latin Christianity the term instrumentum
satisfactiones was used to refer to ascetic
practices that were intended as instruments of salvation. See Sebastian Brock, “Early Syrian
Asceticism,” in idem, Syriac Perspectives
on Late Antiquity (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), 8.
144 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 708 and Sulami,
Appendix to Early Sufi Women, 268
145 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
88
nighttime vigils,
she would wander
around her house reminding herself,
“Oh soul! Eternal
sleep is ahead of you. If I were to die, your repose
in the grave would be a long one, whether
it was sorrowful or happy.”146
The women ascetics of Basra also shared with Jewish and Christian ascetics
the notion that sincere
piety demanded separation from humanity in both word and deed. Perishut, the Hebrew word most often translated as “asceticism,” connotes
separation, especially from things
or people that are regarded
as impure.147 Mu’adha’s disciple
Unaysa bint ‘Amr al-‘Adawiyya
was a practitioner of what Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE) called al-zuhd fi-l-halal, a type of ascetic perfectionism that involved
the renunciation even of things
that were permissible for the ordinary believer.148 This concept is also found in Jewish asceticism, where qedusha (Heb.)
“holiness,” results from foregoing even what is permitted.149 Similarly
in early Syrian Christianity, the qaddish or holy man was “someone apart from his surroundings, someone
who has alienated himself
from, and is unattached to the world he lives in.”150
Sometimes, however,
the act of separation from ordinary believers
might paradoxically involve entering
into society instead
of withdrawing from it. For some Basra
women ascetics, separation from ordinary women
involved earning a living in public, something
that most Muslim women at that time did not pursue. In an account
that originally came from Abu al-Husayn al- Burjulani’s ninth-century Kitab al-ruhban, Unaysa bint ‘Amr is quoted as saying,
“My spirit has never
resisted anything that I compelled it to do more strongly
than the avoidance of eating what is
permissible and earning
a living (kasb).”151 In other words, Unaysa’s practice
of asceticism led her
to act in ways that were not normal for the ordinary
Muslim woman. This is a rare example
of the ethical aspect of asceticism, in which wara’ is
not expressed as avoidance but as
involvement in a sphere of activity that would have been avoided
under normal circumstances.
c.
The Weeping
Women (al-Bakiyat) of Basra
Wherever it occurs, instrumental asceticism is practiced
in a religious environment
in which the market provides the primary model for the moral economy
of divine rewards
and punishments. In rabbinic
Judaism, says Eliezer
Diamond, “Man owes God
obedience, and every sin, whether of commission or of omission,
is a defaulted obligation, a debt.”152 In Christianity,
Paul of Tarsus says in his Letter to the Romans, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans,
6:23).
Surat al-Baqara
of the Qur’an asks, “Who will grant Allah a generous
loan? He will repay him many
times over” (Qur’an,
2:245). Behind each of these
examples is the notion that a moral economy governs the relationship between righteousness and sinfulness on the one hand, and
146 Ibid
147 Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger
Artists, 85-6
148 See Abu Hamid Muhammad
al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din (Beirut: Dar al-Ma’rifa reprint,
n.d.), vol. 4,
229 (Kitab al-faqr
wa al-zuhd); in this passage,
Ghazali attributes the origin of this concept
to Ibrahim ibn Adham.
149 Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger
Artists, 81-2
150 Brock, “Early
Syrian Asceticism,” 9; see also, Voobus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian
Orient, vol.
1, 104-106.
151 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
102
152 Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists, 67
reward and punishment on the other. In this economy of faith and morals, says Diamond, “God has
created a system
of debits, credits,
rewards and punishments and he operates
within its confines.”153
In both Jewish and early Islamic
asceticism, the divine economy
of morals was seen as a
zero-sum game, in which the portions allotted
to the believer in this life and the Hereafter were strictly controlled. In rabbinic Judaism,
this led to the belief that any pleasure enjoyed
in the World might
be deducted from the store
of rewards being
held on account
in the next world.154
The same notion of limited
goods lies behind
the statement of Rabi’a to Sufyan al-Thawri that was cited in the section
on nusk above: “You are but a numbered
set of days. When one day
goes, a part of you goes as well. And when the part is lost, the whole is sure to be lost too.” In such
an environment, the ascetic fears the consequences of even the least of her actions
because each mistake or sin of omission is likely to diminish one’s reward in heaven. In early Islamic asceticism, this belief caused the awareness
of God’s power (taqwa)
to be felt as fear of
retribution (khawf) and led to such religious expressions as preoccupation with ritual observances (nusk) or extreme
caution with regard
to issues of moral doubt (wara’).
Among some women ascetics of Basra, this ethic also led to weeping (buka’). Ascetic
weeping was such a widespread practice in Rabi’a’s time that the jurist Malik ibn Anas devoted an entire chapter
of al-Muwatta’ to “The Excellence of Weeping out of Fear of God.”155 Malik’s contemporary Ibn Mubarak
believed that if newly learned
information about God does not move one to weep it is of no benefit at all.156
Religious weeping is justified
in Islam by a verse of the Qur’an that mentions weeping as
a
sign of the recognition of divine truth:
“When the Qur’an
is recited to those who were given knowledge before it . . . they fall down on their faces weeping, and it increases
them in humility” (Qur’an, 17:109). Although Hadith reports disapprove of lamentations and hiring professional mourners at funerals, weeping
while recalling the inevitability of death is approved.157 Weeping appears to have been a widespread practice among the ascetics of Basra in the interregnal period between the Umayyad
and the Abbasid
dynasties in the mid-eighth century
CE. Massignon cites several residents of Basra
during this period
that he identifies as Bakka’un
(Weepers), including
Salih al-Murri (d. 792-93 CE), who is often mentioned
as an associate of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.158
William Chittick
rejects this classification in a recent
article on weeping
in Islam, saying, “Despite the opinions of some of the Orientalists . . . there is no evidence
that there was a group of
people known by this label.”159 Whether
or not Chittick is right
about Massignon’s use of the term
bakka’un for people like Salih al-Murri,
he is not correct in claiming that there was no label characterizing a class of ascetics as weepers. In his Book of Sufi Women, Sulami characterizes
153 Ibid
154 Ibid, 68
155 Malik, al-Muwatta’, 176
156 Ibn Mubarak,
Kitab al-zuhd, 41; this important text was overlooked by William C. Chittick in his
article, “Weeping
in Classical Sufism,”
in Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley,
eds. Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 132-44. This oversight caused Chittick to conclude incorrectly that the
early Sufi tradition did not devote much attention to the practice of weeping.
157 Chittick, “Weeping
in Classical Sufism,”
143 n. 4
158 Massignon, Essay,
114
159 Chittick, “Weeping in Classical Sufism,”
133
the late eighth-century ascetic
Sha’wana of al-Ubulla
as “one of the weepers
(al-bakiyat), and one
who induces others to weep (al-mubkiyat).”160 Clearly,
since Sulami saw the need to classify weepers into two separate
categories, a well-established tradition of ascetic
weeping must have existed in his time and probably
in early Islam as well. Three women ascetics
of the Basra region, spanning the period from Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya to the generation just before Rabi’a, illustrate this tradition and its role in early Islamic asceticism.161
Ghufayra al-‘Abida (d. ca. 720 CE) was one of the most important disciples of Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya. She apparently was an important figure in the now lost Kitab al-ruhban of Burjulani, who claims that she wept until she became blind.162 As mentioned earlier,
Ghufayra’s nickname, al-‘Abida, means “The Worshipper” and refers to the fact that she was a practitioner of ascetic ritualism (nusk).
As we have seen, ascetic
ritualism is associated with the notion that the relationship between the human being and God is framed in terms of obligations and debts. This is
illustrated by Ghufayra’s response when someone
sympathizes with her for her blindness:
“Being veiled from God is worse [than blindness]. And the blindness
of the heart from
understanding what God desires from His commands
is even greater.”163 In this statement, Ghufayra complains that ignorance of God is a sin because it prevents people
from knowing the extent of their obligations toward God, even before trying to fulfill
them.
Ibn al-Jawzi’s account of Ghufayra in the book Sifat al-safwa provides further evidence that her weeping was due to the fear that her balance sheet of pious and virtuous
acts would come up
short on the Day of Judgment. “I have sinned
against you, oh God, with each of my
extremities. By God, if you aid me, I will do my best to obey you with every extremity with which I have disobeyed you.”164 In another
account, we see that for Ghufayra, weeping
seems to have been a way of adding
extra credit to her balance
sheet. When asked
if she becomes depressed from crying
so much, she replies, “How could someone
who has fallen
ill from something become
weary of that which contains
the cure for her illness?”165 Nothing,
including a visit by her favorite
nephew, was capable
of drawing Ghufayra
away from her fear of the trials that she needed to undergo in order to pass from the World
to the Nonworld: “By God, I cannot find any place for joy in my heart while I am thinking
of the Hereafter. The news of my nephew’s arrival reminded me of the day of my encounter
with God. So I find myself between joy and devastation.”166
A similarly fear-based asceticism motivated the weeping of ‘Ubayda bint Abi Kilab (d.
ca. 745 CE), a noted woman ascetic from a village
outside of Basra who lived in the generation
after Ghufayra. Sulami refers to ‘Ubayda as “sound in judgment” (‘aqila), which indicates that
160 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 106-7
161 The Egyptian
writer Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq,
quoting a statement of her uncle,
Shaykh al-Azhar
Mustafa ‘Abd al-Raziq (d. 1950), claims
that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was “the first to place the principles of love and
sorrow in the temple of Islamic mysticism.” However,
except for Ibn al-Jawzi, no early writer describes Rabi’a as weeping
to the extent that she would be considered one of the “weepers” of Basra. See Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya
bayn al-ghina’ wa al-buka’ (Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya between Wealth
and Weeping) (Cairo: The Anglo-Egyptian Book Shop, 1982), 129.
162 See Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, who cites Burjulani
in the isnad of
his account, 96.
163 Ibid
164 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 714 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 286
165 Ibid, 287; this account
also came from Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban.
166 Ibid
she
was not considered insane or hysterical for her weeping.167 For twenty years,
she associated with Malik
ibn Dinar (d. 745 CE), a famous
disciple of al-Hasan
al- Basri. ‘Ubayda
would often visit Ibn Dinar in the company
of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz
ibn Salman, a preacher who practiced pious retreats in an underground cell (sardab)
beneath his house.168 According
to the Sufi prosopographer Isfahani, Ibn Salman’s spiritual
practice was also based on the fear of God.
Whenever he mentioned the Day of Judgment in his sermons,
he would cry out, and others in the
audience who followed a similar
path would respond
to him. At times, we are told, people would drop dead from the terror of God’s judgment
in his teaching sessions.169 Motivated
by a similar fear of divine
judgment, ‘Ubayda wept for forty
years until she became blind.
The self- mortification that she practiced
led her to hope for death, both to earn martyrdom through spiritual combat and to release herself
from the moral dangers of the World: “By God, every
morning I get up fearing
that I will commit a sin against
myself that will lead to my perdition on the Day of Judgment!”170 The notion of asceticism as martyrdom is characteristic of instrumental
asceticism because martyrdom is sought instrumentally as a key to heaven.
In the market-based ethic of limited
good followed by ‘Ubayda, every day carried
the danger of sins of omission and commission that might cause her moral account to end up with a negative balance. This attitude
is also a common characteristic of instrumental asceticism.
What
might be described
as a “science of weeping”
characterized the ascetic
practice of
Sha’wana (d. ca. 770 CE), a contemporary of Rabi’a who was the most important
woman ascetic of the Iraqi port city of al-Ubulla. Accounts
of Sha’wana’s weeping
confirm Massignon’s contention that the Weepers
of the Basra region made up a category of ascetics that was separate from other practitioners of asceticism. In his short
notice on Sha’wana, Sulami tells us that she recited the Qur’an and preached to the public
and that her lectures were attended by several
categories of the Piety-Minded. These included renunciants (zuhhad), worshippers (‘ubbad), intimates of God (mutaqarribun), “masters
of hearts” (arbab al-qulub), and female practitioners of self-mortification (mujahidat). As for Sha’wana
herself, Sulami classifies her as one of the self-disciplinarians (mujtahidat), the fearful (kha’ifat), the weepers (bakiyat), and the inducers
of weeping (mubkiyat).171
The more detailed account
of Sha’wana by Ibn al-Jawzi
confirms another of Massignon’s
theories: that weeping
as a spiritual practice in Basra was connected doctrinally to al-Hasan al- Basri’s teachings about sorrow
(huzn).172 A major source
of information about Sha’wana was Malik ibn Daygham, the son of Daygham ibn Malik, a student of Hasan and one of the first people to refer to himself as a Sufi.173 Daygham
was curious about Sha’wana but because of his
advanced age, he could not travel from Basra to al-Ubulla to see her. Thus, on several occasions
167 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 134-5
168 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 715 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 290
169 Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 6, 243-5.
One of those who dropped
dead from ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Salman’s
sermons
may have been Rabi’a’s student
Maryam of Basra.
See Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 84.
170 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 715 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 290
171 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 106-7
172 Massignon, Essay,
114 n. 158
173 See Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 682-4. Ibn al-Jawzi
suggests that Daygham
ibn Malik’s
ritualistic
approach to asceticism was due to his mother, who was a Bedouin. He was said to be unique in his sadness
and the extent to which
he afflicted his body with austerities. He said, “If I knew that it would
bring about God’s satisfaction, I would call upon the cleaver to cut my flesh
into pieces.”
he sent his son Malik, who reported to him on Sha’wana’s condition. Often, her bouts of weeping were so severe that her guests
became embarrassed and had to leave. One ascetic
complained that he stopped
attending Sha’wana’s gatherings because her profuse
weeping made it impossible
to understand what she had to say. Sha’wana defended
herself from such criticism saying,
“Any one of you who is able to weep should weep or at least
be compassionate toward the one who
weeps. For the weeper only weeps because
of his awareness of what has affected
his soul.”174 At one point, she was so overcome by grief that she could neither pray nor perform
other acts of worship. Then a visitor
came to her in her dreams and recited the following verses:
Scatter tears from your eyes if you are truly distressed, For wailing heals the
sorrowful.
Strive, stand,
and fast steadfastly at all times, For steadfastness comes from
obedience.175
The most interesting accounts
about Sha’wana reported
by Ibn al-Jawzi are descriptions of her tears. In one account,
she says: “By God, I want to weep until I run out of tears. Then I
will weep blood until not a single drop of blood is left in my body. This is how far I am from real weeping!”176 One day, Daygham
ibn Malik received
a man from al-Ubulla who described
Sha’wana’s weeping. Daygham asked detailed questions
about her weeping:
“How does she begin
her weeping?” “Whenever
she begins a session of invocation, you will see tears pouring from her eyelids like rain.” “Which
are more abundant— the tears coming
from the inner corner
of the eye beside the nose, or the tears coming from the outer corner of the eye beside the temple?” “Her tears are too numerous
to distinguish one from another.
From the moment
she begins her invocations, they flow, all at once, from the four parts of her eyes.” Then Daygham
wept and said, “It seems to me that fear has burned
up her entire heart! It has been said that an
increase or decrease of tears
is proportional to the extent
of the burning of the heart. When the
heart has been fully consumed,
the practitioner of sorrow (al-hazin) can weep whenever
he wants to do so. Thus, the smallest
amount of invocation will cause him to weep.”177
Daygham’s assessment of Sha’wana’s weeping recalls Herbert
W. Basser’s discussion of the tradition of weeping in rabbinic Judaism.
According to Basser,
tears are an important
supplement to prayers because penitential tears stir up divine passion.178 In Jewish traditions God weeps, the angels weep, and the Prophets
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and Moses weep. Weeping is also
a common theme
in the Book of Psalms.
Tears, says Basser,
are the medium
of an unspoken theology: “The mystery
of crying is that through
tears the outside
worlds and the interior worlds merge deep inside the human spirit.”179 The tears of Sha’wana, like those of the sages in rabbinic texts, may express either remorse or despair, but in every case, they express deep religious
yearnings. In later Jewish mysticism, weeping was one of the rituals of Tikkun Olam— acts of
174 Ibn al-Jawzi,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 727-9 and Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 300
175 Ibid, vol. 2, 728 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 302
176 Ibid, vol. 2, 727-8 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 300
177 Ibid, vol. 2, 727 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 298
178 Herbert W. Basser, “A Love for all Seasons:
Weeping in Jewish
Sources,” in Patton
and Hawley, Holy
Tears, 180
179 Ibid, 185
world-restoration that allowed divine
and human tears to flow together. In this tradition, much as in early
Islamic asceticism, a distinction was made between
the oily upper
tear and the watery
lower tear.180 When Sha’wana’s tears
flowed “all at once, from the four parts of her eyes,”
this was a sign of divine union, in which the divine and human waters flowed together
to quench the burning of her heart.
The example of Sha’wana
also brings to mind the early Christian tradition of weeping (Gr. penthos). For early Christians, weeping was seen as “the purified passion
experienced by the penitent who, through the pricking of conscience, accepts
his or her need to repent in order to be
restored to God.”181 The Greek term penthountes
and the Western
Aramaic term abiluta describe a state of repentance that was often expressed by early Christians through lamentations and the
continuous shedding of tears.182 Accounts
of the Weeping Women of Basra indicate
that the connotation of these Christian terms was similar
to the Muslim understanding of the Arabic
word huzn, “sorrow.” In early Christianity, the grief that led to weeping was considered a “joy-bearing
grief” because the penitent’s approach
to God ultimately led to redemption and salvation.
Bishop Kallistos Ware describes
a science of tears and redemptive weeping
in Orthodox Christianity that is similar
to that of Sha’wana in Islam. In the Orthodox
tradition, the tears of the ascetic are both “bitter”
and “sweet.” Bitter tears, which flow from the lower part of the eye, express contrition for sin and act as a form of purification. Sweet tears, which
flow from the upper
part of the eye, reflect
a “transfiguring spiritualizing of the senses”
and act as a form of
illumination. This is because they express joy at the eventual reconciliation between the penitent ascetic and God.183
However, just because the Islamic tradition
of ascetic weeping
shares similarities with rabbinic Jewish weeping and Christian penitential weeping, this does not necessarily mean that the Weepers
of Basra copied
their practices from Jews or Christians. The student of comparative
asceticism should not use superficial similarities to jump to hasty
conclusions about the supposed
origins of ascetic practices. Correspondences between Sufi statements and the teachings of early Church figures
do not necessarily imply that the Christian tradition of monasticism had a “pervasive” influence
on the development of Islamic
spirituality, as Albert Hourani and other
Christian scholars of Islam have supposed.184 The same lesson
holds true for the supposed differences between
these traditions. Not enough comparative research has been done on Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim ascetic weeping
to allow Hannah Hunt, for example, to conclude that Muslim weeping “is devoid of the joy-bearing grief of penthos.”185
IV.
The Asceticism of Rabi’a and Her Circle
180 Ibid, 187
181 Hunt, Joy-Bearing
Grief, 3
182 Ibid, 8
183 See Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Oxford, U. K.: Oxford
University Press, 1979) and idem,
“The
Orthodox
Experience of Repentance,” Sobornost, vol. 2:1 (1980),
18-28, cited in Ibid, 32 and n. 142.
184 See, for example, Albert
Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The
Belknap
Press of Harvard
University Press, 1991),
72-73
185 Hunt, Joy-Bearing
Grief, 18
a.
Rabi’a’s Students
and Associates
In his Book of Sufi Women,
Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami discusses ten women ascetics
who were contemporaries of Rabi’a in Basra and the surrounding region. Of these women, only one is specifically mentioned
as a student of Rabi’a.
This is Maryam of Basra (d.
before 801 CE), whose spiritual path was based
on the doctrine of divine
love (mahabba), and whose ascetic
practices included night-vigils and the entrustment of all personal
affairs to God (al-thiqa bi-llah
or tawakkul).186 Although it is important to beware of superficial religious comparisons, Sulami’s notice on Maryam of Basra
cannot help but leave the student
of comparative asceticism with the impression that Christian ascetics
influenced her practices.
Reminiscent of Christian themes are Maryam’s
name (Mary), the importance she gives to love,
and the verse of the Qur’an that she was fond of reciting in her night vigils: “Gracious
is God toward his servants” (Qur’an,
42:19). This Qur’anic
verse describes God’s love for His servants in a way that is reminiscent of the Christian concept of divine
grace.187 Also reminiscent of Christian asceticism is Maryam of Basra’s celibacy. The practice of celibacy by a number
of early Muslim ascetics
including Rabi’a was one reason why Western
scholars such as Margaret
Smith sought the origins of Islamic asceticism in Christianity. The issue of Rabi’a’s celibacy
will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, which discusses
the trope of Rabi’a the Lover.
Another reputed
student of Rabi’a
was ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal.
‘Abda (“female slave”) appears as an important
source of information on Rabi’a in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa
but is not mentioned by Sulami in his Book of Sufi Women. She was supposed
to have been Rabi’a’s servant at the end of the latter’s life and may have replaced
Maryam of Basra in this capacity. As we saw in Chapter 1, ‘Abda is noted as the source of accounts
of dream visions
of Rabi’a, such as
when she sees Rabi’a after death in a bright green dress and wearing
a veil made of green silk
brocade. Rabi’a tells her in the dream that the original shroud
and woolen veil with which her
body was wrapped for burial
were taken up to the Heaven of ‘Illiyyin
(Qur’an, 83:18-21).188 It is
possible that the stories about
‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal provided
a connection between
the practices of Rabi’a and other women ascetics
of Basra and early Syrian Sufism. As we shall see in Chapter 4, a major figure of early Syrian Sufism was Abu Sulayman
al-Darani (d. 830 CE),
who moved from Basra to Syria with some of his disciples. One of these disciples, Ahmad ibn
Abi al-Hawari (d. 845 CE), is the main source
of Sulami’s accounts
about Maryam of Basra.
There is also evidence
that Darani and his followers
knew ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal.189
A unique account
in an unusual source provides
the only extant
reference to a possible
teacher of Rabi’a. This is Hayyuna, a female ascetic
of the second half of the eighth century CE.
186 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 84-85; as discussed earlier in this chapter, tawakkul is
an important part
of
wara’ and is treated prominently in Muhasibi’s Kitab al-makasib.
187 The early
fifth century CE Syrian Christian ascetic Makarios the Great stated:
“Manifold are the
patterns of grace, and most varied
are the ways it leads the soul. Sometimes, as God decides,
grace gives rest to the soul,
at other times it puts it to work.” John
Anthony MCGuckin, The Book of Mystical
Chapters: Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent, from the Desert Fathers and other
Early Christian Contemplatives (Boston and London: Shambhala Books, 2003),
146-7
188 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 712 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 280
189 Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari was well-known among later Sufis
for transmitting traditions on Christian
asceticism and love mysticism. See Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 10, 5-33. Further information on Ibn Abi al-
Hawari can be found in Sulami’sTabaqat
al-sufiyya and Qushayri’s Risala.
Hayyuna lived
in the port city of al-Ubulla and may also have been the teacher
of Sha’wana. She appears in a work called ‘Uqala’ al-Majanin by al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Nisaburi (d. 1016 CE). The term ‘uqala al-majanin literally means “the rationally insane,”
and refers to individuals
who were considered mad by the general
public but whose supposed madness
actually concealed profound wisdom.190 Ibn al-Jawzi may have been aware of this work because he uses the term
‘uqala’ al-majanin to describe several of the women ascetics
who appear in Sifat
al-safwa.191 Significantly, Rabi’a does not appear as a “rational madwoman”
in Nisaburi’s book. However,
Hayyuna does appear prominently in ‘Uqala’ al-Majanin, where she is depicted as a teacher
of love mysticism.192 What made her appear to be a madwoman
was her tendency to go into
raptures out of her love for God. According to Nisaburi, Rabi’a
used to visit Hayyuna frequently. One night, in the middle of her devotions, Rabi’a fell asleep and Hayyuna
kicked her awake, saying, “Get up! The wedding of the Guided Ones (‘urs al-muhtadin) has come! Oh, one who beautifies the Brides of the Night
(‘ara’is al-layl) by means
of night-vigils!”193 The importance of this account for the development of love mysticism in early Sufism
will be discussed in the next
chapter. For the present, the reference to night-vigils may be taken
as evidence that Hayyuna and her students
practiced nusk, ascetic ritualism.
b.
From Instrumental Asceticism to Essential Asceticism
In the previous section
of this chapter,
the concept of instrumental asceticism was
introduced to characterize ascetic practices
that were directed
toward specific and identifiable
goals. Instrumental asceticism was closely related
to the ascetic ritualism of nusk,
which also conceived of the worshipper’s relationship with God as a set of ritual obligations and moral duties. Rabi’a’s
contemporary ‘Ajrada the Blind (al-‘Amiya) exemplifies this type of asceticism.
She fasted continuously for 60 years, wept and lamented
constantly, and passed
the night in prayer-vigils. Although a modern observer might view these behaviors as signs of depression, for ‘Ajrada they were not spontaneous or uncontrolled actions. Instead, they were calculated
behaviors that she described as part of a competition among ascetics for divine favor and spiritual status. The better and more often one performed
rituals of worship,
the higher one rose in the
hierarchy of the holy. This can be seen in the following
supplication attributed to ‘Ajrada: “For your sake, oh God, the worshippers cut themselves off from the World in the darkness
of night,
190 For an extensive discussion of ‘Uqala’ al-majanin and its author,
see Michael W. Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society,
ed. Diana E. Immisch (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press,
1992), 349-65.
191 For example,
Rayhana “The Enraptured” (al-waliha), who flourished in the middle of the eighth
century
CE, is listed by Ibn al-Jawzi under the category
of “The Rationally Insane of al-Ubulla.” See idem,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 729 and Appendix
to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 306.
192 See al-Hasan
ibn Muhammad ibn Habib al-Nisaburi, “Uqala’ al-majanin, ed. Muhammad Bahr al-
‘Ulum (Najaf, Iraq: al-Maktaba al-Haydariyya, 1968), 149
193 Ibid. The trope of a God-fearing woman kicking a sleeping student
or spouse awake is common
in texts
about Muslim
ascetics. Sulami uses this trope in
an account about Kurdiyya bint ‘Amr, the servant of Sha’wana of al-Ubulla. Sha’wana admonishes Kurdiyya saying, “This
is not the abode of sleep! Verily,
sleep is reserved for cemeteries!” Ibn al-Jawzi also uses this trope in his account
of the wife of Riyah al-
Qaysi (d. 796 CE), who kicks her husband awake, saying, “The night has left and
with it the army of the righteous, while you were asleep. I fear that you have deluded me, oh
Riyah!” See Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 116 and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 721.
glorifying you from nightfall until the predawn
hours, competing for your mercy and the favor of your
forgiveness. So through
you, my God, and none other, I ask you to put me in the first rank
of the Foremost, that you raise me up to the level of your Intimates, and that you count me among
your righteous servants.”194
A second type of asceticism that was important in Rabi’a’s time was asceticism as a form of
protest, particularly against
the unequal distribution of wealth in the Abbasid
Empire at the height of its power and influence. This type of asceticism, which was central
to the moral outlook of the Piety-Minded as described by Marshall Hodgson,
can be termed reactionary asceticism. The French historian
Maurice Lombard has painted a vivid portrait
of social and economic conditions in the early Abbasid
period, which he derived in part from the writings
of Nestorian and Jacobite
Christian observers. One of the most important
of these Christian observers was Pseudo-Denys of Tell Mahre, who was a contemporary of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
According to Lombard’s interpretation of this source,
the economic life of early Abbasid society was impacted by a major influx
of gold and a rise in the production of consumer goods.
These economic factors caused a rise in price inflation, which benefited court circles and the merchant class but caused hardship
for the lower classes.195 Great numbers of the landless
poor migrated from the countryside to the urban centers of Iraq and Egypt. Because
of this growth in the pool of available labor, the salaries
of workers could not keep up with the rising prices caused by
inflation. As more and more country people moved to the cities,
merchants and government officials bought up rural landholdings at discount prices. This “urban invasion
of the countryside” resulted
in the breakup of earlier
patterns of land tenure. According
to Lombard, “Wealth began to be expressed in chattels instead
of real estate . . . This disintegration of the
domanial (sic.) structure brought
with it social upheaval: the uprisings of the humbler
country- folk matched the slave and plebeian uprisings
in the cities.”196 This discontent of the lower classes was reflected in the practice
of reactionary asceticism.
However, despite this social unrest, great fortunes could still be made. The cargo of a
single ship from China docking at the port of al-Ubulla
might be worth 500,000 gold dinars.197
According to Lombard, “The merchant
lived on a grandiose scale in his stately townhouse, surrounded by a host of slaves
and hangers-on, in the midst of his collections of books, travel souvenirs, and rare ornaments.”198 By contrast, the towns and villages around
the great urban centers were the refuge
of ruined landowners and poor rural laborers. Tax farmers and money-
lenders in the cities forced small landowners off their lands for defaulted loans and non-payment of taxes, “which grew in proportion with the fall of the purchasing power of the currency . . . The
only recourse was to run away from the villages.
Everywhere there were refugees, displaced persons wandering aimlessly in an attempt
to evade the taxes and their urban creditors, and gradually slipping into brigandage.”199 The Proto-Sufi and former highwayman Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad,
194 Ibn al-Jawzi,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 712-13 and Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 284
195 Maurice Lombard,
The Golden Age of Islam, trans.
Joan Spencer (Princeton, New Jersey: Markus
Wiener
Publishers, 2004 [reprint
of first translated edition, 1975]), 146-157.
This work was originally
published posthumously in 1971 as Islam
dans sa première grandeur.
196 Ibid, 147
197 Ibid, 148
198 Ibid, 149
199 Ibid, 151
who was mentioned in Chapter 1 as a friend of Rabi’a’s student
Sufyan al-Thawri, may have been one
of these displaced persons. Also during
this period, the local Aramaic-speaking people of Iraq began to show signs of unrest
and occasionally rose in revolt.
Sometimes, these revolts
took on the color of Pre-Islamic Iranian forms of religious revivalism. At other times, they expressed Kharijite or Shiite aspirations. Such forms of popular religious expression led to an increased concern about heresy among
religious leaders.
The previously mentioned Kitab al-zuhd
by al-Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran confirms
Lombard’s picture of economic
transformation and social
crisis in the early Abbasid
period. In contrast
with later works of this type, it is almost exclusively devoted to reactionary asceticism. The book opens with a chapter
on the advantages of having little wealth and few offspring (fi fadl qillat al- mal
wa al-walad).200 Unlike today, where wealth is conceived almost entirely in terms of money,
for Mu’afa wealth consisted not only of gold and silver, but also of land, farm animals, women, and slaves. Children, literally “sons,” were also included in this list because one’s
children brought both pride and shame to one’s lineage. Furthermore, children required the accumulation
of wealth, and hence an involvement with the World, for their upkeep.201 For Mu’afa, all of the above
forms of wealth
belonged to the World in the World/Nonworld dichotomy of Islamic asceticism. Mu’afa demonstrates his reactionary approach
to asceticism by citing Hadith
reports of the Prophet
Muhammad that warn against the accumulation of excess wealth.202 The Caliph
‘Umar is said to have wept at the thought
of the harm that an increase in wealth would bring to the Muslims.203 The Prophet’s Companion ‘Abdallah ibn Mas’ud is quoted
as saying there would
be a
time when people would want to free themselves from the World so much that they would
seek out death for themselves.204 In this and similar accounts,
the World is described as a source of
strife (fitna) that needs
to be avoided at all costs. In what is perhaps Mu’afa’s
harshest condemnation of worldly
values, the ascetic
Khalid ibn Maymun
(d. 753 CE) states that in this age, it is better to raise a dog or
a puppy than to raise a child.205
The
greatest part of Mu’afa’s Kitab al-zuhd
is devoted to the condemnation of fame, status, honor, and the trappings of power. He reports that when the Caliph ‘Umar wanted to appoint the ascetic Sa’id ibn ‘Amir al-Jumahi (d. 640 CE) governor of Caesaria in Palestine,
Jumahi exclaimed, “Fear God, ‘Umar, and don’t put me in turmoil!”
Jumahi’s fear of the moral dilemma caused by the exercise of power is presented as a rebuke
of those who sought power for
personal gain.206 In a Hadith report that would later be popularized by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and
200 Mu’afa’s pessimism may be related
to the fact that he lost both his wealth and his two sons during the Abbasid conquest of Mosul. See the notice in Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 804.
201 Muslim ascetics
in this period
often viewed children
as an impediment to the spiritual life because of
the necessity to
earn a living or otherwise involve oneself with the World in order to care for
them. Nusiyya bint Salman, the wife of an ascetic preacher and disciple of
Sufyan al-Thawri named Yusuf ibn Asbat al-Shaybani (d. 814-15 CE), complained
of her duties as a wife and mother in terms that would be understood by a modern
career woman: “Oh Lord, you do not see me as someone
worthy of your worship.
So because of this you have preoccupied me with a child!” See Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 92.
202 Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran, Kitab al-zuhd, 185
203 Ibid, 179
204 Ibid, 189
205 Ibid, 188; this statement probably reflects the conditions that prevailed during
the Abbasid revolution,
when Mu’afa lost his wealth
and his children.
206 Ibid, 206
other Sunni reformers, Mu’afa
quotes the Prophet
Muhammad as saying:
“Four things remain
in my community from the Time of Ignorance (al-Jahiliyya) that people do not want to give up.
These are arrogance about social position
(al-fakhr fi-l-ahsab), cursing a person for his lineage (al-ta’n fi-l-ansab), using the stars to forecast
rain (al-istisqa’ bi-l-nujum), and wailing [at funerals] (al-niyaha).”207 The only way to overcome
such problems and return to the original values of Islam, says Mu’afa, is to make the humility
of the Prophet the standard
of conduct: “He visited the sick; he followed funerals; he answered the petitions of slaves; he rode a donkey; and he allowed his slave to ride with
him.”208
Although Mu’afa does not specifically prescribe
fasting, he does advise fostering humility by regulating one’s dress and diet. Surprisingly, the overall level
of renunciation that he
encourages is more moderate than one might
expect from such a reactionary work. Far from advocating the kinds of extreme asceticism that one occasionally encounters in Sufi texts, Mu’afa merely warns against overeating, advises moderation in the consumption of meat, and recommends the consumption of barley bread
and whole grains
instead of wheat bread or white
bread. Ironically, such practices today
would not be considered asceticism. Rather, they would simply be seen as part of a healthy
and organic life-style.
Given the prevalence of reactionary asceticism in the early Abbasid period,
it is significant that Rabi’a is not portrayed
as a reactionary ascetic in early narratives. However, as noted at the beginning
of this chapter,
she is sometimes portrayed as an ascetic
ritualist (nasika) who performs night-vigils and other acts of self-sacrifice. The accounts about her by Jahiz
portray her as an exponent
of ethical precaution (wara’). Although
most early narratives portray Rabi’a in ways that allow her to be classified among the other women ascetics
of her time, early writers do not include
her among the Weepers of Basra. Rabi’a
the Weeper is a trope
that appears to have been first introduced by Ibn al-Jawzi
in the late twelfth century
CE. In subsequent generations, other writers used Farid al-Din al-‘Attar’s rather dramatic depiction
of Rabi’a as the basis for their own characterizations of her practices.
For Ibn al-Jawzi, Rabi’a’s
weeping is more an expression of feminine emotionalism than an ascetic virtue.
In one account, a male observer states,
“I began to hear the sound of Rabi’a’s
tears falling on [her prayer mat] like pouring rain. Then she became agitated
and cried out. At
that point, we got up and left.”209 In this statement, one can find three tropological elements that are typical
of Ibn al-Jawzi’s depiction of Rabi’a. First,
she weeps uncontrollably. Second, she becomes agitated. In Sifat al-safwa, Ibn al-Jawzi depicts
Rabi’a as reacting
to unexpected visitors hysterically, sometimes
agitated, sometimes shrieking, and sometimes cringing
against a wall.
Finally, her male observers, who are made uncomfortable by her actions,
take leave of her.
Kimberley Christine Patton
and John Stratton
Hawley have observed
that in religions other than Islam as well, male hagiographers felt the need to announce
the entry of women onto the public stage with “emotional discourse-breaking acts” such as weeping. Men, on the other hand,
are more often characterized by ceremonial behaviors
that perpetuate and reconstitute the prevailing
social system.210
207 Ibid, 262; a separate
chapter in Kitab al-zuhd
is devoted to each of these faults.
208 Ibid, 238-9
209 Ibn al-Jawzi,
Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 710-12 and Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 276-83
210 Patton and Hawley, Holy Tears, 13
By
contrast, the Rabi’a that Sulami
describes a century
before Ibn al-Jawzi
is a spiritual master much like the men he describes
in his biographical dictionary Tabaqat al-sufiyya.
Sulami’s Rabi’a
is very different from the highly-strung and emotional recluse
portrayed by Ibn al-Jawzi. As we saw in Chapter
1, she is a rational
and disciplined teacher
who demonstrates her mastery of important states of knowledge. Sulami concentrates on Rabi’a’s intellectual abilities more than on her asceticism, portraying her primarily as a teacher
of wisdom. Only once does Sulami’s Rabi’a lose her self-control: this is when she has become intoxicated by her love for
God.211 By downplaying her emotionalism, Sulami’s
portrayal of Rabi’a
thus provides a more
“masculine” image of female spirituality than does Ibn al-Jawzi. Typical
of Sulami’s depiction
of Rabi’a is her tendency to interiorize and essentialize ascetic
teachings, such as in the following
statement: “For everything there is a fruit (thamara) and the fruit of the true knowledge of God (ma’rifa) is orientation toward God (iqbal).”212 This statement reflects
a view of spiritual practice that goes much deeper than either instrumental or reactionary asceticism.
In his book Holy Men and Hunger Artists, Eliezer
Diamond contrasts instrumental asceticism with essential asceticism, an asceticism that entails “explicit
renunciation of some aspect of conventional existence
because self-denial itself is seen as inherently spiritually salutary.”213 The above statement
by Rabi’a can be seen as an example of essential asceticism. However, Diamond’s definition does not go far enough in elucidating this concept. Rabi’a’s essential asceticism was, to use Diamond’s terminology, a “dynamic
imperative” that caused
her to see the ascetic path as governing every aspect of her life.214 This attitude goes beyond the
balance sheet of goal-oriented actions
that characterizes instrumental asceticism. For Rabi’a, asceticism was not something supererogatory to Islam; rather, the practice of asceticism was the
practice of Islam itself, in the essential Qur’anic sense of a fully
engaged submission to God.
This
is illustrated by a statement
by Rabi’a that appears in Kharkushi’s Tahdhib al-Asrar. When someone asks her how she has attained her spiritual station,
she replies, “By leaving aside all that does not concern me and by cleaving to the One who always is” (bi-tarki ma la ya’nini
wa unsi bi-man lam yazal).215
A common theme that emerges
from the earliest
accounts of Rabi’a’s
asceticism is her tendency to strip away the outward
forms of religious
practice and expose the inner essence of ascetic worship in her teachings, sometimes in terms that are shocking
to her audience. Often this involved explicit criticism of instrumental forms of asceticism. In Kharkushi’s chapter
on repentance Rabi’a says, “Our repentance is in need of its own repentance.” She also states,
211 Sulami, Early Sufi Women,
78
212 Ibid, 76; see also, Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-Asrar, 49. The person
who originally transmitted this
statement from Rabi’a was Shayban al-Ra’i
(The Shepherd), also called “al-Ubulli“ because he resided
in al-Ubulla. Shayban was a Nabati, one of the original
Aramaic-speaking inhabitants of Iraq. See
Ibn al- Jawzi, Sifat al-Safwa, vol.
2, 913-14.
213 Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger
Artists, 12
214 Ibid, 11
215 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-Asrar, 81; Margaret Smith traces this statement to one of Muhasibi’s works,
but
she does not say
which one it is. See idem, An Early Mystic, 215. This was probably because this statement,
attributed to Rabi’a, can also be found in Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani’s chapter on
Muhasibi in Hilyat al-awliya’. However, a close reading of the passage
reveals that the authorial voice is Isfahani’s, not Muhasibi’s. It is part of an argument
to demonstrate that Muhasibi’s approach
to essential asceticism was shared by other figures of
early Sufism, including Rabi’a, ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd, and Dhu al-Nun
al-Misri. See Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 10, 108.
“Seeking the forgiveness of God by the tongue
alone is the repentance of liars.”216 She explains
the meaning of these statements in a third
anecdote. A man said to Rabi’a, “Verily,
I have committed many sins and acts of disobedience. Do you think that God will redeem me if I repent to
him?” “No,” Rabi’a replied. “If God had wanted to redeem you, you would already have repented. God the Glorious
and Mighty has said, ‘ [God has already] redeemed
them so that they
might repent’” (Qur’an, 9:118).217 In other words, if you were meant to repent,
you would have done so already, without need for
argument.
Perhaps the clearest example
of Rabi’a’s critique
of instrumental asceticism is in an account from Abu Talib al-Makki’s Qut al-qulub
(The Sustenance of Hearts), which relates one of
the lessons that she teaches
to Sufyan al-Thawri. Thawri states the problem to be discussed in a formal way, as if he is asking for a fatwa: “Every act of worship has a rule behind it and every act
of faith has an inner meaning. What is the meaning of your faith?”
To this Rabi’a responds, “I do not worship God out of fear of God. If I did, I would be like the disobedient slave-girl
who only works when she is afraid. Nor [do I worship God] out of a love for heaven.
If I did, I would be
like the disobedient slave-girl who only works when she is given something. Instead, I
worship God out of love for him alone and out of yearning for him.”218 This statement is important because Rabi’a’s concept
of worship subordinates the spiritual attitudes
of fear (khawf)
and service (khidma), which
are central to asceticism, to the attitudes of love (mahabba) and knowledge (ma’rifa), which would become central to the newly developing tradition
of Sufism. In Rabi’a’s
essential asceticism, the outward forms
of worship and divine service
that are associated with asceticism are subordinated to their inner
meaning. To the extent that the body is
transcended through acts of ascetic
discipline, the heart as a locus for spiritual knowledge
grows in importance.
We shall see in the next chapter that whereas the trope of Rabi’a the Teacher finds its
doctrinal basis in the trope
of Rabi’a the Ascetic, the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic finds
its fulfillment in the trope of Rabi’a the Lover. In Chapter 4 we shall
see likewise that the trope
of Rabi’a the Lover ultimately leads to the trope of Rabi’a the Sufi. In the ladder
of spiritual development that begins with asceticism, the servant-devotee of God is transformed into a lover of
God, and the lover of God is transformed into a knower
of God. This model of spiritual
development has been part of the story
of Rabi’a from the time of Muhasibi
until the present
day. It remains an open question
whether the coherence of this model is governed
by the tropological character of the Rabi’a narrative, or whether the model itself
has been shaped
by the narratives out of which it is composed.
216 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 95
217 Ibid, 97
218 Muhammad ibn ‘Ali b. ‘Atiyya Abu Talib al-Makki,
Qut al-qulub fi mu’malat
al-Mahbub wa wasf tariq
al-murid
ila maqam al-tawhid, edited
by Basil ‘Uyun al-Sadr (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1997), vol. 2, 94. This teaching appears to have come
originally from the Jewish Mishnah,
which dates to the fourth century CE. Chapter
1 of Mishnah Pirkei Avot (The Wisdom
of the Worshippers) contains the following tradition: “Antigonus of Socho received the Torah from Shimon the
Righteous. He used to say: Be not
like servants who minister unto their master for the sake of receiving a
reward, but be like servants who serve their master not upon the condition of
receiving a reward; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.” Rabi’a’s statement differs from this
tradition only in stressing the love of God more than the fear of God as the
basis of her asceticism. I would like
to thank Gordon Newby of Emory University for this reference.
CHAPTER 3 RABI’A THE LOVER
A long time ago, exchanging greetings
and salutations, the two Sufis
met in Basra.
As soon as she saw him behind
the gate,
she revealed her face to the beautiful young man.
Her face was
wrinkled and her eyes were faded, beneath the black face-veil and under the white lace.
Hasan bowed his head with a deep sigh, and responded
to the salutation of this dear guest.
“What are you
doing Rabi’a, for God’s sake?” The lover
asked, his chin trembling. [Rabi’a
said,]
“If only 'Hasans' would walk the beautiful streets
of Basra, Oh Allah, how decent
human nature would be!
If only people like him walked
our streets, I would never
have to wear the veil!”
— Bosnian Ilahi, “Hassan
i Rabija,” by Dzemaludin Latic1
I Rabi’a and the Poetics
of Myth
The Rabi'a depicted in this ilahi (Islamic religious song) by the Bosnian
poet Dzemaludin Latic never existed as a historical personage.
In addition, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya probably
never met al-Hasan al-Basri.2 If she had done so, Hasan would
have been an old man and Rabi'a
would have been a girl of no more than fourteen
years of age. It is difficult to imagine even the famous Rabi’a as a respected teacher at such an early
age. Al-Hasan al-Basri
died in 728 CE and Rabi'a
died more than 70 years after him, in 801 CE. Thus, from a strictly historical perspective, one
must conclude that this story is a myth and that Rabi’a as she appears in this song is a trope. Just
1 Dzemaludin Latic is Professor
of Qur’anic Exegesis
(tafsir) at the Faculty
of Islamic Studies
in Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The song was
recorded by the popular Bosnian singer Aziz Alili. I am grateful to Ahmet Alibasic of the Faculty of Islamic
Studies in Sarajevo for translating this ilahi
and providing information about its author.
2 The trope of Rabi’a’s
friendship with al-Hasan
al-Basri first appears
in Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar’s (d. 1220
CE) Tadhkirat al-awliya’ (Memorial of the Saints). Over time, it spread
throughout the Islamic world. See the
translated passages on Rabi’a and Hasan from ‘Attar in Michael A. Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism: Sufi, Qur’an,
Mi’raj, Poetic, and Theological Writings (Mahwah, New York: Paulist Press,
1996), 160-2.
as
in the Mandan myth mentioned
in the Introduction, the figure of Rabi’a in Latic’s
ilahi is an example of
“The Old Woman Who Never Dies.”
However, the historical accuracy
of the alleged friendship between
Hasan and Rabi’a is
not important for the Bosnian
Muslims who love this ilahi, memorize
its lyrics, and put it on
numerous web sites.3 What is most important
about the song is not its historical accuracy but its message, which alludes to the religious and political troubles
that have caused
Bosnians to suffer for decades. It recalls
a better time when good (hasan in Arabic means “good”)
was easier to find
and women did not have to worry
about their safety.
For fans of this song, Latic’s “beautiful streets of Basra” evoke the streets
of Sarajevo and other cities
of Bosnia in an age of peace when
people still trusted each other. Latic uses the figures of Rabi’a and Hasan, who befriend each other through their love of God, to evoke this lost world. As Lynda L. Coon has observed about the
stories of Christian saints, Latic’s evocation of these two revered figures
depends not on facts,
but on “topoi, literary
inventions, and moral imperatives.”4
The key motif of Latic’s ilahi
is the depiction of Hasan and Rabi’a as lovers of God. By
using the trope of Rabi’a
the Lover, the song “Hassan
i Rabija” is no different from other narratives that use this trope for purposes far beyond what the “real”
or historical Rabi’a
could ever have imagined. The trope of Rabi’a the Lover has evoked more poetic license
than any of the
other tropes about her have done. For example, when discussing Rabi’a
the Lover in her book al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa (The Sufi Lover),
the Lebanese writer
Widad El Sakkakini tells the reader that she keeps a vision
of the mythical Rabi’a in her mind’s eye. “I see Rabi’a’s
faint image on the shimmering waves: not in worn-out dress and sandals,
with a stick; but moving towards the shores of heaven in a halo of brightness, with a reed pipe, playing
the tune for her
verses.”5 In Doorkeeper of the Heart, a later reflection on Rabi’a that was inspired
by the English translation of El Sakkakini’s book, Charles Upton offers a similar version
of Rabi’a. In his book, however, the poems attributed to Rabi’a are portrayed as precursors of the poetry of the Persian
Sufi Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273 CE). “If Rumi is the Ocean, Rabi’a is the Well . . . Rabi’a . . . has
the virtues of maidenly simplicity, and the virgin
blade; along with the taste
of wine, she carries
also the taste of water—
a far more precious substance, when you live,
like Rabi’a did, in the desert of God.”6
As we can see from these
modern representations, the romantic image
of Rabi’a the Lover is both complex
and contradictory. She lives in the city and in the desert;
she is an old woman and a virgin
maiden; she walks
beside the “shimmering waves” of Basra
in a haloed garment and also walks in the “desert
of God,” playing
a reed flute that recalls
the opening lines of
Rumi’s Masnavi.7 As if this were not enough,
a recent French
representation of Rabi’a,
3 See, for example, http://bosnamedia.com/media/cat6.stm.
4 Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions:
Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997), xv
5 Widad El Sakkakini, First among Sufis: the Life and Thought of Rabia al-Adawiyya the Woman Saint
of
Basra, trans. Nabil
Fatih Safwat (London: The Octagon Press, Ltd., 1982), 62; see also the Arabic
text, Widad al-Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-Mutasawwifa (The Sufi Lover) (Damascus: Dar Tlas li-l-Dirasat wa-l- Tarjamat wa-l-Nashr, 1989 reprint of 1955 original), 98.
6 Charles Upton,
Doorkeeper of the Heart:
Versions of Rabi’a
(New York: Pir Press, 2003 reprint of 1988
original), vii.
7 The Introduction of Rumi’s Masnavi uses
the poetic motif of complaint
(Ar. shakwa) to express
the
longing
of the lover for the beloved. It also expresses
the motif of the soul that longs
to return to its origin.
Rabi’a: Les Chants de la Recluse (Rabi’a: the Songs of the Recluse) adds the now common but highly dubious claim that she was a reformed
prostitute: “Her genius
was that of Mary
Magdalene. She was much loved.”8
The trope of Rabi’a the Lover
supports Lynda Coon’s view of hagiography as a form of “exalted discourse” that fixes the literary
representation of a saint in the cultural
imaginary.9 For
this reason, more than with the tropes of Rabi’a the Teacher
and Rabi’a the Ascetic, the
investigation of the trope of Rabi’a the Lover must be more literary than historical. Although there is some evidence
that the “real”
or historical Rabi’a
spoke of love in her teachings, there is
no way to know how much her teachings resembled later Sufi love mysticism. The most that we
can say with any degree
of accuracy is that the trope of Rabi’a the Lover has existed for many
centuries and has been, in the words of the French North African writer Jamal-Eddine Benghal, “a point of reference
and a model for many men and women taken by purity and love.”10 Therefore, the primary purpose
of this chapter cannot be to separate
the “real” Rabi’a from her figurative persona, as I have tried to do to in the previous
two chapters. Instead,
I will concentrate on the representation of Rabi’a the Lover in Sufi literature, focusing on the most
important elements in the construction of this trope.
II Asceticism and Love Mysticism
in Early Islamic
Basra
a.
From Asceticism to Love Mysticism
Shaqiq al-Balkhi, a contemporary of Rabi’a whom we encountered in the previous chapters, stated that there are four stages in the path of asceticism. The first stage is renunciation (zuhd), the second stage is fear (khawf), the third stage is desire
for heaven (al-shawq ila al-
janna), and the fourth stage is love of God (al-mahabba
li-llah).11 This teaching
is important for several reasons. First, Shaqiq describes asceticism as a path of truthfulness and sincerity (sidq).
In doing so, he confirms
the point made by Vincent
Wimbush and Richard
Valentasis that the root
of asceticism is ethical formation.12 Second,
by saying that asceticism culminates in the love of
God, Shaqiq confirms
the view of Bishop Kallistos Ware and other religious writers
on asceticism that asceticism is an affirmative path of acceptance and not just a negative
path of rejection. For Shaqiq, desire
motivates the ascetic
to attain the ultimate goal of renunciation,
“Listen to the reed flute how it tells a tale, complaining of separation/ Saying,
‘Ever since I was parted
from the reed-bed, my lament hath caused man and woman to moan/ I want a
bosom torn by severance, that I may unfold the pain of love-desire.” Reynold A. Nicholson, editor and
translator, The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin
Rumi (London: Luzac & Co., Ltd., 1977 [reprint of 1926 original]), vol.
1, 5
8 Mohammed Oudaimah
and Gérard Pfister,
Rabi’a: Les Chants de la Recluse
(Mesnil-sur-l’Estrée,
France: Éditions
Arfuyen, 2006), 7; as we shall see in
Chapter 6, the trope of Rabi’a the Reformed
Sinner was the creation of the Egyptian historian and Existentialist
philosopher ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi.
9 Coon, Sacred Fictions, 1
10 Jamal-Eddine Benghal,
La Vie de Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, une sainte musulmane du VIIIème siècle
(Paris:
Editions
Iqra, 2000), 8
11 Shaqiq al-Balkhi, “Manazil al-Sidq” in Paul Nwyia,
Trois Ouevres inédites de mystiques musulmans,
Šaqīq
al-Balhī, Ibn ‘Atā, Niffarī (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq, 1972), 17; see
also, Balkhi’s discussion of the stages of love in Carl W. Ernst, “The Stages of Love in Early Persian Sufism,
from Rabi’a to Ruzbihan,” in Lewisohn ed., Classical
Persian Sufism, 439-41.
12 Wimbush and Valentasis, “Introduction” in idem, Asceticism, xxix
which is union with God. This agrees with an important point that Bishop
Ware makes with respect to asceticism in Orthodox Christianity: “Desire, employed aright,
impels us to love God; jealousy (or zelos [zeal]) spurs us on to make greater efforts
in the spiritual life . . . our objective is not the nekrosis (mortification) of the passions
but their metathesis (transposition).”13 This affirmative view of asceticism is far removed
from the negative
view made famous by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who claimed that the asceticism of the saints
is passive- aggressive and self-indulgent, “a pretext for hibernation, their novissima
gloriae cupido, their peace in nothingness (‘God’), their
form of madness.”14
Shaqiq al-Balkhi also states
that the transformation of the ascetic self depends on the conquest of fear,
which marks the transition from asceticism as a way of negation
to asceticism as a way of affirmation. Freed from preoccupation with the World
and its desires
and cares, the ascetic opens herself to the life of the Nonworld and seeks the divine presence
for her fulfillment. Fulfillment in God is the ultimate
goal of the ascetic path. It is also the goal of the mystical
path. According to Averil
Cameron, by reorienting desire away from the World and toward God, the ascetic expresses “the freest
form of desire
in his or her individual relation with God.”15 Geoffrey Galt Harpham explains
this paradox in the following way: “Asceticism does not exclude
desire, it complicates it; it proposes
gratifications which are represented as both ‘anti-desire’ and yet (and for
this reason) are more desirable
than desire because
they do not insult the conscience.”16 For Shaqiq as well, a desire that is “more desirable than desire” inspires
the ascetic “to love what God
loves and to hate what God hates until nothing
becomes more beloved
than God and what pleases Him. God watches over and blesses
the one who strives for the love of God and bestows
Love upon him.”17
As we saw in Chapter 2, three approaches to Islamic asceticism were current in Rabi’a’s
time. The first was instrumental asceticism, a form of asceticism that was directed
toward specific goals. Instrumental asceticism was closely
related to the practice of ascetic ritualism (nusk), which led the ascetic
to conceive of her relationship with God as a balance
of religious and moral obligations. God’s virtues are always greater
than human virtues.
Thus, there was theoretically no limit to how much the instrumental ascetic of Rabi’a’s
day might struggle
in her pursuit of ritual and moral perfection. At times, such ascetics even competed with each other in
their attempt to attain the highest possible
rank in the hierarchy of virtue. The majority of ascetics in Rabi’a’s day were
instrumental ascetics.
The second type of asceticism
in Rabi’a’s time was reactionary
asceticism. This was an
expression of protest against the inequality of wealth in the Abbasid Empire. The perspective of reactionary asceticism
was illustrated in Chapter 2 by Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran’s Kitab al-zuhd, a book written during Rabi’a’s
lifetime, which was as much concerned with asceticism as a form of
13 Kallistos Ware, “The Way of the Ascetic: Negative
or Affirmative?” in Wimbush and Valentasis,
Asceticism, 12
14 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Horace B. Samuel (New York: Boni
and
Liverlight, Inc., 1918), 94
15 Averil Cameron,
“Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity,” in Wimbush and Valentasis, Asceticism,
154
16 Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative, 46
17 Shaqiq al-Balkhi, “Manazil al-Sidq” in Nwyia ed., Trois Oeuvres inédite, 20; the verb translated as
“strive
for” in the above passage
is ibtagha, which also comes from an Arabic
root that connotes
“desire.”
social protest as it was with asceticism as an approach
to God. Reactionary asceticism was not an
alternative to instrumental asceticism because
it was also instrumental in its approach.
This is evident in the following
quotation from Kitab al-zuhd: “Your wealth calls you to hellfire but your
poverty calls you to heaven.”18 In this statement Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran
rejects wealth as a moral danger but affirms poverty
as a sign of worthiness for heaven. The statement is instrumental
because salvation depends
directly on one’s asceticism: wealth
leads to disaster
but poverty leads to
success. This statement also implies that a poor person has an advantage over a rich person in attaining heaven, even if the rich person has led a pious life. Reactionary asceticism represented the sociopolitical aspect of early
Islamic asceticism. As such, it was important
for those whom Marshall Hodgson called the
“Piety-Minded.”
What appears to have made Rabi’a
distinctive among the ascetics of her day was that she
rejected both instrumental asceticism and reactionary asceticism for a third type of asceticism,
essential asceticism. Essential asceticism was based on the interiorization of ascetic practice.
In essential asceticism, one attains the Nonworld not so much by rejecting the World as by
detaching oneself from it. The ascetic avoids the World not because it is evil but because it is less important than the Nonworld. In this sense,
essential asceticism is part of the normal
practice of Islam because
it conveys the Qur’anic message
of sincere submission to God. Rabi’a’s
essential asceticism was illustrated in Chapter 2 by her statement that asceticism consists
in “leaving aside all
that does not concern me and by cleaving to the One that always is.”19 This statement also implies that one of the goals of asceticism is love of God, because
the ascetic cleaves
to that which is most fundamental for her existence. Since we depend
on God for our existence, closeness to God is the worthiest
of all goals. Rabi’a is reported to have said, “I do not worship God out of fear of God. If I did, I would be like the disobedient slave-girl who only works when
she is afraid. Nor [do I worship
God] out of love for heaven. If I did, I would be like the
disobedient slave-girl who only works when she is given something. Instead, I worship God out
of love for Him alone and out of desire
for Him.”20 For Rabi’a,
God is the worthiest object
of love because He is the source of all things.
This confirms Geoffrey
Galt Harpham’s contention that the ascetic’s desire
for God is more “desirable than [ordinary] desire.”
This attitude is also
reflected in another saying of Rabi’a: “The best way for the slave to come close to God Most
High is for him to know that he must not love anything in this world
or the Hereafter other than Him.”21
b.
Love of God in Qur’an and Hadith
Mahabba, the Arabic term for love that is used in these quotations of Rabi’a, appears only once in the Qur’an. However,
this use is significant, because
it occurs in a verse
that
18 Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran, Kitab al-zuhd, 185
19 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 81
20 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94; see also, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Love, Longing,
Intimacy, and
Contentment: Kitab al-mahabba
wa’l-shawq wa-l-uns wa’l-rida, Book XXXVI
of The Revival of the Religious Sciences Ihya’ ‘ulim al-din, trans. Eric
Ormsby (Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2011), 52, where the phrase “disobedient slave girl” is rendered euphemistically as “bad worker.”
Ghazali seems to have taken this quote directly from Makki. Note as well how closely this statement
corresponds to the teachings of Shaqiq al-Balkhi discussed above.
21 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 80-81
instructs the believer to trust completely in God, which is an important aspect
of essential asceticism. The term appears
as part of a command
given by God to the mother of Moses, who is
told to put her child in a chest and cast him into the River Nile. God tells
her not to worry about the consequences, “for I have put my love upon [Moses]
and he will be reared
under my care” (wa alqaytu ‘alayka
mahabbatan minni wa li-yusna’a ‘ala ‘ayni) (Qur’an,
20:39). This verse assures the mother of Moses that her trust in God will be rewarded by God’s love and care for
her.
Another woman in the Qur’an who entrusts herself
completely to God is Mary the
Mother of Jesus, who “had faith in the words of her Lord and His books,
and was one of the obedient” (Qur’an, 66:12). When the pain of childbirth drove Mary to seek refuge under a palm
tree, she cried out to God for help. In response, God provided her with ripe dates and running
water to sustain her (Qur’an,
19:23-26). Although the term mahabba does
not appear in the
Qur’anic verses about
Mary, the same reciprocity applies
to her relationship with God as in the
verse about the mother of Moses. The Qur’an’s description of Mary as “one of the obedient” (min al-qanitin), also connotes devotion
and surrender.22 Mary’s
devotion to God leads her to
entrust her life completely to her Lord, an act that Tor Andrae, the Swedish scholar
of Sufism, called “the sum of all devotion.”23 Some Sufis followed
Mary’s path of entrustment to God
(tawakkul) and refused to earn a living because,
like Mary, they depended on God to provide for all of their needs.24
Other verses that mention
the love of God in the Qur’an
also stress the reciprocity
between the believer’s love of God and God’s love for the believer. “Say: If you love God, follow [the Prophet Muhammad]
so that God will love you” (Qur’an,
3:31). “Soon God will
bring forth a people whom He will love and they will love Him” (Qur’an, 5:54). A similar
sense of reciprocity can also be found in Hadith reports.
“When I [i.e., God] love someone, I am the hearing by which he hears, the sight by which he sees, the tongue by which he speaks, and the
hand by which he grasps.”25 Ascetic
ritualists (nussak)
used this hadith to argue that the amount
of love that God gives to the believer depends
on the amount of pious observances that the
believer performs. The contrast between
love that is given altruistically and without hope of
reward and love as a form of recompense for acts of devotion also appears in Hadith. For example, the notion of love as recompense can be seen in the following tradition
from the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal:
“Renounce the World (izhad fi-l-dunya) so that God will love you.”26 Despite
its mention of love, this hadith is a justification for instrumental asceticism because it depends on a cause-and-effect relation between ascetic
practices and divine
favor. In contrast, the concept of altruistic love can be seen in the following
hadith from the Sunan of
22 See Aliah Schleiffer, Mary the Blessed Virgin
of Islam (Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae,
1998), 56.
23 Andrae, In the Garden of Myrtles, 110
24 The Iraqi Sufi Ibrahim
al-Khawwas (d. 904 CE), who was a famous practitioner of tawakkul, even
refused to beg
for food from others. He said, “It is
not part of Sufi conduct to have means upon which to rely in case of need, nor something that can be accepted by another [as payment], nor sight nor tongue with which to beg if one is hungry, nor a
word by which to beseech human beings in case of misfortune.” See Abu Madyan, Bidayat al-murid in V. Cornell, The
Way of Abu Madyan, 31 and 64.
25 Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Riqaq (Book
of Ritual Practices), 38
26 Musnad Ibn Hanbal, Kitab al-Zuhd (Book
of Renunciation), 1
Tirmidhi: “God is an intimate
friend (rafiq) and He loves intimate
friendship (rifq).”27 This hadith justifies essential asceticism
because God gives love altruistically, irrespective of the believer’s ability
to respond in kind.
However, one must be careful before
using Hadith accounts
to define the concept of love
in Rabi’a’s time. The uncritical use of Hadith may lead the historian
of early Islam into the trap
of anachronism. The mere fact that a statement appears
in a famous collection of Hadith reports does not necessarily mean that the Prophet Muhammad
said it. Most of the Hadith collections
that exist today were compiled
after Rabi’a’s time and more than two centuries after
the death of the
Prophet Muhammad. For example, Ahmad ibn Hanbal
died in 855 CE, half a century
after Rabi’a and 223 years after
the Prophet. Thus, the traditions about love and renunciation in his
Musnad
may reflect current
views of asceticism in his own time more than the views of the
Prophet. Abu ‘Isa al-Tirmidhi, the compiler of Sunan al-Tirmidhi, died almost a century after Rabi’a, in 892-93 CE. Nearly 260 years separate
him from the Prophet Muhammad. Thus, the traditions about altruistic love in his Hadith collection might reflect attitudes
about love that were
current in the culture of the Abbasid
age but not in the age of either Rabi’a
or the Prophet.
Nevertheless, Hadith collections can still be used to suggest answers
to more limited
questions. For example, one can use them to get a sense of whether the terms for love used in
later Sufi reports about Rabi’a
were authentic to Rabi’a’s era. To take but one example, a survey
of statements about the love of God in Hadith
accounts reveals that the word mahabba often
appears as a generic term for love.28 In one hadith,
the Prophet explains
that the Qur’anic
term “ties of the womb” (silat al-rahim, Qur’an, 4:1) means, “love for one’s family”
(mahabbatan fi-l- ahl).29
Here, the term mahabba appears as a synonym
for hubb, the most common word for love in
Arabic. The Prophet
could easily have used the phrase hubban fi-l-ahl
instead of mahabbatan
fi-l-ahl.
Support for the idea that early
Muslims used the terms mahabba and
hubb interchangeably can be found in a statement by Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 776 or 790 CE). “Do not seek
the love of God (hubb Allah) along with the love of money or honor (mahabbat al-mal wa-l-
sharaf).”30 This statement is significant because
it reverses the expected use of the terms hubb
and mahabba. In later generations, Sufis would use the term mahabba for the love of God but not
for the love of worldly
things. However, in Ibn Adham’s
statement, these terms are reversed, such that mahabba stands for love of the World but hubb stands for love of God. Accounts
such as these indicate
that the terms hubb and mahabba were
synonymous in Rabi’a’s
time. Thus,
there is evidence to conclude
that the term mahabba was a common word for love in early Islam,
and that ascetics and Proto-Sufis used it to replace the more generic
word hubb as a term for the
love of God. This hypothesis is confirmed by Sufi traditions in Arab regions
of the Muslim world, where mahabba is
still used as the primary
term for the love of God.
However, this situation does not appear to have been the case for ‘ishq.
This term, which means “passionate desire,” has been used by Sufis
after the time of Rabi’a
as a replacement for
27 Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Kitab
al-Birr (Book of Virtue), 77
28 This is also the opinion of Jahiz, who was one of the first to introduce the figure of Rabi’a in
Arabic
literature. See Joseph Norment
Bell, Love Theory in Later Hanbalite
Islam (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1979),
36.
29 Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Kitab al-Birr, 49 and Musnad Ibn Hanbal, 2:374
30 Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, 35
mahabba.31 Unlike mahabba, the term ‘ishq cannot be found in any of the major Hadith
collections. Only its root, ‘ashiqa, appears
in Hadith, and then only once. This is in the Musnad
of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, where the verb ‘ashiqa refers to physical desire,
such as a man’s desire
for a woman.32 Louis Massignon claimed
that the first person to use the term ‘ishq for
the love of God was ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd (d. 793 CE), who is said to have been an associate
of Rabi’a in Basra.33 According
to Massignon, Ibn Zayd refused
to use the term mahabba because it “presumed too much confidence in divine favor.”34 This opinion was challenged by the Egyptian scholar ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi,
who notes that Massignon cites no evidence
for his assertion.35 According to Badawi, the term ‘ishq did
not become part of Sufi vocabulary until
a generation or so after Rabi’a
in the ninth century CE, and reflects
a later stage in the development of Sufi love mysticism.
Thus, unlike the case for mahabba, the evidence provided
by Hadith suggests
that the use of
‘ishq as a term for the love of God was probably a later innovation. This would suggest
that statements attributed to Rabi’a using
the term ‘ishq are
probably not authentic.36 In support
of this assertion, one can also add that the basic meanings of ‘ishq and mahabba in Arabic are different. The term ‘ishq connotes love as desire
whereas the term mahabba, like the term hubb, connotes love as affection.37 One could argue,
pace Massignon, that love-as-affection (mahabba) is a more appropriate way of expressing a Muslim ascetic’s love for God than love-as-passionate- desire (‘ishq). Where, then, did the Sufi term ‘ishq as “desire
for God,” come from? Can one find
a precedent for “desire” as connoting love in general? We shall see later in this chapter
that a possible source for this meaning was the Greek term eros, which, like ‘ishq, meant both “love” and “desire.”
c.
The Ascetic Love Mystics of Basra
31 For the Abbasid-era writer Jahiz, ‘ishq was
a type of mahabba. See Bell, Love Theory, 36. On ‘ishq as excessive or mad love see Dols, Majnun, 313-19.
32 Musnad Ibn Hanbal, 5:164
33 In some Sufi texts,
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd, and Riyah (or Rabah) al-Qaysi
(d.
796 CE) appear as
members of a Basra Sufi Love Trio. In
this trope, Rabi’a is depicted as the founder of the doctrine of mahabba, Riyah al-Qaysi is the founder
of khulla (intimate friendship), and Ibn Zayd is the founder of the doctrine of‘ishq.
See my discussion of this trope in Rkia Elaroui Cornell, “Rabi’ah al-
‘Adawiyyah (circa 720-801),” in Cooperson and Toorawa, Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925, 294.
34 Massignon, Essay,
135
35 In Ibid, 135, n. 346, Massignon
cites a manuscript by the Hanbali theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d.
1328
CE), as the source for this claim
about Ibn Zayd.
However, he does not give the title.
See also, Badawi,
Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 61-63.
36 Further support
for this hypothesis can be found in the fact that theoretical works on love-as-‘ishq in
Islam are not
common until the mid-tenth century CE. An
example of such works is the “Epistle on the Essence of Love” (Risalat mahiyyat
al-‘ishq), the thirty-seventh epistle (risala)
of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa’). For a
discussion of this work see Binyamin Abrahamov, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism: The Teachings of Al-Ghazali and
Al-Dabbagh (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 18-21.
37 In ‘Atf al-alif
al-ma’luf ‘ala al-lam al-ma’tuf (The
Conjunction of the Attached Letters
Alif and Lam),
Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Daylami (d. ca. 1001-2
CE) defines love (hubb)
as “a name for affection
that is pure.” See Abu’l-Hasan ‘Ali b. Muhammad al-Daylami, A Treatise on Mystical Love, trans.
Joseph Norment Bell and Hassan Mahmood Abdul Latif Al Shafie (Edinburgh, UK:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 24.
As we saw in Chapter 2, Walter O. Kaelber defines
asceticism as “a voluntary, sustained, and at least partially
systematic program of self-discipline and self-denial in which immediate, sensual or profane gratifications are renounced in order to attain a higher spiritual state or a more
thorough absorption in the sacred.”
Both goals of asceticism, the attainment of a higher spiritual
state and a more thorough
absorption in the sacred, are part of the essential asceticism practiced
by Rabi’a and the Sufis
who followed her. Asceticism and mysticism come together at the point where the goals of both paths
are attained: in the “thorough absorption” in God that is the goal of
essential asceticism.
In the book Studies in Early Mysticism
in the Near and Middle East, Margaret
Smith locates the meeting-point between asceticism and mysticism in the notion
that “none can attain
direct knowledge of God except
by purification from self. The soul must be stripped
of the veils of selfishness and sensuality if it is to see clearly the Divine Vision.”38 Recent comparative studies of asceticism have confirmed Smith’s
hypothesis. It seems
that the object
of asceticism in all major religions
is to purify the self in order to attain a higher reality.39 In Islamic asceticism, purification of the self is the purpose of zuhd (renunciation) and wara’ (ethical precaution).
However, as we have seen, asceticism as a form of active
spirituality involves both a withdrawal from the World and an approach
to God beyond the World.
The most basic approach to
God for early Muslim ascetics was
through instrumental asceticism and ascetic ritualism
(nusk). Through ritualized acts of devotion,
early Muslim ascetics sought to make themselves more worthy of God. However, a better means of approach to God was the essential asceticism associated with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. For Margaret Smith, Love is the “guide and inspiration of the soul” that motivates the ascetic’s approach
to God. “He that does not love does not know God; for God is Love,” Smith
says, quoting the New Testament (I John 4:8). “The Oriental mystic,
seeking to get rid of that element
of not-being, which
is opposed to true Being, the Divine Reality,
finds that self,
the great hindrance, can be overcome
by Love alone. Love alone can perfectly purify
the soul and set it free from the bonds
of self- seeking and the fetters
of the flesh and so enable it to pass on its upward way, to look upon God as He is in truth, and to realize that it is itself one with the Divine Goodness,
one with that Reality
which is also Everlasting Love.”40
The type of transcendent
love-mysticism that Smith describes in the above quotation
has been a hallmark
of Sufism since the time of Rabi’a. This has led many Sufis and modern scholars to assert that Rabi’a
was important— perhaps
even the key figure— in introducing the concept of Love
in Islam and defining mahabba as
transcendent or mystical
love.41 One can find historical
38
Smith, Studies in
Early Mysticism, 5. This work,
which is largely unknown today, first appeared in 1931, three years after Rabi’a the Mystic. It remains the best available
comparative study of early Christian and Islamic mysticism in the
Middle East.
39 Although Smith locates the meeting-point of asceticism and mysticism in the purification of the self that
leads to the
vision of God, she maintains the mistaken view that both asceticism and
mysticism are passive forms of spirituality.
In Rabi’a the Mystic (1928),
Smith contends that early Sufism “consisted of asceticism carried
to the point of quietism.” See Smith, Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge), 76 and (Oneworld), 100.
40 Smith, Studies in Early Mysticism, 5-6. In this passage, the phrase, “Oriental
mystics” refers to Muslims
and Eastern Christians alike.
41 ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi (Shahidat
al-‘ishq al-ilahi, 63) claims that no Muslim used the term mahabba
for divine love before Rabi’a. Although
Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women refutes this claim, there is reason to believe that the love of God and
essential asceticism ascribed to Rabi’a provided the framework for
support for this assertion in the observation that a transcendent form of love mysticism does not
seem to be prominent among
Muslim ascetics before
Rabi’a. For example,
although several women ascetics
in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women teach
a path of transcendence through
love of God, most of them were Rabi’a’s
students or flourished after her time. However, although
Rabi’a may have been an important figure in the development of Islamic love mysticism, she was not the
first person to teach the love of God in Basra. This distinction appears
to belong instead
to an early male ascetic,
‘Amir ibn ‘Abd Qays (d. ca. 680 CE).
According to the Egyptian
historian Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq,
‘Amir was “the first lover of
God (muhibb) in Islam.”42 Even more, the clan of Banu ‘Abd Qays in Basra may also have been associated with the concept of mahabba. For example, Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women mentions a woman named ‘Afiya of ‘Abd Qays, who was known as “The Infatuated” (al- Mushtaqa) because
she combined both the love of God (mahabba) and desire for God (shawq) in her
teachings. Sulami quotes
‘Afiya as saying,
“The lover (muhibb) never
wearies of intimate discourse (munajat) with the Beloved,
and nothing is of interest
to him other than the Beloved.
Oh, may I always
desire Him!”43 If Sulami had not specified that this statement came from a woman
of ‘Abd Qays, one might have thought
that it had come from Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Apparently, the clan of Banu ‘Abd Qays passed
down a tradition of ascetic
love starting with ‘Amir ibn ‘Abd Qays,
just as Rabi’a’s
clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays passed
down a tradition of
renunciation starting with Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya and her husband
Sila ibn Ushaym.44 Both ‘Adi
ibn Qays and the clan of ‘Abd Qays were part of the same tribe of Qays ‘Aylan.
For this reason, one might suggest that Rabi’a’s practices
of asceticism and divine love were part of the repertoire
of this tribe’s traditions: they were, so to speak, “all in the family.”
However, one should not overlook an important difference between the Love doctrine of ‘Amir
ibn ‘Abd Qays and that of his later kinswoman
‘Afiya. For ‘Amir, the love of God does
not seem to have led to a transcendent knowledge of God. Instead,
‘Amir’s love of God appears to have been instrumental. In Hilyat al-awliya’, Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani quotes ‘Amir as saying,
“I love God, the Glorious
and Mighty, with a love that eases every problem
for me and God has shown
his pleasure with me by granting my every wish.”45 This statement describes
the love of an instrumental ascetic,
for which each investment of devotion or service to God is in expectation of a tangible reward.
By contrast, ‘Afiya’s
passionate desire for God, which causes her to see nothing in the world except the Divine Beloved,
recalls the essential
asceticism made famous by
Rabi’a. A change seems to have taken place in the doctrine
of the love of God in Basra during
Rabi’a’s lifetime.
A
survey of the statements of early ascetics
in Basra suggests
that the concept
of essential asceticism began to appear
in Basra around
the second half of the eighth century
CE. In this period, one can also find examples of both instrumental and transitional approaches to the love of
subsequent
theories of love mysticism in Islam. The
idea that Rabi’a was the first love mystic in Islam goes back in modern
studies to Margaret
Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic. For a later version of this trope, see
Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The
Formative Period (Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 4.
42 ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, 117
43 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 98-9; note that this quotation
uses shawq, the generic
term for “desire”
in
Arabic,
rather than the later term ‘ishq.
44 See the discussions of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya in Chapters 1 and 2 above.
45 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 2, 89
God. For example, Abu Muhammad Habib
al-Farisi, better known
as Habib al-‘Ajami (both terms refer to his Persian
origin), frequented Basra
around the time of the Abbasid conquest
in 750 CE. According
to Isfahani, he was famous
for “ransoming his soul from God” (ishtara
nafsahu min Allah) through acts of devotion.46 It was so widely believed
that Habib’s bargains with God would be fulfilled that people gave him money to distribute as alms as a down payment
on their dwellings in paradise.47 Ransoming
one’s soul from God and putting down payments on dwellings in paradise are unmistakable expressions of instrumental asceticism.
In partial contrast to Habib al-‘Ajami’s instrumental asceticism was the approach
of Malik ibn Dinar (d. 745 CE). Ibn Dinar was a student
of al-Hasan al-Basri
who served as an
important link between the ascetics
of Hasan’s and Rabi’a’s generations. Some hagiographers
even claim that Ibn Dinar and Rabi’a knew each other.48 The goal of Ibn Dinar’s
asceticism was to attain
complete acceptance of whatever God willed. He would say, “Verily the heart of the
lover of God loves hardships
for God’s sake.”49 Unlike Habib al-‘Ajami
and ‘Amir of ‘Abd Qays but
more like Rabi’a and ‘Afiya of ‘Abd Qays, Ibn Dinar viewed
his altruistic love of God as a reflection of God’s own altruism. This can be seen in the following statement: “I read in some book that God the Glorious and Mighty said, ‘Oh son of Adam,
my goodness descends
on you and your evil rises up to me. I show my love to you by granting you grace (ni’ma) but you show your dislike of me through your disobedience. Yet I am still a generous king who turns
aside his face from your ugly behavior.’”50 However,
although Malik ibn Dinar viewed
his love for God
altruistically, he still did not conceive of divine love as a form of intimacy between
lover and beloved. Rather,
it was an expression of the affection
of a grateful client for an all-forgiving patron. As such, it still fell short of true love mysticism.
By
contrast, the love of God expressed by Rabi’a and other female ascetics of the Basra
region made greater use of the notion of intimacy. The earliest recorded
saying by Rabi’a,
which appears in a work by the early
Sufi al-Harith al-Muhasibi, speaks of the relationship between
God and the ascetic
in terms that are much more intimate
than those used by Ibn Dinar: “The night has come,
the darkness has mingled, and every lover is left alone with his beloved.
Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.”51 Besides Rabi’a,
several other contemporary women ascetics of the
Basra region also combined essential
asceticism with the intimate love of God. Among the most
notable of these were three women of al-Ubulla, whom we have already met in Chapter
2. These were Rayhana,
Hayyuna, and Sha’wana, who lived more or less at the same time as Rabi’a.
Rayhana was a black slave.52 However, despite her lowly status, she was
famous as a poet. Sulami’s section on Rayhana in his Book of Sufi Women
contains the following verses that express her intimate love of God:
You are my intimate companion, my aspiration, and my happiness,
46 Ibid, vol. 6, 149
47 Ibid, 151
48 See, for example, the account related
by Malik ibn Dinar in ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-Awliya’ reproduced in
Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 167-8.
49 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 6, 263
50 Ibid, 277
51 Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa al-ruju’ ila Allah, 104
52 Nisaburi, ‘Uqala’ al-majanin, 147
And my heart refuses to love anything
but you.
Oh my dear, my
aspiration, and the object of my desire (muradi),
My desire (shawqi) is endless! When will I finally encounter
you?
My request
is not for Heaven’s pleasures (min al-jinani
na’ima); I only want to be together with you!53
The depiction of Rayhana in
hagiographic literature is important for the Rabi’a myth because she embodies
two characteristics that would appear in later narratives about Rabi’a.
First, she was a slave,
an attribution that first appears
in Nisaburi’s eleventh-century work, ‘Uqala’ al-majanin. Two centuries later,
the same attribution would be made about Rabi’a
by Farid al-Din al-‘Attar and it remains
a major part of the Rabi’a myth today. Second,
Rayhana is described by both Nisaburi
and Sulami as a poet of love mysticism. As we shall see below,
this too is an important part of the Rabi’a myth. The trope of Rabi’a the Love Poet first
appears in Abu Talib
al-Makki’s Qut al-qulub, which
was written about
a generation before
‘Uqala’ al-
majanin. Might the tropes of Rabi’a the Slave and Rabi’a the Love Poet have been conflated with similar tropes of Rayhana? This possibility is worth considering, although, as we shall see, there
is also evidence to support a different hypothesis.
What is most significant about Rayhana’s poem in the present context
is that it expresses a “desire
more desirable than desire,” which Geoffrey Galt Harpham has described as the
hallmark of the essential ascetic’s approach to God. In this poem, Rayhana
rejects the pleasures of heaven for an intimate encounter with God for its own sake. She also expresses a similar sentiment in a statement
reproduced by Ibn al-Jawzi in Sifat al-safwa: “The lover (muhibb)
subsists with the object of his hopes (al-ma’mul) with a presence
that causes the heart to take
flight because of happiness.”54 Such expressions of love without
expectation of reward
indicate that Rayhana was an exponent
of essential asceticism. In another poem from Nisaburi’s ‘Uqala’ al-majanin, she describes her intimate relationship with God in terms of self-sacrifice and martyrdom
It is enough for the lover that the Beloved knows That the lover is cast down (matruh) at his door.
The heart within him breathes
in the darkness of night,
Pierced
through and wounded
by the arrows of passion
(hawa).55
This
is the kind of love for which Rabi’a was to become famous, a love so single-minded
that the lover is willing
to make any sacrifice in order to be with the Beloved.
Even though Rayhana is mortally wounded
by passion, she remains at the Beloved’s
door, taking her last
breaths in hope of attaining union.
53 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 94-95; I have changed the translation of this poem slightly from the original version.
54 Ibn al-Jawzi
Appendix in Ibid, 306-7; I have changed
the translation of this verse somewhat from the
original
version.
55 Nisaburi, ‘Uqala’ al-majanin, 147
In a famous anecdote, which
first appears about a century and a half after her death, someone
asks Rabi’a, “How is your love for the Prophet?”
Rabi’a replies, “Verily,
I love him. However, my love for the Creator has preoccupied me from love for created
things” (shaghalani hubb al-khaliq ‘an hubb al-makhluq).56 This statement is open to many different
interpretations. One is that Rabi’a’s intense
love for God has caused her to overlook the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad in Hadith in favor of the teachings
of the Divine Beloved in the Qur’an.
The early Sufi biographer Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi (d. 952-53 CE), who may have been the first
to transmit this saying,
explains Rabi’a’s words
in the following way. “What she meant was this: I love the
Messenger of God with faith, belief, and conviction, because
he is the Messenger of God and because God loves him and has commanded us to love him. But my love for God demands
preoccupation with constant
remembrance of God, intimate converse
with him, and constant
delight in the sweetness of his speech and in his looking
into men’s hearts,
while still remembering his blessings.”57 Because
of the implication that the words of God are more
important than the words of the Prophet,
this and similar
statements led Rabi’a
to be accused of heresy by some opponents
of Sufism. Ironically, one of her champions who defended her against
such accusations was the Hanbali
jurist Ibn Taymiyya,
who was bitterly opposed to Sufism.58
Another woman ascetic
of al-Ubulla who appears
to have taught love mysticism was
Hayyuna. As noted previously, Hayyuna
is the only figure to appear in premodern sources
as a teacher of Rabi’a. She also appears
in some sources
as the teacher of Rayhana.
A major source of
information about Hayyuna
was the early ascetic and proto-Sufi Ibrahim
ibn Adham..59 This detail suggests that Hayyuna
flourished in the mid-eighth century
CE. Might Hayyuna
have been the original
source of the doctrine of love mysticism for which Rabi’a
has been given
credit? We will probably
never know the answer to this question.
However, a comparison of Hayyuna’s
statements with the statement of Rabi’a reproduced by Muhasibi is very suggestive of this possibility: “Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya would say at the coming of night, ‘Night
has come, the darkness has mingled (ikhtalata al-zalam), and every lover is left alone with his beloved.
Now I am alone with you, my
Beloved.’”60
This statement is similar
in form to statements about love mysticism attributed to
Hayyuna in Nisaburi’s ‘Uqala’ al-majanin. In the longest
quotation cited by Nisaburi, Hayyuna gives an analysis of the states
of love (ahwal al-mahabba), which seems to indicate that she had a
well-developed doctrine of love mysticism:
56
Sulami, Early Sufi
Women, 78-9; a slightly earlier version of this statement can be found in
Daylami’s ‘Atf al-alif. See Daylami,
A
Treatise on Mystical
Love, 112. Daylami
appears to have taken the quotation
from Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi’s Tabaqat
al-nussak. On this latter work,
see Chapter 1 and R. Cornell, Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 53.
57 Daylami, A Treatise
on Mystical Love, 112
58 The story that most concerned Ibn Taymiyya has Rabi’a saying
about the Ka’ba in Mecca,
“This is
nothing but an
idol to be worshipped on the earth; it has no part of God in it, yet at the
same time it is not empty of Him.” Although
Ibn Taymiyya denies that Rabi’a ever made this statement, he nonetheless
defends its theological premise. See Taqi al-Din
ibn Taymiyya, Majmu’a al-Rasa’il wa al-masa’il, edited by Muhammad ‘Ali Baydun (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2000), vol. 1, 76 and 94-7.
59 See, for example, the account attributed to Ibn Adham in Nisaburi,
‘Uqala’ al-majanin, 150.
60 Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah, 104
One who loves
[God] becomes intimate (man ahabba anisa). One who is intimate [with God] becomes
joyful (man anisa tariba). One who is joyful becomes desirous (man anisa
ishtaqa). One who is
desirous becomes infatuated (man ishtaqa
waliha). One who is
infatuated serves [the Beloved] (man waliha khadima). One who serves [the Beloved] attains
nearness (man khadima wasala). One who attains nearness attains union (man wasala
ittasala). One who attains
union gains intimate knowledge (man ittasala
‘arafa). One who has intimate knowledge attains proximity [with the
Beloved] (man ‘arafa qaruba). One who is in a state of proximity cannot
sleep and experiences moments of profound sadness (wa tasawwarat ‘alayhi bawariq al-ahzan).61
Other statements by Hayyuna
are similar in form to the statement by Rabi’a reported
by Muhasibi. In one of these,
Hayyuna makes the following supplication: “Oh God! Grant me peace
in my heart through my vow (‘aqd) to trust only in you. Make all of my thoughts, ideas, and inclinations agree with your acceptance of me. Do not allow these to deprive me of you. Oh,
hope of those who hope!”62 Like Rayhana and Rabi’a, Hayyuna
is depicted as composing poetry. However, all that remains
of her poetry are scattered verses, such as the following: “Oh one who has
promised satisfaction to the Beloved!
You and none other are the one that I want!”63 In another verse, Hayyuna admonishes God for her passionate suffering: “You know that I am infatuated with you. So, my Lord, why don’t you protect
me from the harshness of the sun?”64
Another important similarity between Hayyuna
and Rabi’a is in her role as a teacher- trainer (mu’addiba). Hayyuna
was famous for giving “tough love” to her students
and associates, just as Rabi’a supposedly did with Sufyan al-Thawri. In an account
from ‘Uqala’ al-majanin,
Hayyuna kicks Rabi’a awake before dawn, saying,
“Get up! The wedding of the Guided Ones
(‘urs al-muhtadin) has come! Oh, one who beautifies the Brides of the Night (‘ara’is al-layl) by means
of night-vigils!”65 The metaphor of “Brides of the Night” is reminiscent of Rabi’a’s
statement reported by Muhasibi. In another
account from ‘Uqala’ al-majanin, Hayyuna is depicted as criticizing a famous male ascetic. Much as Rabi’a
is depicted as chastising the jurist
Sufyan al-Thawri for his worldliness, Hayyuna is depicted
as chastising the preacher and ascetic
‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd for his hypocrisy.
61 Ibid
62 Ibid
One day Hayyuna
was present at one of ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd’s sessions. Upon hearing him finish speaking, she stood up and shouted, “Oh
so-called theologian (mutakallim)! Talk about yourself instead! By God, if you were to die, I would not
attend your funeral!” “Why?” Ibn Zayd
asked. She replied, “You talk about
people and then you seek their company. I
can only compare you to a child in the first stages of learning. His way of learning is to memorize things
in his mother’s house in the evening such that he would forget them completely
by daybreak. This causes his teacher
to discipline him by hitting him. So
go, ‘Abd al-Wahid! Chastise yourself
with an abundance of discipline (adab). Sustain yourself with the nourishment of
sufficiency in God, and earn your true reputation by applying to yourself what
you say about other people!”66
63 Ibid, 149
64 Ibid
65 Ibid; See Chapter 2 n. 198 above for other examples
of this trope.
66 Nisaburi, ‘Uqala’ al-majanin, 149-150
The final woman ascetic
of al-Ubulla in Rabi’a’s time to be associated with love
mysticism was Sha’wana.
The figure of Sha’wana the Lover appears
in a single account
attributed to the Persian Sufi Muhammad ibn Khafif of Shiraz (d. 982 CE). As we saw in Chapter
2, Sha’wana is most famous
as a practitioner of ascetic
weeping. In Ibn Khafif’s story,
she weeps at having
neglected her devotions “because she remained
so long distraught by love.” Later,
a figure appears to her in a dream and says to
her in verse:
Let your eyes flow with the tears you were holding
back, For lamentations can cure the grief-stricken.
Be diligent; keep
vigils, and fast always and forever, For wasting away is a characteristic of the obedient.67
Ibn Khafif’s account is significant because
it recalls Herbert
W. Basser’s observation that in rabbinic Judaism
penitential tears were regarded as a means of arousing
divine passion. If the
same could be said for the tears of Muslim
ascetics, then Sha’wana’s example allows us to link ascetic weeping to both essential asceticism and love mysticism. According
to this view, weeping, like other expressions of asceticism, helps the ascetic
cross the boundary
between the World and the Nonworld.
Basser explains, “The mystery of crying is that through
tears the outside worlds
and the interior
worlds merge deep inside the human spirit.”68 As we have seen in Walter O. Kaelber’s definition of asceticism cited above, this “merging of outside and interior
worlds” is a major goal of both asceticism and mysticism.
d.
The Question
of Rabi’a’s Celibacy
Most premodern Muslim sources
describe Rabi’a as celibate. In her chapter
on Rabi’a’s celibacy in Rabi’a the Mystic, Margaret Smith cites several sources
for this claim and notes that
Rabi’a was reputed to have refused proposals
of marriage from ‘Abd al-Wahid
ibn Zayd, the Abbasid governor of Basra, and even from al-Hasan
al-Basri, who died over 70 years before her.69 For Smith, Rabi’a’s
celibacy suggested parallels
with Christianity. “Like her Christian sisters in the life of sanctity,” she remarks, “Rabi’a
espoused a heavenly
bridegroom and turned her back on earthly
marriage even with one of her own intimates and companions on the Way.”70 As a Christian scholar,
Smith believed that Rabi’a’s celibacy
was based on the Christian
model of marriage to God. This opinion
was objectionable for some Muslim writers, who sought to distance Rabi’a from Christianity. For example, Widad El Sakkakini
counters Smith’s view by
stating, “Rabi’a’s love was not like the love known to the Greeks, which came from the teachings of Plato; nor like the pre-Islamic love familiar to the monks.
Her uniquely woven
model entered the Islamic
creeds as a concept of beauty dissociated from the body.”71
67 Daylami, A Treatise
on Mystical Love, 199
68 Basser, “A Love for all Seasons,”
185
69 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 29-39 and Rabi’a (Rainbow Bridge), 10-19
70 Ibid (Oneworld), 32 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 13
71 El Sakkakini, First among Sufis, 62; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 98
Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s attempt to disassociate Rabi’a from Christian
models of celibacy went even further.
According to ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a
started her adult
life as a married woman and only later
turned to celibacy
after her husband
had died: “She did not practice
celibacy like Christian nuns. Rather,
the actual sources
state that she was married
and that every night she used to cook and attend to her husband,
saying, ‘Do you have a need?’ When she had fulfilled them and left him, she would purify herself and bend her knees in prayer.”72 The original version
of this story comes from Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa, but the woman in question is not Rabi’a. Instead,
she is the wife of Riyah (or Rabah) al-Qaysi
(d. 796 CE).73 In some modern versions of Rabi’a’s
life, Rabi’a is depicted as the wife of Riyah al-Qaysi.
‘Abd
al-Raziq’s attempt to refute the accounts of Rabi’a’s celibacy
can be criticized on
several grounds.
First, her argument
against Christian comparisons ignores a long-standing tradition in Sufism that refers to the mystic’s
intimate encounter with God as a form of spiritual marriage.74 This can be seen, for example, in Hayyuna’s references to God’s devotees
as “Brides of the Night” (‘ara’is al-layl) and the ascetic’s night vigil as the “Wedding
of the Guided Ones” (‘urs al-muhtadin). Even today, the death-date of a Sufi saint in many parts of the Muslim world is
referred to as a “wedding” (‘urs). On such evidence, Margaret Smith was justified in suggesting a parallel between
the Christian concept
of celibacy as marriage to God and the Sufi notion of union with God as a form of spiritual
marriage.
Ironically, ‘Abd al-Raziq’s contention that Rabi’a became celibate after her husband
had died makes her celibacy seem even more “Christian” than otherwise. Although
Muslim widows may become celibate after the death of their husbands, this is not a widely recommended practice in Islam. Rather, it is more typically Christian. For example, Paul of Tarsus states in his letter to
Timothy that Christian widows should
take a vow of celibacy
after the death
of their husbands
(1 Tim. 5:9-12). Thus, ‘Abd al-Raziq’s attempt to avoid
comparisons with Christianity by making Rabi’a a celibate widow had the opposite effect of what she intended.
In religious terms, this
practice is more “Christian” than “Muslim.”
Finally, ‘Abd al-Raziq cites only two premodern sources
to back up her claim
of Rabi’a’s widowhood. Both of these sources are chronologically later than the sources that assert Rabi’a’s celibacy and both come from Egypt. The earlier
of these sources
is al-Rawd al-fa’iq (The
Garden of Awareness) by Shu’ayb ibn Sa’d al-Hurayfish (d. 1398 CE). In this account, al-Hasan
al-Basri comes to visit Rabi’a after her husband dies and inquires whether
she wants to marry again.75 We
72 ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, 57
73 See Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa
74 The trope of the marriage of the human soul to God goes back to the Jewish
Hellenistic philosopher
Philo of
Alexandria (d. 45 CE). It was picked
up from Philo’s followers by early Christians in Alexandria and most likely entered
Islamic writings through
the influence of Nestorian Christian teachers in Iraq, who
followed the traditions of both Alexandrian philosophy and Alexandrian
Christianity. See Pierre Hadot, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision,
translated by Michael Chase with Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 55 and n. 12.
75 Al-Shaykh [‘Abdullah Shu’ayb ibn Sa’d] al-Hurayfish, al-Rawd al-fa’iq
fi-l-mawa’iz wa-l-raqa’iq
(Cairo: Maktabat
al-Jumhuriyya al-‘Arabiyya, 1970), 183; In tracing the original version
of this account to ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’, Margaret Smith
incorrectly translates the text as stating that Hasan says to Rabi’a, “I desire
that we should marry and be betrothed.” (Rabi’a
[Oneworld], 31 and [Rainbow Bridge], 13)
However, in the original
Persian passage from ‘Attar, Hasan asks, “Do you desire to
take a husband?” (Pers. Raghibti
shawhar koni?) In neither of the
passages in ‘Attar where Hasan mentions marriage to Rabi’a, does he identify
himself as a possible suitor. See
Shaykh Farid al-Din Muhammad ‘Attar
can reject this account
as anachronistic because
Hasan died long before Rabi’a.
The source of most
of Hurayfish’s accounts
about Rabi’a was ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’ (Memorial of the Saints), which was written
around the beginning of the thirteenth century CE.76 However,
he also added other
elements to the Rabi’a narratives, such as the claim of her marriage, which cannot be found
in ‘Attar’s work. The second source that ‘Abd al-Raziq cites to prove Rabi’a’s marriage and widowhood is al-Kawakib al-durriyya (The Pearly Spheres),
by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ra’uf
al-Munawi (d. 1621 CE).77 This collection of Sufi biographies from Ottoman Egypt
is notorious for its inaccuracies, such as the assertion that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was both from Basra and Egypt.78 Clearly,
if these are the best that ‘Abd al-Raziq can provide in the way of “actual” historical sources,
then her assertion
that Rabi’a was a widow
rests on very shaky ground.
Accounts of Rabi’a’s celibacy
are both more numerous and chronologically earlier
than are accounts of her marriage
and widowhood. The earliest account
of Rabi’a’s celibacy
can be found in Balaghat al-nisa’ by
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur (d. 893 CE). As we saw in Chapter 1, this
work is one of the earliest to mention Rabi’a.
Like his predecessors Muhasibi and Jahiz,
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
reproduced local accounts
about Rabi’a from Basra. In the account
in question, Rabi’a is asked, “Marriage
is a requirement of God, the Glorious
and Mighty. So why do you not marry?” She replies: “One requirement of God prevents
me from fulfilling another of His
requirements.”79 This account
is also significant because it associates Rabi’a’s
celibacy with essential asceticism; in fact, it is also the earliest
evidence of her essential asceticism. Because it is an early source
of non-Sufi origin,
Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur’s claim that Rabi’a practiced celibacy is much more credible than the late Egyptian anecdotes
denying her celibacy
that are cited by
‘Abd al-Raziq. Furthermore, since the majority of other premodern
sources agree that Rabi’a was celibate, this early account
in Balaghat al-nisa’ should be taken as important evidence
that the “real” Rabi’a was in fact, to borrow a term from Susanna Elm, a “virgin
of God.”80
At the opposite end of the spectrum from ‘Abd al-Raziq’s assertion that Rabi’a was
married, is the claim of another Egyptian
historian, Taha ‘Abd al-Baqi Surur, that Rabi’a’s celibacy was the result
of her radical other-worldliness. “[Rabi’a]
had left creation
in its entirety. She had left the world
in its entirety. She was spirit and not body. So what could men want of her?”81 Surur’s rhetorical question raises the issue of how the celibacy of Muslim women ascetics was perceived in Rabi’a’s time. Was it similar to the Christian notion of marriage
or betrothal to God as imagined
by Margaret Smith, or was it an expression of extreme other- worldliness, as Surur seems to
suggest?
In
answering this question, one must first take note of the fact that the Qur’an appears to
criticize monasticism (rahbaniyya)— and by implication celibacy— when it states that the
Nishaburi, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, ed. Muhammad Isti’lami (Tehran: Intisharat Zawar, 14th edition,
2005 reprint of 1967 original), 47.
76 See Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 161-62 and ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 47-48.
77 For the original quotation, see Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ra’uf al-Munawi, al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi tarajim
al-sadat al-sufiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, 1999), vol. 1, 288.
78 Ibid, 285; A tomb that is purported to be Rabi’a’s
can still be found in Cairo today.
79 Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur,
Balaghat al-nisa’, 204
80 See Susanna
Elm, Virgins of God: the Making
of Asceticism in Late Antiquity
(Oxford, U. K.: The
Clarendon Press, 1996).
81 Taha ‘Abd al-Baqi Surur,
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya wa al-hayat
al-ruhiyya fi al-Islam
(Cairo: Dar al-Fikr
al-
‘Arabi,
1957), 51
Christians created
monasticism for themselves even though God did not prescribe it for them (Qur’an, 57:27). As mentioned in Chapter 2, the verb used in the Qur’an to characterize the invention of monasticism is ibtada’a, which comes from the same root as bid’a,
the term used in
Islam for the unauthorized innovation of religious practices or doctrines. This Qur’anic verse
is supported by a hadith that is often mistaken by Muslims for a Qur’anic
ruling: “There is no
monasticism in Islam”
(la rahbaniyyata fi al-Islam). Abu Dawud al-Sijistani, who transmits this hadith in Sunan Abi Dawud, makes a point of clarifying that the Qur’anic
verse and the hadith
refer only to celibacy but not to asceticism, which is encouraged in Islam. To further underscore the point that only celibacy is criticized, Abu Talib al-Makki
cites another well-known hadith in Qut al-qulub: “He who loves me makes my Sunna his example,
which means marriage.”82
There is no scriptural source in Islam
that encourages celibacy
the way that it is encouraged in Christianity. In the New Testament, celibacy
is prescribed for full-time priests
in the Book of Matthew (Matt.
19:12). In the Book of Matthew as well, women are encouraged to forsake childbearing for the sake of God (Matt. 19:29),
and believers are told that the marriage bond does not apply in heaven (Matt. 22:30).
In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul states that he considers it best for a man not to take a wife (1 Cor. 7:1). In the same letter,
Jesus is described as wishing that all men could follow
his example of celibacy (1 Cor. 7:7), and that men
should avoid marriage in order to avoid worldly temptations (1 Cor. 7:27).
However, even in the Qur’an, one sometimes finds celibacy mentioned
with approval.
For example, John the Baptist is described as chaste or celibate (hasur, Qur’an,
3:39). In addition, the Virgin Mary is praised
for preserving her chastity (ahsanat farjaha, Qur’an, 21:91 and 66:12).
Mary is also popularly known
among Muslims as al-Batul (literally, “devoted”
or “consecrated” to God), an epithet
that is usually understood to mean “The Virgin” or “The
Celibate.”83 Finally, there
are verses in the Qur’an
that refer to family and children as worldly
temptations, such as the passage,
“Verily, your possessions and your children
are trials for you”
(Qur’an, 64:14).
In Rabi’a’s time, a number of well-known ascetics
refused to marry. In part, this was a
result of the misanthropic attitude
of reactionary asceticism. In the previous
chapter, we saw how
the moral pessimism of such works as al-Mu’afa ibn ‘Imran’s Kitab al-zuhd
led to exhortations against having children in a dangerous
and sinful world. This prejudice
against having a family
(ta’ahhul) can be seen in a statement attributed to Ibrahim ibn Adham, one of the most famous celibate ascetics of Rabi’a’s
day. “If a Sufi marries,
his similitude is like that of a man who travels on a boat; and if he has children, he is sunk.”84 At other times, Muslim ascetics
expressed their rejection of marital or family life in terms of a cynical attitude
toward social relations. The Prophet’s cousin Ibn ‘Abbas (d. 688 CE) asked rhetorically, “Can anyone ruin people other
than other people?”85 Malik ibn Dinar, a celibate
ascetic and lover of God who was a generation older than Rabi’a stated,
“A man will not attain
the station of the true believers until he casts
his wife
82 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 405
83 See, for example, how the imperative (tabattal) and verbal noun forms of this term (tabtila) are used in
Qur’an, 73:8: “Keep the remembrance of the name of your Lord with complete and utter devotion” (wa’dhkur isma Rabbika wa tabattal ilayhi tabtila).
84 Sarraj, al-Luma’ 199
85 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 307
aside as if she were a widow and takes refuge in garbage
dumps frequented by dogs.”86 Ibn Dinar
was so averse to the concept of marriage that he is said to have stated, “If I could, I would divorce myself!”87 Although Ibrahim
ibn Adham also rejected marriage,
he was more pragmatic about the
subject. When asked why he did not marry, he replied, “What
would you say about a man
who deceives and cheats on his wife? If I were to marry a woman, she would ask from me what
women ask. Yet I have nothing to do with women.”88 Abu Sulayman al-Darani
(d. 830 CE), a
celibate ascetic and early Sufi of Basra who later moved to Syria, rejected
marriage because he disliked women in general.
Seeing women as the embodiment of the World, he forbade
his followers from marrying
them as a form of ethical precaution (wara’). Darani
clamed that companionship with women made the majority
of men ignorant (jahil)
and stupid (safih); thus, women should be avoided
by all men who seek the presence
of God.89
However, despite
their disapproval of marriage, all of these male ascetics—
even Darani— visited female
ascetics such as Rabi’a and her contemporaries. In fact, not only did they
visit female ascetics, they also visited
them alone and after dark. This practice, which is attested to by ‘Attar
and other Sufi writers, has troubled modern Muslim moralists. For example, Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s concern about the impropriety of al-Hasan al-Basri
spending the night alone in prayer with Rabi’a appears
to be what caused her to try save Rabi’a’s
reputation by making her a
married woman.90
Clearly, ascetic
women were exceptions to the normal category of women in early Islam. As
‘Attar famously states about Rabi’a
in Tadhkirat al-awliya’, “When a woman is on the path of
God Most High, she becomes
a man.”91 Because
such women were singled out for their exceptional virtue, it is reasonable to conclude that many of Rabi’a’s female colleagues practiced celibacy as she did. Among the female ascetics
in the region of Basra
in Rabi’a’s time,
only Sha’wana is mentioned in a premodern source as having
been married. However,
even this claim is
doubtful because it is mentioned
without attribution by Ibn al-Jawzi,
who lived four centuries
after Sha’wana.92
In light of the abundant textual
evidence attesting to the practice
of celibacy in early
Islam, and because of the ambiguity of scriptural passages
and doctrinal statements about this subject, it is necessary to find a more theoretically adequate and less superficial way of
comparing Muslim and Christian approaches to celibacy than has been attempted so far. As much as contemporary Muslim
moralists might wish to deny that celibacy
was once an accepted
practice in Islam, it is undeniable that celibacy was widely tolerated, if not fully approved, in the
early Muslim world. In fact, most, if not all, of the varieties of celibacy that were present in early
86 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 2, 259
87 Ibid, 295
88 Ibid, vol. 8, 21; this account
contains the same trope as the “Why do you not marry?”
account about
Rabi’a
in Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s
Balaghat al-nisa’. Other examples
of this trope can be found in Isfahani,
Hilya, vol. 2, 261 and ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 47-48.
89 See the discussion of Darani’s view of marriage
in Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 413-14.
Darani’s
negative
view of women was similar
to that of Paul of Tarsus.
90 ‘Abd al-Raziq,
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, 59; In order to underline the moral problem
of Rabi’a and Hasan
being alone together, ‘Abd al-Raziq cites a hadith in which the Prophet
Muhammad forbids a man to be
alone with a woman, “even if they are the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.”
91 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 41 (Pers. Chun zan dar rahi Khodayi Ta’ala
mard bashad.)
92 See Ibn al-Jawzi Appendix
in Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 304-305.
Christianity were present in early Islam as well. These even included some forms of celibacy that are usually thought to have been
unique to Christianity.
For example, in 325 CE the Council of Nicaea forbade
Christian priests and other
celibate males to take into their houses,
synesaktoi, women who lived with men as fictive “sisters” in a sort of pseudo-marriage.93 Despite
this prohibition, many Christian ascetics continued this practice through
the end of the fourth century CE, especially in Syria.94 It is thus probably not a coincidence that pseudo-marriages are also mentioned in early Sufi accounts from this region. For example,
Abu Nasr al-Sarraj
(d. 988 CE) mentions a male Muslim
ascetic who contracted a marriage but still had not consummated his union after thirty years.95
An even better example
from Syria can be found
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa, where relations between the male Sufi Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari (d. 845 CE) and his wife Rabi’a
bint Isma’il of Damascus
are described in terms that are very similar to the practices
of Syrian Christian synesaktoi. In an account
that originally came from a lost work on early
Muslim ascetics by the traditionist Ibn Abi al-Dunya
(d. 894 CE), Rabi’a of Damascus says to her husband, “I do not love you in the way that married couples
do; instead, I love you as one of the Sufi
brethren. I wanted to be with you only in order to serve you, and I desired and hoped that my
fortune would be consumed by someone like you and your brethren.”96 In the fourth
century CE, the Christian bishop Basil of Ancyra condemned the synesaktoi
of Antioch and other Syrian cities out of concern
that such women
would “forego divine
love by living
comfortably together with men who look after their earthly needs,
all under the pretext of charity.”97 The main
difference between Rabi’a
bint Isma’il’s example
and the practice
that Basil referred
to was that in the latter
case, Christian ascetics
of higher status
took in poor women as synesaktoi
in order to be served by them. In the case of Rabi’a bint Isma’il,
however, the social status of the spouses
is reversed, such that a rich wife offers her wealth
as charity to support her ascetic husband.
A more nuanced
and culturally appropriate way of drawing
a distinction between
early
Christian and Islamic approaches to celibacy is to think of celibacy
as expressed in either
“principled” or “vocational” forms. Principled celibacy
is a form of celibacy
that is based on scriptural foundations and is seen as fundamental to ascetic practice
in general. Celibacy
in early Christianity can be termed principled celibacy
because it was sanctioned by scripture and was a central principle of both anchoretic (individual) and cenobitic (group)
asceticism. In other words,
it was very difficult to call oneself
an ascetic in early Christianity unless one practiced celibacy. Other examples of principled celibacy
can be found in Buddhism
and Hinduism. However, celibacy in Judaism and Islam is best characterized as vocational
celibacy. In both of these religions, celibacy is not a majoritarian practice for ascetics
and is not sanctioned by either law or
scripture. In cases where celibacy
was tolerated, it was accepted
as part of the ascetic
life but was
93 Elm, Virgins of God, 48-51
94 Ibid, 206
95 Sarraj, al-Luma’, Arabic text 199; Had the male ascetic’s
wife chosen to do so, she could
have petitioned
for divorce on the grounds
of non-consummation.
96 Ibn al-Jawzi
Appendix to Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 316-17;
Ibn Abi al-Dunya
was the teacher
of the
Sufi biographer
and theologian Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi. The
fact that this account originally came from a near-contemporaneous written
source seriously undermines Julian Baldick’s claim that Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus never existed. See Baldick, “The Legend of Rabi’a of
Basra,” 237.
97 Elm, Virgins of God, 50
not
seen as fundamental to the practice of asceticism itself.
This type of celibacy can be called “vocational” because it is based on individual choice
and views marriage
and family as impediments to the ascetic’s
principal vocation, which is devotion
and service to God.
The concept of vocational celibacy is related
to the concept of essential
asceticism. This is clear in Rabi’a’s
statement about celibacy
as recorded by Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur:
“One requirement of God prevents me from fulfilling another of His requirements.” What Rabi’a meant by this was that the undivided attention the ascetic gives to God leaves no room for anyone
or anything else.98 Abu Talib al-Makki makes the same point in his chapter
on Love in Qut al-
qulub: “He who wants to be loved by God must reject
the World and must not even contemplate the love of God unless he renounces the World.”99 For the ascetic
who follows this precept,
marriage and family are distractions that divert the attention of God’s lover
from the Beloved.
In the original version
of the account cited by Hurayfish and ‘Abd al-Raziq, where al- Hasan al-Basri
suggests to Rabi’a
that she remarry,
the Persian Sufi ‘Attar depicts
Rabi’a as “belonging” to God. However,
unlike Margaret Smith,
who views Rabi’a as the bride of God,
‘Attar depicts her as the ward of God. In this account
Rabi’a states, “I am not my own. I belong to
[God] and I am under His command.
Permission for a betrothal can come only from Him.”100 The subtext
of this statement is the rule in Islamic jurisprudence that a virgin
bride can only be
given away in marriage by her guardian.
For Rabi’a, God is the guardian (wali) of his ascetic devotees; if the ascetic
remains celibate, this means that God has chosen to withhold permission from his ward to marry.101 Hasan likes Rabi’a’s
answer to his question because
it reflects the intimate relationship that prevails
between God and the essential ascetic. However, it is also important to note that although this account concerns
marriage, it is not about
love. Although the point
of ‘Attar’s story
is the closeness of the relationship between
the ascetic and God, this relationship is one of guardianship and dependency, not one of loving intimacy.
Thus, the moral of
this story most likely involves
either the renunciation of the World
that forms the basis of asceticism or the superiority of essential asceticism over instrumental asceticism.
Both of these themes
are present in two of the most famous stories
of marriage proposals to Rabi’a. These stories
first appear in Abu Talib al-Makki’s Qut al-qulub, a work that appeared
nearly two centuries after Rabi’a’s
death. In one account, Rabi’a
is petitioned for marriage by the
Abbasid governor of Basra, Muhammad
ibn Sulayman al-Hashimi (fl. ca. 762 CE), who offers
her 100,000 gold dinars as a bride price
and 10,000 dinars a
month as maintenance. Rabi’a refuses this offer
with the following words: “It does not please
me that you should be my slave and that all you possess should
be mine or that you should distract
me from God for a single
moment.”102 Since Rabi’a
was born around
714 CE, she would have been around
40 years old at
98 Pierre Hadot also sees essential asceticism as fundamental to Plotinus’ (d. 270 CE) doctrine of Love. He characterizes Plotinian Love as “an
invasion of the soul by a presence which leaves no room for anything but
itself.” See idem, Plotinus, 55.
99 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 92
100 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 47 and Sells,
Early Islamic Mysicism, 161-2;
the Sells translation states,
“You must ask permission from him.”
101 This belief also corresponds to the Qur’anic
view of God as the wali (guardian or protector) of the
believers. See, for example,
Qur’an, 2:257: “God is the guardian of those who believe; He takes them out
of the darkness toward the light” (Allahu
waliyyu alladhina amanu, yukhrijuhum min al-zulumati ila al- nur).
102 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94; see also, Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 29 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 10.
the
time of the governor’s proposal. Although it is possible that a close
kinsman of the Abbasid
Caliph would have thought of marrying Rabi’a as a way of both honoring
her and pleasing
the inhabitants of Basra,
such a scenario is unlikely.
What is most important about
this story is Rabi’a’s refusal, which stresses
the doctrinal point that marriage,
especially to a rich spouse,
is a distraction for the
ascetic lover of God.
A similar point is made in the second story of Rabi’a’s rejection
of a marriage proposal in Qut al-qulub. This time the proposal is made by ‘Abd al-Wahid
ibn Zayd. According to Louis Massignon, Ibn Zayd was the most important doctrinal
successor of al-Hasan
al-Basri.103 As a preacher, he was famous
for the quality
of his sermons, which stressed
moral virtue, sincerity, and the solitary life. Given Ibn Zayd’s high moral standing, it is interesting that in some accounts
he is rebuked for hypocrisy by either Hayyuna
of al-Ubulla (see above) or Rabi’a. In the account from Makki’s Qut al-qulub, Rabi’a refuses Ibn Zayd’s proposal
with the following
rebuke: “Oh lustful one! Seek a lustful woman
like yourself! What did you see in me that aroused your desire?”104
The moral of this story may simply be to remind Sufis that one cannot combine devotion to God with devotion
to a spouse. As the Qur’an states,
“God did not create two hearts in one
body” (Qur’an, 33:4).
However, the story
may also have a more subtle meaning,
in which Rabi’a is not really talking
about worldly desire
but rather about the difference between instrumental and essential forms of asceticism. Like the governor
of Basra, Ibn Zayd may have wanted
to marry Rabi’a in order to get “extra credit” from God by marrying a famous ascetic.
Another problem
with this story concerns its historical accuracy.
Sulami, writing in the
generation after Makki,
recounts the very same story. However, Sulami’s
version of the story is not about Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya but about the other Rabi’a of Basra, Rabi’a
al-Azdiyya.105 We saw in Chapter
1 that accounts about the two Rabi’as
were conflated by later historians and hagiographers. For example,
in the fourteenth century CE, the Hanbali
scholar Muhammad al- Dhahabi mistook one Rabi’a
for the other in an account about “Rabi’a al’Adawiyya’s” purported refusal to meet with Sufyan
al-Thawri.106 Since the real Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was widely assumed to have been the teacher
of Thawri and would have met with him regularly, only Rabi’a al-Azdiyya could have refused
to meet with him. A similar logic applies to Makki’s story about
the alleged proposal of ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd. Although
Makki’s account of Ibn Zayd’s marriage proposal predates Sulami’s, Sulami’s account is more credible
because he cites
a chain of transmission that goes back to a resident of Basra who was a contemporary of the two women
ascetics. In addition, Sulami states
that Ibn Zayd was known to have been a close companion
of Rabi’a al-Azdiyya.107 Although
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya might also have known Ibn Zayd, no early
account describes the two of them as being on such close
terms. Thus, when Margaret Smith refers to Ibn Zayd as Rabi’a’s
“companion on the Way,” she apparently was just the latest in a
long line of writers who confused Rabi’a al-Azdiyya with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.108
103 Massignon, Essay,
147-8
104 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94
105 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 128-9
106 See Chapter
1 above and Dhahabi, Siyar, vol. 8, 241.
107 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 128-9
108 Smith, Rabi’a, (Oneworld), 32 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 13
III Rabi’a the Muslim Diotima
a.
An Incognito Presence: Rabi’a and Plato’s Symposium
In Sufi writings, Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya is portrayed as the teacher of divine love par excellence. Although
other Muslim ascetics
also taught the doctrine of divine love in Rabi’a’s time, this fact has made little
difference to the development of the Sufi tradition of love
mysticism. As Carl W. Ernst has observed,
“It is striking that the Sufi tradition
unanimously credits Rabi’a with these insights
into love and regards her as the example of the pure lover of God.”109 According
to Ernst, even the great Andalusian Sufi Muhammad (Muhyiddin) Ibn al- ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE), who wrote a book of poems
on divine love titled The Interpreter of Desires (Tarjuman al-ashwaq) stated
that Rabi’a “analyzes
and classes the categories of love to the point of
being the most famous interpreter of love.”110 As we have seen, in Arabic-language Sufi texts,
the trope of Rabi’a the Lover goes back to the Basra
Sufi and theologian al-Harith al-Muhasibi,
who flourished in the first half of the ninth
century CE. In Persian-language Sufi texts, the trope
of Rabi’a the Lover goes back to the late twelfth-century hagiographer Farid al-Din al-‘Attar, who uses Rabi’a to exemplify the concept of mystical love.111 Carl Ernst sums up Rabi’a’s importance to the Sufi tradition of love mysticism
in the following way: “Regardless of the difficulty of ascertaining her exact formulations, we may still invoke Rabi’a
as the figure who stands for the first
intensive meditations on the nature
of mystical love in Islam.”112
About fifty years after ‘Attar created what was to become the standard version of the
Rabi’a myth in Tadhkirat al-awliya’, a scholar from Jerusalem named ‘Izz al-Din ibn ‘Abd al-
Salam al-Maqdisi (d. 1279 CE) composed a hagiographical work titled Kitab sharh
al-awliya’ (The Explanation of the Saints). One of
the chapters of this work bears the title, “The Explanation of Rabi’a’s State”
(Sharh hal Rabi’a). In this chapter,
Maqdisi conveys the following teaching attributed to Rabi’a on the mystery
of Love:
Between the lover
and the beloved, there is no separation. Love
is an expression of desire (nutq ‘an shawq). It is the description of an experience (dhawq, literally, “taste”) and only the one who has experienced it knows it. He who expresses it cannot be defined by it (man wasafa fa-ma ittasafa). How
can one express a thing whose presence is absence, whose existence melts away,
whose appearance is fleeting, whose sobriety is intoxication, whose emptiness is fullness, and whose happiness is infatuation? The awe it causes deprives the tongue of speech. The bewilderment it causes makes the
coward act courageously. The jealousy
it causes veils the sight of anything else. The
perplexity it causes prevents reasoned thought. What else is left but everlasting astonishment, permanent
bewilderment, hearts that are perplexed, secrets that are hidden, and bodies that are forever wasting away? Such is Love (mahabba), the Ruler of Hearts under her harsh regime (bi-dawlatiha al-sarima fi-l-qulub hakima)!113
109 Ernst, “The Stages of Love,” 439
110 Ibid
111 See, for example, Smith,
Rabi’a (Oneworld) 124 and (Rainbow Bridge),
99-100
112 Ernst, “The Stages of Love,” 439
113 Portions of Maqdisi’s work are reproduced in Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 177-78; According
to
Badawi, the original manuscript of this work can be found in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, fonds Arabes, no. 1641.
In the passage after this selection, Maqdisi comments
further on the mystery
of Love in a poem
of his own. After this, he eulogizes
Rabi’a in a passage where the voices of the hagiographer and his subject merge
into one:
Have mercy on the lovers
(al-‘ashiqin), whose hearts
Are bewildered and lost in the vast wilderness of Love (mahabba)!
The resurrection of their desire
(‘ishq) has taken place. Their souls Arise, with an endless and
everlasting humility,
Leading
either toward gardens
of eternal union
Or toward a fire that blocks hearts
and keeps them aflame!
Oh Rabi’a! You are a wonder in the domain of Love! How is it that the image of actual reality
(surat
al-waqi’a), came to be named “Rabi’a”? If the state [of Love] is one, then from whence come this
sharing (sharika) and unification (mujama’a)? She said: Oh people! Harmony
is a rule of companionship. Do you not see that the offspring of Desire and Awe are not fulfilled unless they drink from the Sea
of Love with Love’s own drink? I saw
him saying to his companion in the cave: “Do
not despair, for God is with us.” What do you think of “two” when God is the
third of two? Then, I advanced toward
the solitude of the cave with true commitment.
But Jealousy cried out from inside the cave: “Who is this infatuated and
anxious woman who removes the veil of contentment and yet is content with us
alone?”114
This remarkable passage contains
a number of important allusions. The first allusion
is to Surat al-Waqi’a in the Qur’an (Qur’an, 56, “The Event” or “The Actual Reality”). This sura contains some of the most famous
Qur’anic descriptions of the rewards
of heaven that await
believers and the punishments of Hell that await sinners.
In the above passage, Maqdisi
creates a pun that uses this Qur’anic reference
as a metaphor, in which sura with the letter sin, meaning
a Qur’anic discourse, is replaced by sura with the letter sad, meaning
“image.” In this way,
Maqdisi portrays Rabi’a as the icon or “image” of the Qur’anic
Surat al-Waqi’a. Another
important allusion in this passage
is to the famous account
of the cave on Mount Thawr near Mecca, where the Prophet
Muhammad and his friend Abu Bakr hid for three days during their
flight from Mecca to Medina.
In popular accounts
of this story, Muhammad tells
Abu Bakr not to
fear their discovery by Meccan search parties,
for “God is with us.”115 In Maqdisi’s text, the
Prophet Muhammad personifies Love and reminds
Abu Bakr that one of the most important signs of love is trust in the Beloved.
However, along
with these Islamic
references, Maqdisi’s text also contains
other
allusions, which evoke Plato as much as they evoke the Qur’an or the image of the Prophet. One trace
of Platonic influence can be seen in Maqdisi’s conflation of love-as-mahabba with love-as-
114 Ibid, 178
115 This version
of the story of the cave does not appear in Sirat Rasul Allah (Biography of the Messenger
of God) by
Muhammad ibn Ishaq (d. 768 CE) or in the later edition of this work by Ibn
Hisham (d. ca. 833 CE). See Arnold
Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A
Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (Lahore: Oxford
University Press, 1970 [reprint of 1955 first edition]), 224-25.
Many Muslims believe
that Sura 29 of the Qur’an, al-‘Ankabut
(The Spider), refers to the spider’s web that was supposed to have hidden
the Prophet and Abu Bakr from their pursuers by being stretched across the
mouth of the cave.
However, the title of this sura actually refers to the thinness of the spider’s
web, which is likened to the
vain hopes of those who take protectors other than God (Qur’an, 29:41).
‘ishq in the poem that follows Rabi’a’s
statement. As noted
earlier in this chapter, the primary
connotation of love in early Islam was affection, which corresponds to the Arabic terms hubb and mahabba. Only later
was divine love expressed as ‘ishq,
which connotes physical
longing or desire. In Plato’s Dialogues, as in the works of the Greek
philosophers in general,
the Greek term eros, which connotes physical
desire, was used to express
the concept of Love as a principle.
Because the term ‘ishq began
to appear as a synonym
for mahabba in Muslim writings at about
the same time that Greek
philosophical works were beginning to be translated into Arabic, some scholars of Islam have suggested that ‘ishq first came into Islamic
discourse as the Arabic
translation of eros.116
Besides the conflation of mahabba and ‘ishq, other possible traces of Platonic
influence can also be found in Maqdisi’s chapter
on Rabi’a. For example, Rabi’a’s
personification of Love as
a great (feminine) ruler might be seen as alluding to the personification of Love as Aphrodite
or Phaedrus’ description of Love as a “mighty god” in Plato’s
Symposium.117 In addition,
Maqdisi’s description of Love as a paradox
of opposites recalls
Plato’s discussion of the spirit
of Eros in the Symposium, which is described
as occupying a paradoxical space in-between the human
and divine realms.118 Other possible
echoes of Plato’s
Symposium can be found
in Rabi’a’s comment on the harmony
that Love seeks
to create between
souls. This brings
to mind Eryximachus’ depiction of Love as the creator
of harmony among
the elements.119 Maqdisi’s depiction of the spiritual
lover as the offspring of Desire and Awe evokes
one of the mythological
portions of the Symposium, where Eros is portrayed as the offspring of Poverty and Plenty.120
The final hint of Plato in Maqdisi’s text is in the passage
where Jealousy cries out from “inside
the cave” and asks, “Who is this infatuated and anxious woman
who removes the veil
of contentment and yet is content
with us alone?” This passage
is reminiscent of the Myth of the Cave
in Book VII of Plato’s
Republic and of the priestess Diotima
of Mantineia, who unveils the higher mysteries of Love for Socrates
in the Symposium.121
Because of the frequency
of such Platonic allusions, might one arguably
characterize Maqdisi’s Rabi’a as a “Muslim
Diotima?” Do traces
of Plato’s Symposium pervade other Sufi depictions of Rabi’a and her teachings
on divine love? Although she does not mention it explicitly, this possibility seems to have occurred to Margaret Smith, for she includes a passage
from the Symposium in the chapter
on love mysticism in her book Rabi’a the Mystic.122
Furthermore, Smith adds a statement
that would make no sense if she were not thinking of a
116
See, for example, Bell, A Treatise on Mystical Love, where Bell often combines these two
terms as “’ishq (eros)” in his
translation of Daylami’s ‘Atf al-alif. Richard Walzer equates ‘ishq with eros and mahabba with the
Greek term philia (friendship,
affection). Furthermore, he
attributes the use of this terminology to the influence of a passage
in the sixth book of Plotinus’ Enneads. See idem, “Commentary” to Abu Nasr al-Farabi, On the Perfect State (Mabadi’ ara’ ahl
al-madinah al-fadilah), Richard Walzer, ed. (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1998
reprint of 1985 Oxford University Press original), 352.
117 Plato, The Symposium
in B. Jowett
ed., The Dialogues of Plato in Four Volumes
(Boston and New
York: The Jefferson
Press, 1871), vol. 1, 473-5
118 See Louis A. Ruprecht
Jr., Symposia: Plato, the Erotic, and Moral Value (Albany, New York: State
University of New York Press, 1999),
48-57. See also, Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 495.
119 Plato, The Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 481
120 Ibid, 495-7
121 Ibid, 497; For the Myth of the Cave, see Plato,
The Republic, in Jowett,
vol. 2, 841-7.
122 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 119 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 94-5
comparison between
Rabi’a and the figure of Diotima in the Symposium. “[Plato]
makes Diotima of Mantineia
set forth the doctrine of love leading
to the beatific vision, and foreshadow the ideals of the mystics
of all creeds who were to come after her, and who were to seek the way to God
through love.”123 Much the same could be said of the Sufi works that speak about Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya.
For Plato, Diotima was “a wise woman in [Love] and many other branches of knowledge.”124 Abu Talib
al-Makki says much the same about Rabi’a
in Qut al-qulub. “She
was known for her proven
reliability in the doctrine of Love” (idh kana laha fi-l-mahabba qidamu sidqin).125 Ironically, both Rabi’a and Diotima may share the status of being
mythologized historical figures. Although most Plato scholars assume
that Diotima was a
figment of Plato’s imagination, Louis Ruprecht believes
that the name might refer to a real
person. Ruprecht observes
that all of the male characters in the Symposium were
real people who lived during the first part of the Peloponnesian War. If Socrates
too is real, and if he was a
soldier of Athens as Plato claims, it is likely
that he participated in the battle of Mantineia in 418 BCE.126 If so, he might have met a priestess there who was named Diotima.
However, just as the
myth of Rabi’a bears only a partial
resemblance to the real Rabi’a,
Plato’s figure of Diotima may also
represent more rhetoric
than fact. The name Diotima in Greek means “honored by Zeus” or “honoring Zeus” and Mantineia, which refers to a city in the Arcadian region of Greece,
is related to the Greek word, mantis,
meaning “seer.”127 Much like Rabi’a, Diotima
is portrayed by Plato as a religious expert
and teacher of men, who initiates her students into the truth
that lies behind
the mysteries. Whether or not she was a real person,
the most important
point about Diotima,
in the words of Kevin Corrigan
and Elena Glazov-Corrigan, is that she is “a dialectical image,
not thrice removed from the original, but a paradigm
herself through which
one may see the truth
she represents and of which she speaks.”128 The Greek word for “image”
is ikon and Diotima
and Rabi’a both come down to us through
history as literary
icons that transcend both time and space.
However, the main problem with seeing Rabi’a as the Muslim Diotima is that no
conclusive evidence
exists that early
Muslims were acquainted with the text of Plato’s Symposium in detail.
According to Dimitri
Gutas, “Plato’s Symposion (sic) was very little known
in the medieval Arab world. As far as it can be ascertained, no direct translation of the full Greek
text was ever made; the Arab bibliographers say nothing on the subject,
and no verbatim quotations that
might derive from such a translation have ever been recovered.”129 Gutas characterizes the Symposium
as an “incognito” presence in Islamic
literature, and claims
that it was first introduced through
a paraphrase by the philosopher Abu Ya’qub al-Kindi
(d. 866 CE) or through “gnomic
fragments current in Graeco-Arabic wisdom
literature.”130 Evidence to support
123 Ibid (Oneworld), 120 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 95
124 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 494
125 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 95
126 Ruprecht, Symposia, 44-50
127 Kevin Corrigan
and Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic
at Play: Argument, Structure, and Myth
in the Symposium (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
2004), 111
128Ibid, 115
129 Dimitri Gutas,
“Plato’s Symposion in the Arabic Tradition,” in idem, Greek Philosophers in the Arabic
Tradition (Aldershot, Hampshire, U. K. and Burlington, Vermont:
Ashgate-Variorum, 2000), IV, 36
130 Ibid, 37-8
Gutas’ contention can be found in the fact that the extant allusions to the Symposium in Islamic
literature mostly discuss
theories that Plato rejects in this work, such as the myth of Aristophanes that souls were originally created round and that Love consists of the soul’s
search for completeness by finding its missing half.131 Nowhere does one find Diotima
mentioned by name, nor
does one find detailed references to her teaching
of the higher states of love, which is the real
point of the Symposium.
However, other
evidence suggests that the lack of mention
of a full translation of the
Symposium in extant Arabic
sources does not necessarily mean that such a translation did not exist. For example, Ihsan Abbas, the noted Lebanese
scholar of medieval
Arabic literature, believed that Plato’s Symposium was
in fact translated into Arabic and that it was known in the
Muslim world by the end of the second century
A.H. (eighth century
CE).132
If Abbas’ hypothesis is correct, this would date the translation of the Symposium to
around the time of
Rabi’a’s death in 801 CE. Thus, it would be reasonable to suppose that the Symposium provided the rhetorical model for Rabi’a as the “Muslim
Diotima.” Abbas bases his claim about the translation of the Symposium on
a section of a chapter
in the historical work Muruj al-dhahab (The Pastures of Gold) by ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn
al-Mas’udi (d. 958 CE). This work describes
an intellectual salon (majlis, literally, “sitting”) on the subject of Love-as-‘ishq that was held in Baghdad by the Abbasid
vizier Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki (d. 805 CE). The discussion in this salon apparently included Plato’s Symposium. For Ihsan Abbas,
the concept of the majlis in Abbasid court society was based on the concept
of the symposium, which was widely known in
the Middle East through the influence of Hellenism.133 In Abbas’
opinion, the Barmakid
majlis on Love was modeled
after Plato’s Symposium. This is confirmed
for him by references to parts
of Plato’s text in the account of the majlis in
Muruj al-Dhahab.134
Whether or not Abbas was
correct to consider Yahya al-Barmaki’s salon as based on Plato’s Symposium, Mas’udi’s
discussion of this gathering appears
to refute the contention of Dimitri Gutas that the Symposium
was first introduced to the Muslim
world by the philosopher
Kindi. Since Kindi lived a generation after this event took place, it is not likely that he provided
the first Arabic paraphrase of the Symposium. An examination of Mas’udi’s account
in fact reveals several
references to the Symposium. The clearest of these is a paraphrase of the discourse of Aristophanes. “One of [the guests] said: God created
every soul round in the shape
of a ball. Then He divided them into portions
and made every
body out of one half. Therefore,
when a body encounters the body which was the half that was originally cut away from it, Love- as-desire (‘ishq) occurs
by necessity between
the two of them because
of their primordial
131 See Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 482-7; references to this myth first begin to appear
in Arabic in the late ninth and early tenth
centuries CE. See, for example, the
reference to the myth of Aristophanes in Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Dawud
al-Isfahani’s (d. 910 CE) Kitab al-zahra. Idem, al-Nisf
al-awwal min Kitab al-zahra, Louis Nichol Al Bouhaymi and Ibrahim ‘Abd
al-Fattah Tuqan, eds. (Beirut: Jesuit Printing House, 1932), 15
132 Ihsan Abbas,
Introduction to Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi, Tawq al-hamama fi-l-ulfa wa al-alaf, ed. Ihsan
Abbas
(Sousse, Tunisia: Dar al-Ma’arif li-l-Taba’a wa al-Nashr, reprint
of 1980 first edition, n.d.), 9
133 Arabic sources
report the existence
of elite intellectual salons as early as the Umayyad period.
For
example, the great-granddaughter of the Prophet
Muhammad, Sukayna bint al-Husayn (d. 738 CE), was
famous for hosting such majalis. See Amira El Zein, “Love Discourse in
Hijazi Society under the Umayyads: A Study in Class and Gender,” in Sonbol ed.,
Gulf Women, 117-119.
134 Ibid, 11
relationship.”135 Equally
significant is a statement about
Love that Mas’udi
attributes to Plato (Aflatun): “I do not know what Love (hawa,
another term for Love-as-desire) is, other than the
spirit of beauty (junun al-hayyi’). Also, Love is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy.”136 This statement seems to be a paraphrase of portions of Diotima’s teaching
to Socrates in the
Symposium, in which Love is described as neither fair nor foul and that Love is a spirit
(Gr. daimon) whose essence is
beauty.137
The best evidence in Muruj al-dhahab for
a complete or nearly complete
translation of the Symposium in Arabic comes in the paragraph that follows Mas’udi’s
paraphrase of the discourse of Aristophanes. The opening sentence
of this paragraph states, “Those who are
responsible for this discussion (maqala) have other statements that expand on the subject
we have just discussed.”138 Ihsan Abbas interprets this as indicating that a complete
or nearly complete version of the Symposium was
known to exist in Mas’udi’s
time. Furthermore, the statement also indicates that the topics
discussed in the Symposium
were subjects of significant discussion and debate among Muslims
at the height of the Abbasid era.
Many scholars, both inside
and outside of the Muslim
world, have commented on the influence of Neo-Platonism on Sufi mysticism. It is not necessary to repeat these observations
here. However, it is worth
suggesting that this emphasis on Neo-Platonism may have obscured the influence of Plato’s
own works on the Sufi tradition. Now that it can be argued that the
contents of the Symposium
were in fact more widely known in the generation after Rabi’a than Gutas and other skeptics
have assumed, it becomes easier
to suggest parallels between Plato’s
depiction of Diotima of Mantineia
and the depiction of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in Sufi literature. As we shall see below, these parallels are so numerous
as to make their chance
occurrence unlikely.
However, to agree with Gutas on at least one point, it must be conceded
that the trope of
“Rabi’a the Muslim Diotima” was an “incognito” presence in Sufi literature. Even if a full
Arabic translation of Plato’s Symposium is
eventually found, one is not likely to find an explicit
reference to it or to Diotima in any Sufi work. On the contrary,
because Sufism was often
criticized as an innovation, Sufi authors tended to minimize
references to non-Muslim sources other than the traditions of the Judeo-Christian prophets.139 Until now, no explicit
reference to
135
Abu al-Husayn ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn b. ‘Ali al-Mas’udi, Muruj al-dhahab wa ma’adin al-jawhar,
ed. Mufid Muhammad Qumayha (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1985), vol. 3,
457. The passage quoted above paraphrases only the summary of the myth that
appears at the end of Aristophanes’ discourse in the Symposium. The language
of this section is more in accord
with Muslim sensibilities than are other parts of Plato’s text, since it speaks of God in
the singular and lacks references to homosexuality. See Plato, Symposium,
in Jowett, vol. 1, 486.
136 Mas’udi, Muruj al-dhahab, vol. 3, 458; Socrates (Buqrat) is also quoted
in this account
as saying that
Love is the mingling of two souls (456).
137 See Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 496-7 and 498. (“Love is only birth
in beauty, whether
of body
or soul.”)
The Arabic terms jinn or junun (from the Latin genius)
refer to living
spirits or guardian-spirits in the same sense as the
Greek terms daimon or daimones.
138 Mas’udi, Muruj al-dhahab, vol. 3, 457
139 A similar
phenomenon can be observed in early Christian texts. For example,
Elizabeth A. Clark has
found earlier
“incognito” traces of Diotima in Gregory of Nyssa’s fourth-century CE
discussion of the wisdom of his saintly sister Macrina in Life of Macrina and On the
Soul and the Resurrection. See
Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard
University Press, 2004), 178-79. Works
such as these from the Capadoccian tradition of Christian writing were likely
to have been available in Iraq in the Abbasid period.
Diotima has been found
in any Islamic text, nor is one likely to find such a reference. Nevertheless, the parallels between
Rabi’a and Diotima
as iconic figures
are striking, and they
extend throughout Sufi literature from the tenth
century CE until
modern times. Some of the most
important of these
parallels are enumerated below, with special
attention being given
to discussions of Rabi’a
the Lover in Abu Talib
al-Makki’s Qut al-qulub and
Farid al-Din al- ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’. However, it should be added that one could add other parallels
to this list and if the list took account of the parallels to be found
in the full variety of Sufi works, the subject of “Rabi’a
the Muslim Diotima”
might comprise a book in itself.
b.
Sharpening the Dialectical Image:
Rabi’a and Diotima
Compared
1.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a teach Love as a wisdom tradition. Plato describes Diotima as “a woman wise in [Love]
and many other branches of knowledge.” The trope of Rabi’a the Teacher, discussed in Chapter
1, similarly establishes Rabi’a’s reputation as a teacher
of wisdom. The figure
of Rabi’a as a wise teacher of love mysticism was first developed by the Sufi Abu
Talib al-Makki in his masterpiece, Qut al-qulub
(The Sustenance of Hearts). In this work, Rabi’a
is described as “one of the lovers”
(wa kanat ihda al-muhibbin).140 This is not a casual
remark. For Makki, Love is the final stage of the Station of Certainty (maqam al-yaqin), which is the culmination of the Sufi path. The discussion of this station
takes up 253 pages of the latest edition of Qut al-qulub. It comprises the central part of the book and includes its most important teachings. The Sufi attains
the Station of Certainty by ascending through
nine spiritual states (ahwal): Repentance (tawba), Patience
(sabr), Thankfulness (shukr),
Hope (raja’), Fear (khawf),
Renunciation (zuhd), Trust (tawakkul), Satisfaction (rida), and Love (mahabba). “[Mahabba] is the
love of the spiritual elites
(al-khusus),” says Makki. “It is the love of the [divine]
Beloved (mahabbat al-mahbub).”141 As we shall see
in the next chapter, for Makki Love is also the
culmination of the Sufi way of knowledge. In Qut al-qulub the
discussion of Rabi’a
the Lover appears in the final portion of the final chapter on the Station
of Certainty. By putting his discussion of Rabi’a the Lover at the end of his discourse on Love, Makki signals to the reader that the figure of Rabi’a the Lover symbolizes the essence of Sufi wisdom.
2.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a teach
the essence of Love. In the Symposium, Diotima teaches the way of “true love”
and the “true
order” of the spiritual quest that leads to the mystical
vision of “true divine beauty
. . . pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality.”142
Like Socrates, she is a teacher
whose lessons go directly
to the essence of her
arguments by stripping away the veils of rhetoric. In Qut al-qulub, Makki similarly describes Rabi’a’s the Lover as one who has “truly
experienced the ardor
of the lovers” (wajd al-muhibbin
al-muhiqqin).143 By using the Arabic term muhiqq (fem. muhiqqa) in this passage,
Makki informs the reader
that Rabi’a has attained the full meaning
of the doctrine of Love. For the later
Sufi writer Farid al-Din al-‘Attar, whose fictionalized treatment
of Rabi’a was to turn the trope of
Rabi’a the Lover into the paradigm for an entire
tradition of Rabi’a
stories, the importance of her
140 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94
141 Ibid, vol. 1, 317
142 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 508
143 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 95
teaching transcends even the limitations of gender: “In unity (tawhid), how can your existence
and mine remain, much less ‘man’ and ‘woman’?144
3.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a are outsiders. In their
book on Plato’s Symposium, Kevin Corrigan and Elena Glazov-Corrigan remark that Diotima
is able to resolve the arguments of the
guests at the symposium because
she is an outsider. As they put it, her image is that of a
“nonparticipating participator, an image with just the right mixture
of reality and mystery to make
us realize that not her personality, but her teaching, is of ultimate
importance.”145 As if to
underscore this point, just before
Diotima gives her final statement
on Love as the vision
of Absolute Beauty, Plato
reintroduces her to the reader
as “the stranger
(foreigner) of Mantineia.”146 As the Corrigans
point out, this social distance
gives objectivity to Diotima’s
teaching.147 In a passage discussed
earlier in this chapter, the Muslim hagiographer Maqdisi similarly portrays Rabi’a
as a “strange” woman, although
in this case her oddity
rather than her foreignness is stressed. However,
Rabi’a is also portrayed in Sufi hagiography as a stranger
in social and geographical terms. Although she is of Basra, in that she belongs to one of the city’s major Arab clans, she is not portrayed as living in Basra but outside of the city. For example,
in ‘Attar’s fictionalized biography
of Rabi’a, she withdraws for meditation to a place of seclusion beyond the city walls.148 Whenever
male visitors come to see her, they are depicted
as walking a significant distance to find her. This physical
displacement in a separate location
gives Rabi’a, like Diotima,
the neutral space she needs
to make her role more effective.
The
statements attributed to Rabi’a and the anecdotes
about her that one finds in Sufi
hagiographies increase
in number the longer one goes in time between
the age in which she lived
and the present. For example,
it takes 200 years after
her death before Sulami first
identifies her as the quintessential Muslim
woman saint. It takes another
200 years before
‘Attar can write
a biography for Rabi’a
in the modern sense of the term by using oral traditions, rhetorical tropes,
and fictional narratives to make up a coherent life-story. The elements of this story continued to be
added and embellished until the mid-twentieth century, when screenplays about Rabi’a’s life were composed for Egyptian
television and film. Rabi’a’s influence on the tradition of Sufism has continued to grow until the present—
through the writings
of Margaret Smith and others,
her reputation has even reached beyond the borders
of Islam itself.
Thus, like Diotima,
Rabi’a becomes more of an iconic
figure the farther
she is from her origin
in both time and space.
4.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a are consecrated figures. Diotima is a priestess of Love from Mantineia. Plato tells us that she kept the plague away from Athens
for ten years by performing a sacrifice.149 Rabi’a the Lover is a Sufi and ascetic
devotee of God from Basra.
Like the priestess Diotima, she is also both virgin
and celibate. In a way that is unusual for a Muslim
writer, the Persian Sufi ‘Attar describes Rabi’a as a priestess-like figure,
who performs a distinctive form of
metaphorical sacrifice. “This one is veiled with a special
veil,” he writes,
“veiled with the veil of
144 Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 155, and ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 41
145 Corrigan and Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic, 113
146 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 503
147 Corrigan and Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic, 114 and Plato,
Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 494
148 See Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 159 and ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 65. Michael
Sells interprets
this passage
as meaning that Rabi’a retires
to “a place of meditation.” However, the Persian
text has her going into retreat in a tower or cell
(Pers. dar soma’a mu’takif shod).
149 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 494
sincerity, burned up with Love (‘ishq) and longing (ishtiyaq), and enamored of selfless devotion (qurb) and the fire of sacrifice (ihtiraq).”150
As a medieval Iranian,
‘Attar would have been aware of the concept of sacrifice as one of the
most important signs of religious devotion. Qurban is a common Persian
word for sacrifice and literally means, “attaining nearness.” Qurban Husayn, “The Sacrifice of Husayn,” is a name that is used by Shiite Muslims
today. ‘Attar’s use of the terms qurb (“nearness”) and ihtiraq (“burning”) in his characterization of Rabi’a was not accidental. These terms recall not only the
Islamic notion of sacrifice, but also the pre-Islamic notion of sacrifice, in which offerings consecrated to God are burned on an altar. The concept
of the purifying flame, which is central
to the religion of Zoroastrianism, remains
an important symbol in Iranian
culture even today.
To establish his image of Rabi’a
as a sort of “priestess” who has consecrated herself to God, ‘Attar
describes her as “the Deputy
of the Virgin Mary” (Pers.
na’ib Maryam-i Safiyyeh).151 The term
Maryam-i
Safiyyeh, which in Persian means
“Mary the Pure,”
recalls the Arabic
appellation of the Virgin Mary as al-Batul, “The Consecrated One.” Makki’s description of Rabi’a the Lover in Qut al-qulub
also stresses the concept of consecration, in that he makes selfless
devotion (ithar) the key to her practice of Love as a spiritual method.152
5.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a are examiners or testers of famous men. Kevin Corrigan and Elena Glazov-Corrigan make an important
but often overlooked point when they highlight the importance of testing or cross-examination in the teacher-student relationship between Diotima and Socrates in Plato’s
Symposium.153 The use of cross-examination (Gr. anakrinousa, Ar. imtihan) as a pedagogical device is one of the clearest similarities between the tropes
of Diotima and Rabi’a
as teachers of men. We saw in Chapter 1 how the trope of Rabi’a the Teacher partly depended on this method.
Pierre Hadot has noted that Plato’s concept
of argumentation involved both formal arguments and psychogogy, “the seduction of souls.”154 One of the ways that women
teachers of famous men such as Diotima
or Rabi’a could “seduce” their students to learn from them
was through a dialectical form of questioning that radically challenged their assumptions. In the Symposium, Plato seems to suggest that Diotima taught Socrates the method of cross-
examination for which he became famous. Similarly, the concept of ta’dib,
which the jurist
Sufyan al-Thawri used to characterize Rabi’a
the Teacher, referred
to a type of moral training that made use of the pedagogical techniques of systematic discipline, cross-examination, and critical self-examination. Diotima
and Rabi’a both taught a spiritual method
that was based on a form of dialectical questioning that led to the cultivation of mystical knowledge, social virtue,
righteousness, and wisdom.
In both cases as well,
the “tough love” of cross-examination and critique were important
aspects of their wisdom teaching. As Diotima points out in the
Symposium, these methods are important to the spiritual life because they are the pedagogical
methods used by Love itself.155
150 Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 155 and ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 61; the present translation of this passage
differs in significant ways from Sells’ translation.
151 Ibid
152 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 89
153 Corrigan and Corrigan,
Plato’s Dialectic, 108
154 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life,
92
155 On the “science of Beauty,” see Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 502.
6.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a initiate
their students into the higher
mysteries of Love. The dialogue between
Diotima and Socrates
in the Symposium introduces the reader to a doctrine
of Love that is mystical, in contrast to the other theories of Love in this work, which are mythological, medical, or ethical.156 Plato’s
text speaks of lesser and greater mysteries
of Love, and provides
a doctrinal ladder
by which the apprentice can ascend to the higher
states of the mysteries.157 According to Kevin Corrigan
and Elena Glazov-Corrigan, the femininity of Diotima and the balance
of the sexes between the female teacher
and the male initiate symbolize the “creative recipience” of the path of mystical
initiation, a point that is accentuated by Diotima’s discussion of “creative
souls,” sexual union, and Love’s “birth in beauty.”158
Makki’s discussion of Rabi’a the Lover in Qut al-qulub
similarly stresses Rabi’a’s
role as
an initiator of others
into the higher
mysteries of Love. Medieval Islamic works on Love borrowed heavily from Greek philosophical and medical writings
as well as from the cultural
traditions of the Arabs, and discussed medical,
ethical, and even mythological theories
of Love.159 Makki takes great pains to convince
the reader that “the Love that comes from God” (al-mahabba min Allah) is not like ordinary
love. Ordinary love, he says, has seven causes: natural
inclination, sex, benefit to the self, an inborn
characteristic, lust, needful
compassion, and the desire to become closer to God.160 By contrast, the higher mysteries of Love are linked to asceticism and the
transcendence of self, as expressed in Rabi’a’s teachings. The longing (shawq) that motivates
this higher Love is related
to the altruistic renunciation of self-interest (ithar) and the desire of the soul for inner peace and tranquility
(al-sakina).161
At the end of her discourse
in the Symposium, Diotima
speaks of the highest stage of
Love as a state of peaceful communion, where images of beauty are beheld in their realities, and where the initiate
into the mysteries exists in converse
with Beauty as the “immortal friend of God.”162 Likewise, Makki
prefaces his discussion of Rabi’a’s Love theory by describing the abode
of God’s intimates (al-muqarrabun, literally “those who are brought near”)
in the Gardens of the Righteous, where the fruits
of Love’s mysteries are conjoined, just as knowledge and action are conjoined
in the Qur’an. Much like Plato in the Symposium, Makki
describes this state as
a visionary experience (ru’ya), which only those who have attained nearness
to God can behold: “Only God’s intimates shall behold it” (yashhaduhu
al-muqarrabun).163
7.
Both Diotima
and Rabi’a teach Love as the key to knowledge
of God. In the Symposium, Plato signals
his intention to talk about Love as a way of knowledge by saying that Diotima will speak about “a logos pertaining to Love.”164 The Greek word logos,
like the Arabic
156 See, for example,
Corrigan and Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic, 108. I agree with the Corrigans but not with Hadot,
who sees nothing
mystical in Plato’s
doctrine of Love. See Hadot,
Plotinus, 54. (“Platonic
love thus is not, properly speaking, a ‘mystical transport.’”)
157 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 502-3
158 Corrigan and Corrigan, Plato’s Dialectic, 114 and Plato,
Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 498-9
159 For a discussion of medieval Islamic
theories on what today might
be called the “pathology” of love,
see the chapter
on “The Romantic Fool,” in Dols, Majnun, 313-48.
160 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 86
161 Ibid, 91
162 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 503
163 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 93-4
164 Corrigan and Corrigan,
Plato’s Dialectic, 114
word
kalima, can mean “word,”
“discourse,” or “knowledge,” depending on the context. At the beginning of her discourse, Diotima addresses the subject of knowledge by asking Socrates
to define the mean between wisdom and ignorance. The correct answer to this question, “right opinion” (ortho-doxa), is not yet true knowledge because it is based more on dogma
than on reason; however,
it is not ignorance either,
because it still contains part of the truth.165
The trope of Rabi’a the Teacher
also depends on the idea that true
knowledge transcends dogma. As a teacher
of wisdom (hikma), Rabi’a’s
knowledge, like Diotima’s, transcends both
supposition (zann) and “orthodox” creed (‘aqida). For Plato, the key to the path of knowledge through Love is remembrance, for as Diotima
says, knowledge needs
to be renewed by
remembrance or else it is lost.166 Thus, the greatest
mysteries of Love are attained
through remembrance. The paradox
of the contemplation of Absolute
Beauty, which is the goal of the initiatory path for Plato,
is that true knowledge of Beauty consists
of the recollection of what one
already knows. The recollection (tadhakkur) of what one already knows is also part of the Sufi way
of knowledge as expressed by Abu Talib al-Makki. For Makki, Love and knowledge
are two sides of the same coin: “The special knowers
of God (khusus al-‘arifin) have a special
kind of Love” (khassat al-mahabba) but the ordinary
knowers of God have an ordinary form of love” (wa li-‘umumihim ‘umum al-mahabba).”167 Certainty
(yaqin) is only found in the knowledge of God
(ma’rifa) that is attained
by those who love— and thus know— God most intimately. Therefore, one only attains the wisdom that is the goal of the Sufi path by finding knowledge of divine unity (tawhid) on the path of Love (mahabba).
For
Makki, knowing God through Love is less a ladder of ascent,
as it was for Plato, than
a type of equation. The attainment of true and certain knowledge
is the product of the addition of Love
(mahabba) to the understanding of God’s unity
(tawhid). Echoing
Socrates’ description of Diotima in the Symposium, Makki states that Rabi’a is famous among Sufis because
of her unique reliability and experience in matters of Love. In a classically Platonic way, he describes Rabi’a’s knowledge of God as based on the vision
that Love provides
through the Eye of Certainty (mushahadat ‘ayn al-yaqin), rather than through
the ordinary means of confirmed
traditions or true hearsay
(khabar wa sam’ tasdiq). Makki sums up his Platonic
view Love in Qut al-qulub by paraphrasing what he understands to be Rabi’a’s
Love theory: “My love for you is through a vision
that brought me closer to you, made me hurry
toward you, preoccupied me with you, and
cut me off from everything other than you. Before that, I had scattered passions,
but, when I truly
witnessed you, all of my passions merged into one and you became the entirety of the heart and
the totality of Love” (fa-sirta anta kulliyata al-qalb
wa jumlat al-mahabba).168
IV Rabi’a the Love Poet
Makki’s paraphrase of Rabi’a’s Love theory in Qut al-qulub recalls the conclusion of the
discussion of love mysticism in Plato’s Symposium, in which Diotima
states: “What if man had eyes
to see the true beauty—
the divine beauty,
I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life— thither looking,
165 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 494
166 Ibid, 500
167 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 86
168 Ibid, 95
and holding converse with the true beauty divine and simple,
and bringing into being and educating true creations of virtue and not idols
only?”169 The trope of two loves— a passionate
love that corresponds to the lesser mysteries of worldly love versus a love of remembrance and contemplation of divine beauty that corresponds to the “greater
and more hidden mysteries” of Love—
is central to Diotima’s teachings. Although the lesser
mysteries of love are accessible to anyone with understanding, the bridge from the lesser
mysteries to the greater mysteries, “which are the crown of these,”
is crossed only by a few. Even to Socrates
Diotima says, “I know not whether you will be able to attain [this].”170 A similar trope of two loves is also central
to Rabi’a’s Love theory as portrayed in Sufi narratives from Makki’s day to the present.
Theologically, this trope has been linked to the famous verse of the Qur’an that states, “God did
not
create two hearts for man in his breast” (Qur’an,
33:4). As a literary trope, it most famously
appears in Rabi’a’s, “Poem of the Two Loves.”
a.
The Poem of the Two Loves
Abu Talib al-Makki introduces the final portion
of his discussion of Love in Qut al-qulub with a poem that he says was attributed to Rabi’a “by the people
of Basra and others.”171 This poem
has become famous in Sufi literature as the “Poem of the Two Loves.”
As sources for his
attribution of the poem to Rabi’a, Makki cites four men who are often
associated with Rabi’a
in Sufi writings: Ja’far
ibn Sulayman ad-Dab’i
(d. 794-95 CE), Sufyan al-Thawri
(d. 778 CE), Hammad ibn Zayd (d. 793 CE), and ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd (d. 793-94 CE).172 These names
give credibility to Makki’s attribution of the poem to Rabi’a
because all are associated with Basra
and all lived in Rabi’a’s
time. However, no extant source
prior to Makki mentions Rabi’a
or any of these men as the author of this poem. At the present
time, it is impossible to determine who actually composed the Poem of the Two Loves.
Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi (d. 990 CE), writing a short
time before Makki,
cites a slightly
different version of the poem in the section on Love in his treatise al-Ta’arruf li-madhhab ahl al-tasawwuf (Understanding the Doctrines of the Sufis).
However, unlike Makki, he does not attribute the poem to Rabi’a. Instead, he only says, “One of
[the Sufis] recited [it].”173 As far as we know today, Makki was the first person to attribute
the Poem of the Two Loves to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
Because of the uncertainty about its origins,
it is best to consider
the Poem of the Two Loves
as belonging to Sufism as a whole
as much as to Rabi’a.
Makki’s attribution of the poem to
Rabi’a and his exegesis of its text were largely
responsible for the notoriety it was to attain
among later generations of Sufis. I have translated Makki’s
version of the poem below,
retaining as much of the literal
sense of the Arabic original
as possible.
I love you with two loves,
a passionate love And a love of which only you are
worthy.
169 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 503
170 Ibid, 502
171 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94
172 Ibid. See the discussion of these individuals in Chapter 1 above.
173 See Kalabadhi, al-Ta’arruf, 80 and Arberry,
The Doctrine of the Sufis, 103.
As for the passionate love,
It has preoccupied me with remembrance of you beyond
all else.
But as for the love of which only you are worthy,
You part the veils so that I can see you.
No praise is mine for either one or the other,
But all praise
is yours for both the one and the other.174
The Poem of the Two Loves has appeared
in many different versions over the past one
thousand years, with some versions
differing significantly from others. A Google Internet search of
the phrase, “The Poem of the Two Loves by Rabi’a,” yields 36,300 web entries. This is not far
behind “Rumi’s Masnavi,” which
yields 51,400 web entries. The different versions of the poem
go back to the very beginnings of its transmission. For example, in the earliest
version, reproduced by Kalabadhi, the second part of the third verse
reads, “I do not see the world
of existence unless I see you” (fa-lastu
ara al-kawna hatta
araka). In Makki’s
version, however, this line reads, “You part the veils so that I can see you” (fa-kashfuka li-l-hujubi hatta araka).
Although these two passages
seem to convey a similar
meaning, their theological implications are
different.175 Kalabadhi’s “I do not see the world of existence unless I see you,” conveys
a pantheistic theology because
the mystic sees God in the world of existence. In other words,
the mystic either sees the world through God or she sees God in everything. This perspective is problematical for the strict
monotheism of Islam,
where God and the world
are ontologically separate. By contrast, Makki’s
version is more ambiguous and is thus theologically safer. “You
part the veils so that I can see you,” may mean nothing more than, “You have cleared
my mind so that I can perceive you.” The theological problem of Kalabadhi’s pantheistic version of the poem has
been a point of contention
throughout Islamic history.
As late as 2005, it was discussed
as the subject of a fatwa by the Qatar Mufti Yusuf
al-Qaradawi.176
Although the Poem of the Two Loves is important to Kalabadhi’s discussion of the concept of
Love, he does not attribute it to Rabi’a or to any other woman, but presents it anonymously. Kalabadhi tends to avoid the mention of women, whether
Sufi or otherwise, in the text
of al-Ta’arruf. In fact, Rabi’a is the only Sufi woman whom he mentions by name. Rather than to Rabi’a, he gives the last word on the subject of Love to a man, a certain
Ibn ‘Abd al- Samad, who also recites
two poems of his own about Love. These poems,
in effect, obscure
the voice of the author of the Poem of the Two Loves,
whoever she (or he) may be. To borrow the title of a famous
article on the representation of women in late antiquity by Elizabeth A. Clark, in Kalabadhi’s treatment of the Poem of the Two Loves, “the lady vanishes.”177 Although we cannot
know why Kalabadhi did not attribute
this poem to Rabi’a as Makki did, his low opinion
174 Makki, Qut al-qulub, 94
175 See the discussion of this point
in R. Cornell, “Rabi’ah al-‘Adawiyyah,” 294-95.
176 For the text of Qaradawi’s fatwa, see http://www.ghrib.net/vb/archive/index.php/t-12042.html (Islam
Light).
177 See Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian
after the ‘Linguistic
Turn,’”
Church History 67 (1998),
1-31.
of
women is apparent, because elsewhere in al-Ta’arruf
he depicts women as deficient in both intellect and
religion.178
The main reason for the popularity of the Poem of the Two Loves in the English-
speaking world is the prominent treatment that Margaret
Smith gives to it in Rabi’a the Mystic.179 In 1935, only seven
years after the publication of Rabi’a the Mystic, the British Orientalist A. J. Arberry cited “Miss M. Smith’s” book on Rabi’a in connection with the Poem of the Two Loves in
his translation of Kalabadhi’s al-Ta’arruf.180 Ironically, Arberry obscures Smith’s
voice in a way that parallels
Kalabadhi’s failure to acknowledge Rabi’a or any other woman as the author of this
poem. Rather than reproducing what he calls
Smith’s “literal” translation of the poem, Arberry instead uses what he calls
the more “excellent version” of his teacher, the male
Orientalist Reynold A. Nicholson. Further
compounding the problem,
by using Nicholson’s translation instead
of Smith’s, Arberry
chooses a version
of the Poem of the Two Loves that takes liberties with both Kalabadhi’s and Makki’s original
Arabic texts. Instead
of following either version of the poem closely, R. A. Nicholson
shapes his translation to fit his stereotypical image of
Victorian-era poetry. Thus, in the version of the poem that appears
in Arberry’s translation of al-Ta’arruf, not just one but two ladies vanish.
Both Rabi’a and Margaret Smith,
without whom the Poem of the Two Loves
would not have been known
in the West, lose their voices as the
author and translator of the poem respectively and are exiled to a footnote in order to make room for
the voice of Professor Nicholson, a famous male authority on Sufism. This curious state of
affairs makes the reference to “selfish love”
in Nicholson’s version
of the poem seem particularly ironic.
Two ways I love Thee; selfishly, And next, as worthy is of
Thee.
‘Tis selfish love that I do naught
Save think on Thee with every thought;
‘Tis purest love when Thou dost raise
The veil to my adoring gaze.
Not mind the
praise in that or this, Thine is the praise in both, I wis.181
To be fair to Arberry, however,
the tendency to indulge in scholarly fancies
with regard to Rabi’a
is not his problem alone.
Margaret Smith’s own discussion of the Poem of the Two
Loves in Rabi’a the Mystic is
similarly full of what Hayden
White has called
“the fictions of
178 Kalabadhi, al-Ta’arruf, 80 and Arberry, The Doctrine of the Sufis, 103;
Kalabadhi’s depiction of women’s deficiency in intellect and religion can be
seen in al-Ta’arruf, 53 and Doctrine, 68-69. Although he does not consider women to be deficient in their essence,
they still fall short of men in practice. See also
R. Cornell, Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 15-17.
179 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 126-33 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 102-10
180 Arberry, The Doctrine
of the Sufis, 103 n. 1
181 Ibid, 103
factual representation.”182 First,
Smith links Rabi’a’s
recitation of the poem to a scenario
that allegedly appears in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women. The problem with this claim is that Sulami
does not cite the Poem of the Two Loves in this work. In fact, Margaret
Smith never saw a copy of
Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women because it was not discovered until after her death.183 Second, Smith incorrectly reads Makki in Qut al-qulub
as stating that the four male transmitters of the poem were also its authors.184 Third,
she misinterprets Makki’s
exegesis of the Poem of the Two Loves, paraphrasing it in literalistic and anthropomorphic terms that are not present
in the original text. This is consistent with Smith’s attempt
throughout Rabi’a the Mystic
to draw parallels between Rabi’a’s mysticism and Christian mysticism, which makes use of anthropomorphic symbolism much more frequently than does Islamic
mysticism.
The question of authorship for the Poem of the Two Loves continued from the time of
Kalabadhi and Makki throughout the premodern period of Islam. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111
CE), who drew heavily on Makki’s Qut al-qulub
when writing his masterwork Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din
(The Revival of the Religious
Sciences), attributes the poem to Rabi’a and makes it an important part of his discussion of the knowledge
of God in the chapter,
“Love, Longing, Intimacy, and Contentment” (Book 36 of the Ihya’).
In this chapter,
he chooses not to refer to the intimate
knowledge of God by using the Sufi term “taste”
(dhawq). Instead,
he refers to intimate
knowledge as a form of “pleasure” (ladhdha), which more closely
corresponds to the language of Plato’s Symposium.185 In addition, he interprets the “passionate love” to which the Poem of the Two
Loves refers as a love that is bestowed as a result
of God’s goodness,
blessings, and protection. As for the “love of which only [God] is worthy,” this refers to Rabi’a’s love for God in
God’s theological attributes of Beauty (jamal) and Glory (jalal).186 Ghazali’s
view of mystical union as a form of communion with divine beauty also recalls
the place in Plato’s Symposium
where Diotima says to Socrates, “Do you not see in that in communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled
to bring forth,
not images of beauty, but realities?
For
he has hold not of an image, but of a reality; and bringing forth and educating true virtue to
become the friend of God and be immortal,
if mortal man may.”187 To translate this passage into Sufi
terms, one need only substitute the word “heart”
for “mind.” As for Diotima’s
“friend of God,” this concept can also be applied to the Sufi saint, who is similarly called a “friend”
or “intimate” of God (wali Allah).
Sufi or Sufi-influenced writers
after Ghazali who attributed the Poem of the Two Loves
to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya typically followed
a Ghazalian approach
to mysticism and thus tended to
182 See Hayden
White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural
Criticism (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1978), 121-34. Smith’s frequent use
of poetic metaphors (not to say “poetic license”) in her book Rabi’a the Mystic provides an excellent
illustration of White’s thesis.
183 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 125 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 102; Smith
assumes incorrectly that the Book of
Sufi Women was a lost portion of Sulami’s
Tabaqat al-sufiyya. Mahmud Muhammad al-Tanahi first discovered Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women in 1991 in the Muhammad
ibn Saud University library in Saudi Arabia. It was first published in Arabic in 1993. See Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, Dhikr al-niswa al- muta’abbidat al-Sufiyyat, edited by Mahmud
Muhammad al-Tanahi (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji, 1993).
184 Ibid, (Oneworld), 125-6 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 102
185 For an English translation of this passage,
see Eric Ormsby’s
translation in Ghazali,
Love, Longing,
Intimacy, and Contentment, 51-55.
186 Ghazali, Ihya’, vol. 4, 310-311
and Ghazali-Ormsby, Love, Longing,
Intimacy, and Contentment, 52
187 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 503
reproduce his gloss on Makki’s trope of Rabi’a the Lover. For example, the Andalusian vizier and essayist Lisan al-Din
ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374 CE) paraphrases Ghazali’s comments and agrees with him in attributing the poem to Rabi’a in his treatise
on Love, Rawdat al-ta’rif bi-l-hubb al- sharif (The
Garden of Knowledge
of the Noble Love). However,
Ibn al-Khatib reproduces only the first verse of the poem, thus retaining the Platonic trope of two loves but removing its mystical contents.188 By contrast, the full poem including Ghazali’s comments were reproduced by the Yemeni Sufi Muhammad Murtada
al-Zabidi (d. 1790 CE) in his famous
commentary on Ghazali’s Ihya’.189 In this work, Zabidi not only summarizes
both Makki’s and Ghazali’s discussions of the poem but also includes other tropological elements,
such as the reputed proposals of marriage by ‘Abd al-Wahid
ibn Zayd and the Governor
of Basra.
From these and other examples, we can conclude
that the attribution of the Poem of the Two
Loves to Rabi’a
in the premodern period followed
a distinct pattern.
Most of those
who saw Rabi’a as the author
of the poem followed the approach of Ghazali, who learned of the poem and
its attribution from Makki in Qut al-qulub. In the modern period, Margaret
Smith reproduced this chain of transmission in Rabi’a the Mystic and popularized the Poem of the Two Loves as Rabi’a’s on this basis.
However, as we have already seen, another Sufi tradition exists that does not attribute the poem to Rabi’a.
Unlike the Ghazalian
tradition, this alternate
tradition does not seem to have a single
origin, although here too a distinct pattern
of transmission appears.
If Kalabadhi was this
tradition’s ultimate source,
it is not mentioned in the works
that follow al-Ta’arruf in
denying authorship of the Poem of the Two Loves to Rabi’a. For example, in ‘Uqala’ al-majanin,
Nisaburi, writing only a few decades after
Kalabadhi and in the same region of Khurasan, cites
as his source for this poem the famous Sufi theologian of Baghdad, Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd
(d. 910 CE). In what is supposed to be a verbatim account,
Junayd states that the Poem of the Two Loves was
composed by a male shaykh that
he met in a hospital
in Egypt. We are not told whether
the term shaykh refers to an old man, a Sufi master,
or a scholar in general.
However, it is clear that the
hospital in this account is an asylum
for the insane. In medieval
Islam passionate love, whether of the physical
or the spiritual kind, was often associated with mental illness.
As in Ghazali’s version,
the account reproduced by Nisaburi also reveals the strong influence
of Platonic Love theory,
in that the more rational
of the two loves is prompted by a vision of the good:
I entered a
hospital (dar al-marda) in Egypt and saw a shaykh who said to me, “What is your name?” “Junayd,” I replied. “Are
you Iraqi?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Are you
one of the Folk of Love (min ahl al-mahabba)?”
he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Then what is Love (al-hubb)?” he asked. “Privileging
the Beloved over all else (ithar al-mahbub
‘ala ma siwahu),” I
answered. He said, “Love is two
loves; a love that has a cause and a love has no cause. As for the love that has a cause, it is the vision of the good (ru’yat al- ihsan). As for the love that has no cause, it is
because [Love] is made to be loved in and of itself (fa-li-annahu ahlun li-an yuhabb).”
Then he recited:
I love you with two loves, a passionate love
188 Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-ta’rif bi-l-hubb al-sharif, ed. ‘Abd al-Qadir
Ahmad ‘Ata (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, n. d.),
427
189 See the selections from Zabidi, Ithaf al-sadat
al-muttaqin fi sharh Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din in Badawi,
Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 119-21.
And a love of which only you are worthy.
As for the passionate love,
It is a love that preoccupies me with you beyond all else.
But as for the love of which only you are worthy,
I do not see life (fa-lastu ara al-‘aysh) unless I see you.
Despite that
without which there is no life for me, All praise is yours in both the one and the other.190
Besides its attribution to Junayd, Nisaburi’s version of the Poem of the Two Loves differs significantly from earlier versions
because the non-rational form of Love has more to do with
what Michael Dols termed “the romantic fool” than with Sufi love mysticism. Although
spiritual love is not ruled out in this version, the story as a whole conforms to Arabic and Persian literary traditions about profane love. This can be observed in the third
verse of the poem, which reads,
“I do not see life unless I see you.” A similar
statement is made in the fourth verse:
“Despite that without which there is no life for me/ All praise
is yours in both the one and the other.”
The metaphor of finding
and losing one’s life in love recalls
Layla and Majnun, the classic story
of the romantic fool in Arabic
literature. Although the story of Majnun’s “mad” love for Layla was used
by Sufis to refer metaphorically to the mystic’s
love of God, it was equally popular
among non-Sufis and it is still often cited in non-religious contexts.
In his study Majnun: the Madman in Medieval Islamic
Society, Michael Dols traces the trope of the romantic
fool in Islamic
literature as far back as the mid-ninth century CE. He notes
that this trope drew from a combination of Arab cultural
notions of passionate love and the writings of Greek authorities such as Plato, Ptolemy, and Galen.191 Plato’s influence
on Nisaburi’s account is apparent in the Egyptian
shaykh’s definition of the love that has a cause as
“the vision of the good.” This is similar to Diotima’s definition of Love in the Symposium as “the
love of the everlasting possession of the good.”192 For Diotima
as for the Egyptian shaykh,
love of the good is a lesser form of Love,
not the greatest
Love, which leads to the knowledge of divine
beauty. Although Nisaburi’s story of the Poem of the Two Loves is attributed to the Sufi Junayd, there is nothing
particularly “Sufi” about the meaning
of the poem itself. Rather,
it is more reminiscent of non-religious discussions of Love-as-passion and thus belongs
to a different genre of Arab or Islamic literature.
Another version
of the Poem of the Two Loves also provides
a background story that is traced to Egypt but draws on tropes that are found in Christian
hagiographies. This version appears in Masari’ al-‘ushshaq (Battlefields of the Lovers),
by Ja’far ibn Ahmad al-Sarraj
of Baghdad (d. 1106 CE).193 This collection of
anecdotes about Love as desire combines both religious and non-religious genres of literature. In this sense, it is comparable to Ibn al-Khatib’s
190 Nisaburi, “Uqala’ al-majanin, 173
191 Dols, Majnun,
313-19
192 Plato, Symposium, in Jowett, vol. 1, 503
193 See the reference to this work in Bell,
Love Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam, 9-10. See also, Mustafa
‘Abd al-Wahid, Dirasat al-hubb
fi-l-adab al-‘arabi (Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, 1972),
vol. 2, 311-408.
Rawdat al-ta’rif, which also discusses both sacred and profane views
of Love.194 As in ‘Uqala’
al-majanin, Sarraj traces the origin of the Poem of the Two Loves to a famous early Sufi. In this case, however, the Sufi is Dhu’l-Nun
al-Misri (“The Egyptian,” d. 859 CE), a figure
who is well known in Sufi literature, both for his mystical doctrines
and for his encounters with Sufi
women.195 However, most of the women that Dhu’l-Nun meets are unnamed,
and thus must be
considered as literary tropes. Such is the case for the reputed
author of the Poem of the Two Loves, who is an unnamed woman
ascetic that Dhu’l-Nun meets on the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea.
One day I was
walking along the edge of the sea when I saw a slave woman (jariya) wearing garments of hair; she
was emaciated and had a withered appearance.
I drew close to her to hear what she
was saying and saw that she was
overcome with sadness and
grief. Suddenly, a wind blew up and
roiled the waves, so that some fish appeared.
The woman screamed and fell to the ground. When she awoke, she cried out weeping and said: “My Lord! Through you the Near Ones attain intimacy
in their places of retreat; for the sake of your greatness the fish swim in the
swelling sea; for the sake of the glory of your holiness the pounding waves
crash on the shore. You are the one
before whom the dark of night, the light of day, the encircling sphere, the
swelling sea, the shining moon, and the glistening stars prostrate themselves. Everything has its appointed measure,
because you are the Most High, the All-Conquering!”196
After saying these words,
the woman on the beach recites not one but two poems about
Love. The second of these poems is the Poem of the Two Loves. Sarraj’s version of this poem is much
the same as Makki’s, except
that the phrase “passionate love” (hubb al-hawa) in Makki’s
version is replaced by “affectionate love” (hubb al-widad) in this later version. In both versions, the moral of the poem is to differentiate a greater form of love from a lesser form of love.
However, in Masari’ al-‘ushshaq the
lesser form of love is not passion
but affection. Sarraj’s account ends with the observation that after reciting
the poem, the woman “hiccupped and then left the world” (thuma shahiqat
shahqatan fa-idha hiya faraqat al-dunya). While Dhu’l-Nun stands awestruck over the woman’s
body on the beach, a group of women appear
and prepare her for
burial. At the end of the story,
Dhu’l-Nun leads the women in a funeral
prayer.197
The tropes in this account of the Poem of the Two Loves are reminiscent of the “fools for
Christ” stories of early Christianity. When a woman
appears in these
Christian stories, she is
most often an ascetic and a penitent,
a former sinner
who has renounced the World for the love of God.
A number of such stories
appeared in the seventh century
CE and became widely popular
in the Middle East.198 One of the most famous of these stories was the legend of Pelagia
of Antioch.
194 While Bell (Ibid) recognizes the influence of Masari’ al-‘ushshaq on Hanbali writers
such as Ibn al- Jawzi, he considers it haphazardly organized and ignores both
its Sufi content and its use of chains of transmission for its anecdotes. While some of these chains
of transmission may be spurious, the possibility
remains that they could provide important new information on a number of Sufi
traditions.
195 See, for example, R. Cornell Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 15-16.
196al-Sarraj, Masari’ al-‘ushshaq, vol. 1, 274
197 Ibid, 275
198 Patricia Cox Miller, “Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” in Dale B.
Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies:
Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press,
2005), 88; the Lives of Mary
The description of the woman’s hair shirt and emaciated body in Sarraj’s
account of Dhu’l-Nun recalls a passage in the Life of Pelagia where a character named James the Deacon states,
“The joints of her holy bones,
all fleshless, were visible beneath
her skin through
emaciation brought on by ascetic practices. Indeed the whole
complexion of her body was coarse and dark like sackcloth, as the result of her strenuous penance.”199 The all-consuming love of God of the woman
on the beach also brings to mind stories of other Christian
women ascetics such as Shirin of
Iraq. It was said of Shirin: “Despising the whole world
out of love for God and considering it as mere refuse,
in order to gain Christ
she rejected and pushed aside
everything else, attaching herself totally to him with a love that was without
any guile as she lived
out the perfect
life of asceticism in all its
rigor.”200
The depiction of the woman on the beach as a female slave is
also a trope that appears in
Christian writings on asceticism. As Dale B. Martin states
in his book Slavery as Salvation, the metaphor of slavery
conveys a dual meaning. First, it symbolizes the ascetic’s former enslavement to worldly passions;
then the ascetic
transforms her passions
through acts of self-
denial into a new form of “liberated” slavery in the service of God.201 Once the female fool for Christ is “discovered” by a male observer, she dies and is prepared
for burial. This too happens in Sarraj’s Dhu’l-Nun account
when a group of women suddently appears
in order to bury their holy sister.202
A century after the publication of Masari’ al-‘ushshaq, a somewhat revised
version of Sarraj’s story appeared in al-Kawkab
al-durri fi manaqib
Dhi’l-Nun al-Misri (The
Glistening Sphere in the Exploits of Dhu’l-Nun the Egyptian) by the Andalusian Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi
(d. 1240 CE). This little-known work of hagiography, which was translated into French by Roger
Deladrière in 1988, was written
by Ibn ‘Arabi as a testimonial to Dhu’l-Nun, whom he viewed as
one of the founders of his approach
to Sufism. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s version
of the story, Dhu’l-Nun and a male companion meet what they believe to be a male ascetic
in the “desert of the Israelites”
(tih Bani Isra’il). After discovering that the ascetic
is in fact a woman,
a lively exchange
ensues, at the end of which the woman
defines Love in the following way: “For me, Love is a beginning and an attainment. Its beginning is when the heart is fervently given
over to the remembrance of the
Beloved; it consists
of a constant sadness and an ardent
desire without end. When [the lovers]
attain the summit of Love, and are put to the test in their solitude [with
the Beloved], they are
released from most acts of obedience.”203 As in Sarraj’s
version of the story, the woman
of Egypt and Pelagia
of Antioch in particular were translated into several languages
and were well known
in the early Islamic Middle East.
199Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook
Harvey, editors and translators, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press,
1987), 60
200 Ibid, 179
201 See Dale B. Martin,
Slavery as Salvation: the Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven,
Connecticut and London: Yale University Press,
1990). See also, R. Cornell’s
Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 54-8. In this latter
work, I discuss
what I call the “theology of servitude,” which is
shared by early Christian accounts of lovers of Christ and Muslim lovers of
God.
202 This trope can be seen in several of the Lives recounted in Brock and Harvey, Women of the Syrian
Orient. In the story of Mary of Egypt, a lion appears to help the monk Zosimas
bury the woman saint. See also Miller, “Is There a Harlot in
This Text?” 89.
203 Ibn ‘Arabi,
La Vie merveilleuse de Dhu-l-Nun l’Égyptien, Roger Deladrière, trans.
(Paris: Éditions
Sindbad,
1988), 256-8; Ibn ‘Arabi seems to indicate
in a note that follows
this story that the anecdote
collapses and dies after reciting the Poem of the Two Loves. However,
the version of the Poem of
the Two Loves that is reproduced by Ibn ‘Arabi is not that of Sarraj, but of Makki.
Ibn ‘Arabi’s version of the
story appears once again in the fourteenth century in the hagiographical anthology
al-Rawd al-fa’iq (The Garden of Awareness) by the Egyptian
Sufi Sa’id al-Hurayfish.204 Hurayfish’s version is identical to Ibn ‘Arabi’s
up to the point where the
woman ascetic defines Love for Dhu’l-Nun. This part of the story,
which is central
to Ibn ‘Arabi’s version,
is left out by Hurayfish, probably because of its suggestion that the enraptured lover of God can ignore the Shari’a. Another
difference between these
versions is in the Poem of
the Two Loves itself. For some reason, Hurayfish eliminates the reference to two loves
in the first verse while retaining
the suggestion of two loves in the remainder of the poem.
Hurayfish’s version of the Poem of the Two Loves also differs from other versions because he rearranges the verses in a way that transgresses the original poem’s
poetic style. For example, he changes the first verse of the poem to read, “Your
love is the Beloved of the Folk of
Passion/ and a love for which only you are worthy.” In addition, he changes the middle of the
poem to describe the lesser
form of Love as a form of remembrance (dhikr) that preoccupies the lover
with the Beloved
to the exclusion of all else. This creates some confusion as to the poem’s
ultimate meaning because
remembrance, which Plato
associates with the higher form of Love,
is now associated with the lower form of love. Finally,
at the end of the poem Hurayfish adds two additional verses,
most likely of his own composition: “Oh Beloved of the Heart,
I have nothing without you/ So have mercy today on the sinner
who comes to you. Oh my hope, my solace,
and my happiness/ My heart has refused everything but you.” Although
Hurayfish does not explicitly
claim that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya composed
the Poem of the Two Loves, this is strongly
implied by its inclusion in the section
on Rabi’a in al-Rawd al-fa’iq and
by the fact that the woman who is
depicted as composing the poem does not die after she recites
it to Dhu’l-Nun.
b.
The Poem of the Intimate Gift
The second famous poem on Love that has been attributed to Rabi’a was originally
attributed not to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra but to Rabi’a
bint Isma’il of Damascus, the wife
of the Sufi Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari.205 Ibn Abi al-Hawari
was a disciple of Abu Sulayman al- Darani (d. 830 CE), a famous early Sufi who was originally from Basra but moved to Daraya, a village near Damascus.206 Ibn Abi al-Hawari was also from Basra and moved to Syria with his
teacher. Upon their arrival in Syria, Darani,
a celibate who normally forbade
his disciples from marrying, allowed Ibn Abi al-Hawari to marry Rabi’a bint Isma’il,
a rich Sufi widow who was the
originated with Ibn al-Jawzi. However, it is not contained
in Sifat al-safwa, Ibn al-Jawzi’s major work on hagiography. Whether or not it can be found in another of his works, I cannot
say with certainty.
204 Hurayfish, al-Rawd al-fa’iq, 183
205 Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari
also transmitted traditions about Christian ascetics. He may have been
responsible for
disseminating Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s teachings about love mysticism in Syria and
the Levant after he moved from Basra to Damascus. For information on Ibn Abi al-Hawari, see Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, 98-102,
Isfahani, Hilya’ vol. 10, 5-33, Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 836-7, and
Massignon, Essay,
152-8.
206 For information on Abu Sulayman
al-Darani, see Smith,
An Early Mystic of Baghdad, 76-77,
Massignon, Essay, 152-4, Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, 75-82, Isfahani, Hilya’, vol. 9, 254-80,
and Ibn al- Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 828-34.
disciple of Hukayma of Damascus.207 Hukayma was Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s near contemporary and seems to have played a similar role to that of Rabi’a as a wisdom teacher
in Syria. According to the short notice
on her in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women, she taught a path of asceticism,
celibacy, and devotion to God that was very similar
to Rabi’a’s. Sulami
even refers to her as ustadh, the masculine Arabic term for “teacher.” This unusual
term is equivalent in many ways
to the term mu’addiba, by which Sufyan al-Thawri referred
to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.208
Because of the similarities in their names, accounts about Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Syria are frequently mistaken for accounts
about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra. In fact, in many accounts Rabi’a of Basra’s name is given
as “Rabi’a bint Isma’il.”209 As early
as the tenth century CE, Abu
Talib al-Makki highlighted the separate existence
of these two Rabi’as by saying of Rabi’a
bint Isma’il, “Her excellence among
the people of Syria is comparable to that of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya among the people of Basra.”210 Rabi’a bint Isma’il’s
marriage to Ahmad ibn Abi al-
Hawari may have been the source of mistaken reports
about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s marriage, as claimed by Hurayfish, ‘Abd al-Raziq, and others. Likewise, accounts
of Rabi’a’s widowhood may have been due to the fact that Makki describes
Rabi’a bint Isma’il
as a widow.211 As noted earlier in this chapter,
one of the most significant features of Rabi’a
bint Isma’il’s asceticism was her adherence to the Syrian Christian practice
of pseudo-marriage, in which she and Ibn Abi al- Hawari lived not as husband and wife, but rather as “brother” and “sister.” This practice is reported by Ibn al-Jawzi
in Sifat al-safwa. Ibn al-Jawzi also attributes the Poem of the Intimate Gift to Rabi’a bint Isma’il. The information transmitted by Ibn al-Jawzi
on Rabi’a bint Isma’il
comes from two main sources:
Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women and a now lost work by Abu Bakr ibn
Abi al-Dunya (d. 894 CE). Ibn Abi al-Dunya was a noted
traditionist and teacher
of the Abbasid Caliph
al-Muktafi Billah (r. 902-8 CE). He is said to have composed
several works on Muslim ascetics. It is apparently through
the lost work of Ibn Abi al-Dunya
that we learn from
Ibn al-Jawzi that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a bint Isma’il were confused with each other as
early as the second half of the ninth century
CE.212 It may also have been through
Ibn Abi al- Dunya that the “Poem of the Intimate Gift” was first attributed to Rabi’a bint Isma’il.
After the Poem of the Two Loves, the Poem of the Intimate
Gift is the most famous poem
that has been attributed to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Unlike the Poem of the Two Loves,
whose text varies from version to version, this poem tends
to appear in a standardized version that hardly ever varies. For example,
in the recently published Diwan Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya by Muwaffaq
207 According to Abu
Talib al-Makki, Rabi’a bint Isma’il donated her former husband’s inheritance of
300,000 gold dinars to Abu Sulayman al-Darani and his followers. This was why Darani allowed Ahmad ibn Abi
al-Hawari to marry her. See Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 413. Ibn al-Jawzi, who utilized an earlier
source for his information, puts Rabi’a bint Isma’il’s fortune
at the lower but still significant figure
of 7,000 silver dirhams. See Ibn al-Jawzi Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 316-17.
208 See the discussion in Chapter 1 and Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 126-27.
The fact that the term ustadh
appears
in the masculine form indicates that Hukayma attained
the status of a “man” in her wisdom.
209 Ibn al-Jawzi
claims that Sulami
said that the fathers of both Rabi’a’s
were named Isma’il.
This claim
does not appear, however,
in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women. See R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 138-41 and Ibn al-Jawzi Appendix, 314-15.
210 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 413
211 Ibid
212 This can be inferred
from Ibn Abi al-Dunya’s careful
specification of their names. See the comment
in
Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa
Appendix to Sulami,
Early Sufi Women, 314-15.
Fawzi al-Jabr (1999) as well as in the popularized biography Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya by Muhammad
‘Atiyya Khamis (1955) one finds the same version of the poem that appears
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s twelfth-century Sifat
al-safwa.
I have made you the one who speaks
to me in the depths
of my soul, But I made my body lawful for the one who desires to be
with me.
My body is my intimate
gift to my worldly companion,
But my heart’s
beloved is my true intimate
in the depths of my
soul.213
The main difference between
modern versions of the Poem of the Intimate Gift and that of
Ibn al-Jawzi is that modern
accounts attribute the poem to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra whereas Ibn al-Jawzi attributes the poem to Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus. As noted above,
Ibn al-Jawzi may have derived
this attribution from Ibn Abi al-Dunya. However,
if the poem was attributed to Rabi’a bint Isma’il at such an early date, why have so many writers attributed it to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya? What might have been the source for the attribution of this poem to the wrong
Rabi’a? Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami
mentions both Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a
bint Isma’il in his Book of Sufi Women but attributes no poetry to either of them. However,
a likely source for the confusion between the two Rabi’as can be found
in a work that was nearly
contemporary with Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women and was written
in the same city of Nishapur.
This work is Tahdhib al-asrar (The
Primer of Secrets)
by ‘Abd al-Malik
al-Kharkushi (d. 1016 CE). Kharkushi
was an important Sufi of Nishapur who appears to have been a rival
of Sulami.214 At present,
Tahdhib al-asrar is the earliest extant
source for the Poem of the Intimate Gift, in that it predates Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa
by nearly two centuries. In his chapter
on the Sufi doctrine
of intimacy (uns), Kharkushi states: “Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari said: Rabi’a used to
experience many spiritual
states (ahwal). Sometimes Love (hubb)
overcame her; sometimes Intimacy (uns) overcame
her; sometimes Fear (khawf)
overcame her.” The reader
is not told which Rabi’a is meant in this passage.
The report then goes on to cite three poems by Rabi’a,
one for each of the three states mentioned
by Ibn Abi al-Hawari. The Poem of the Intimate
Gift is Rabi’a’s poem for the
state of intimacy.215
It
is easy to imagine how a reader who was unfamiliar with the biographies of Ahmad ibn Abi
al-Hawari and Rabi’a bint Isma’il
might mistake Kharkushi’s account about an unspecified
Rabi’a as referring to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. In fact, it has long been common for Sufi authors to attribute any unspecified reference to a Sufi woman named
Rabi’a to Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya. A similar attribution of the Poem of the Intimate Gift to an unspecified Rabi’a appears in the well- known treatise ‘Awarif al-ma’arif (The
Ways of Discernment) by Abu Hafs ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi
213 Appendix to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 316-317
and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 871-872;
see also, Muwaffaq Fawzi al-Jabr, Diwan
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya wa akhbaruha (Damascus: Dar Ma’d and Dar al-Namir,
1999), 57, 78-9 and Muhammad ‘Atiyya Khamis, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Cairo: Dar Karam, 1955), 62.
214 The rivalry
between Kharkushi and Sulami can be inferred
from the similarity of their teachings
and
their
use of the same sources, as well as by
the fact that only Sulami’s father but not Sulami
himself is mentioned in Tahdhib al-asrar.
215 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 80
(d. 1234 CE).216 Suhrawardi was head of the Sufis of Baghdad
and was an ambassador and advisor for the Abbasid
caliph al-Nasir (d. 1225 CE).217 Because of his
influence on the development of orthodox
mystical doctrines in Islam, ‘Awarif al-ma’arif was often attached
as an appendix to Ghazali’s Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din. Like Kharkushi, Suhrawardi gives no indication that the
Rabi’a who composed
the Poem of the Intimate
Gift was anyone other than Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. Thus, the uninformed reader is led to conclude
that Rabi’a of Basra wrote
this poem rather than anyone else. Because of the wide popularity of ‘Awarif al-ma’arif throughout the Islamic world, it is reasonable to suppose that this work was another
source for the misattribution
of the Poem of the Intimate Gift to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
However, the misattribution of the Poem of the Intimate Gift to the wrong Rabi’a reveals
more than just a simple case of mistaken
identity. It also illustrates the uncritical attitude
toward tradition that has characterized Sufi literature for centuries. Upon careful
consideration of the text
of the Poem of the Intimate Gift, it makes little sense
to attribute it to Rabi’a
of Basra. The second line of the poem, “I made my body lawful for the one who desires to be with me,” alludes to an experience of sexuality that is alien
to the figure of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya as she appears in early
Sufi literature. We have already
seen in this chapter how the earliest
accounts of Rabi’a agree about her celibacy
and her practice of an ascetic devotionalism that left no room for anyone
but God. The third line of the poem, “My body is my intimate
gift to my worldly companion,” confirms that the author
of this poem most likely
had a worldly companion and that she was
intimate with him. In contrast,
early Sufi traditions concur that Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya’s only close companions were other Sufi women
such as herself.
Clearly, the only Rabi’a
whose life story
provides a fitting
background for the Poem of the
Intimate Gift is Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus. If Makki and Ibn al-Jawzi
are correct, the Syrian Rabi’a did in fact have a male companion for whom she made her body lawful.
This was her first
husband, whose inheritance she gave to Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari. Significantly, Ibn Abi al-Hawari is the source for the Poem of the Intimate
Gift in Kharkushi’s Tahdhib al-asrar. Perhaps relying
on this same source, Ibn al-Jawzi depicts
Rabi’a bint Isma’il
as unsure about how
to balance her obligations to her husband
and her obligations to God. According to Ibn al-Jawzi, she eventually tries to resolve this conflict by encouraging her second husband
to take another wife so that she could maintain
their pseudo-marriage. A similar sense of conflict
is expressed in the Poem of the Intimate
Gift. The author of this poem allows
her body to be possessed
by her worldly companion; however, only God, her “true
intimate,” has the right to possess her heart.
The appeal of this poem for many generations of Sufis, both male and female, is that it eloquently
expresses the dilemma of the devotee who struggles to give the proper measure
of devotion both to
God and to a worldly
partner at the same time. How is a Sufi woman
to give herself completely to both God and her husband without
creating what the Qur’an refers
to as “two hearts in one
body”?
216 See, for example, Abu Hafs ‘Umar
al-Suhrawardi, ‘Awarif al-ma’arif, appended
to various editions
of Ghazali, Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din. The attribution of The Poem of the
Intimate Gift to an unspecified “Rabi’a” appears in Chapter 61, Dhikr al-ahwal wa sharhiha (Mention of
the Spiritual States and Their Explanation).
217 On Abu Hafs ‘Umar al-Suhrawardi and his influence on Sufi doctrine,
see Schimmel, Mystical
Dimensions of Islam, 244-47.
CHAPTER 4 RABI’A THE SUFI
“Verily, the
Knower of God (‘arif) asks God to
grant him a heart. So [God] grants it
to him from Himself. When he possesses the heart, he then offers it back to his
Lord and Master, so that in [God’s] repossession of it he will be protected and
will be veiled in its concealment from created beings.”
—
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar
“The fruit of true knowledge
(ma’rifa) is constant orientation toward God (iqbal).”
—
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar
and in Sulami,
Dhikr al-niswa al-
muta’abbidat al-sufiyyat
I.
The Lady Reconsidered: Can We See the Real “Rabi’a
the Sufi”?
In her influential article,
“The Lady Vanishes:
Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian
after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’”
Elizabeth A. Clark uses the concept of the social
logic of historical and hagiographical texts to argue that literary depictions of women saints
exhibit a “reality
effect” that gives them an aura of truthfulness that is sometimes
not deserved.1 Hayden White has similarly observed that the authors of historical works are often more concerned
with the moral of
the story than with the details of the story,
and for this reason they may endow certain events
or depictions with special
symbolic or ideological significance.2 A similar phenomenon occurs when Muslim writers
of hagiography construct the iconic image
of a saint such as Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. As Clark states in her article, “Readers
are thus led to ascribe
considerable truth to the
account because so many ‘effects
of the real’ have been summoned up.”3 This notion of the
“reality effect” is similar to the concept
of “narrative validity”
mentioned in the Introduction to this
study. The mutual reinforcement of the story elements of a master narrative and the
archetypal characters, relationships, and situations that they invoke all conspire
to give the narrative an aura of factuality that may not be objectively “real.”
Elizabeth Clark’s
article is especially relevant to the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya because the “reality effect”
that she focuses
on is the tendency in early Christian hagiography to
depict women saints as teachers
of wisdom. As we saw in Chapter
1, the trope of Rabi’a
the Teacher is a central theme of the Rabi’a narratives. Clark finds a similar example of this trope in Gregory of Nyssa’s (d. 395 CE) writings on his sister
Macrina. Gregory calls
Macrina “my
1 Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian
after the ‘Linguistic Turn’,” Church History,
vol. 67, No 1 (March, 1998), 1-31; the term “reality effect” (l’effet du réel) comes from Roland
Barthes; the term “social logic” comes from Gabrielle Spiegel, “History,
Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990), 59-86.
2 See, for example, Hayden
White, “The Fictions
of Factual Representation,” in idem, Tropics of
Discourse, 121-134.
3 Clark, “The Lady Vanishes,” 21
teacher,” just as Sufyan
al-Thawri does for Rabi’a in works such as Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women. Like Rabi’a as well,
Macrina is depicted
as being concerned
for the human condition
and the life of the soul, and her approach
to God is based on a theology
of Love.4 Perhaps
the most striking similarity between these two figures is in Clark’s
observation, “Macrina is modeled
on Socrates’ muse Diotima of the Symposium, while her words in the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection owe much to
Plato’s Phaedo.”5
As we have seen in the previous chapter,
a nearly identical
assertion can be made about the
trope of Rabi’a
the Lover.6 Clark also suggests that the trope
of “Wisdom As A Woman” goes back to the Classical Greek concept of Sophia,
in which the word for wisdom is feminine,
and to hochmah, the Hebrew term for wisdom,
which is also feminine.7 Since early Christian literature took examples from both Greco-Roman and Jewish literary
cultures, it is not surprising to find that Christian
writers would feminize
the concept of wisdom just as their predecessors did. According to Clark, women saints such as Macrina
were often depicted
by early Christian writers as exemplars of a new type of
knowledge, in which divinely
inspired wisdom replaced
a philosophical education. It is in this sense,
she states, that the feminist
historian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
could characterize early Christian theology
by saying, “The earliest Christian theology is sophialogy.”8
The challenge posed by Clark’s article
to the historical study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is that she concludes from the tropological nature of the Wisdom As Woman motif
that such representations say little or nothing about the “real” woman behind the story. In her opinion,
Gregory’s stories of Macrina do not reveal the real Macrina; instead,
they reveal Gregory appropriating his sister’s voice by “writing
as a woman.”9 Following an argument first posed by David
Halperin, Clark sees the trope of female
wisdom teachers in early Christianity as legitimating the philosophical, theological, or political
agendas of their male authors.
In other words, the figure of the wise woman provides
a tool by means of which men can “think through
various troubling intellectual and theological problems
that confronted male theologians.”10
Clark thus concludes that female
teachers of wisdom
such as Gregory’s
Macrina and Plato’s Diotima are not real women at all; rather,
they are figural
“women.” The wise woman is an
“inversed alter ego” of the male writer.
As a figure of literature, she is a “pseudo-Other:” “an alternate male identity whose constant accessibility to men lends men fullness
and totality that enables them to dispense
(supposedly) with otherness altogether.”11 If we apply Halperin’s and Clark’s conclusions to the tropes that describe
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, we again confront
the key historiographical problem
discussed in the Introduction of the present
study: Is there
any way to see
a “real” person behind the figural representation of a literary
icon?
4 Ibid, 23
5 Ibid, 24
6 I came up with my theory
of the parallels between Diotima
and Rabi’a independently, before discovering
Elizabeth Clark’s article.
7 The same thing, of course, could be said about the Arabic term hikma, which is also feminine.
8 Clark, “The Lady Vanishes,” 24
9 Ibid, 27
10 Ibid. See also, David M. Halperin,
“Why Is Diotima
a Woman?” in idem, One Hundred
Years of
Homosexuality and Other Essays
on Greek Love (New York and London:
Routledge, 1990), 113-151.
11 Clark, “The Lady Vanishes,” 26
It seems to me that the best way to respond
to this challenge is to repeat
a point that has
often been made by Hayden
White but is overlooked by many of his readers:
Just because works of
history and hagiography employ literary tropes and novelistic forms of representation, this does not mean that they are purely fiction.12 Students of hagiography should not allow the ideal of
objectivity to lead them into the blind
alley of artificial or overly simplistic “either-or” dichotomies. As Hayden
White indicates about
history writing in general, the use of tropes and other
literary devices does not necessarily mean that everything said about a figure such as Rabi’a or
Macrina is untrue.
The novelistic form of a narrative does not automatically imply that the content of the narrative is false. Even a trope may have some basis in fact. For example, although the trope of Rabi’a the Lover was developed 200 years after
Rabi’a’s death by Abu
Talib al-Makki, the fact that Muhasibi cited a statement
about love by Rabi’a 150 years before Makki can be taken
as evidence that the “real”
Rabi’a probably did talk about love in her
teachings.13 Even the characters in historical novels are often
real people who lived through
real events and have sayings that are in the historical record. In such cases, we have to acknowledge
that something real exists in the story,
even if it is embellished for rhetorical purposes.
If this obvious but often overlooked fact is taken sufficiently into account, then the question
to be asked of a figural
representation such as Rabi’a the Lover is not only whether it contains anything
real at its core but also, if such information exists,
how does it relate to the content
implied by the work’s rhetorical form?
Elizabeth Clark
bases her argument
about the tropological nature of Macrina
the Wisdom Teacher on Gregory of Nyssa’s reproduction of her statements in formal, classical styles of rhetoric that she could
not have learned
without an advanced
classical education. Since Macrina
did not have such an education, Clark concludes that what she supposedly “says” in Gregory’s writings are actually Gregory’s
words and not Macrina’s. The same can also be said about many
of the statements that have been attributed to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. In the previous
chapters, I noted several
instances in which
Sufi writers made up statements that were supposedly by Rabi’a without reference
to any original text. We shall see more examples
of this use of authorial
license in Chapter 5, “Rabi’a the Icon.” However,
other accounts about
Rabi’a do not show the same
evidence of fictional composition. For example, although
hagiographers such as the Sufi Sulami
and the non-Sufi Ibn al-Jawzi
portray Rabi’a in very different
ways, both attempt
to base their portrayals on what they consider
to be documentary evidence. In other
words, they saw themselves as traditionists instead
of storytellers, and their different portrayals of Rabi’a were
matters of representation rather than of fiction.
12
In “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical
Theory,” Hayden White reminds us that history and fiction start from different
premises: “What distinguishes ‘historical’ from ‘fictional’ stories is first
and foremost their content, rather than their form. The content of historical stories is real events, events that
really happened, rather than imaginary events, events invented by the narrator
. . . The form of the discourse, the narrative, adds nothing to the content of
the representation; rather, it is a simulacrum of the structure and process of
real events. And insofar as this
representation resembles the events that it represents, it can be taken as a
true account. The story told in the
narrative is a mimesis of the story lived in
some region of historical reality,
and insofar as it is an accurate
imitation, it is to be considered a truthful
account thereof.” Idem, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse
and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1987), 27
13 As noted in Chapter
1, Muhasibi reports
in his treatise al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah that
Rabi’a would
say at the coming of night, “The night has come, the darkness has mingled, and every lover is left alone with his beloved. Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.”
Although it is true that many accounts about
Rabi’a— like those
about Macrina— are due
to men “thinking through various
troubling intellectual and theological problems,” we should not automatically dismiss all of the accounts
about her as factually unreliable. Doing so would amount to committing the type of category mistake
that critical historiography was supposed to avoid. In other words,
just because we cannot prove that an account is true does not mean that it is false. When Makki created
the trope of Rabi’a the Lover to illustrate his theory of love
mysticism, he was indeed “a man writing
a woman,” just as Gregory
of Nyssa wrote
the trope of Macrina the Wisdom Teacher. However, because earlier
writers cited statements on love by Rabi’a
much earlier than Makki, this suggests that the trope of Rabi’a
the Lover may have been based on “real” evidence, even if Makki’s
representation of Rabi’a
went beyond the evidence
itself. The same process of tropological construction continues today. The only difference is that newer additions to the trope of Rabi’a
the Lover are based on the contributions of ‘Attar, Maqdisi, Hurayfish, and other Sufi writers who built on the theme that Makki developed. For this reason, when assessing reports about Rabi’a in premodern literature, it is important
to distinguish between the earliest accounts
of her sayings and later
narratives that were designed to make a theoretical point (like Makki’s)
or embellished these accounts to create a fictional life story (like ‘Attar’s).
As
stated in the Introduction and Chapter 1, I believe that historiographically, the best
approach is to view the earliest
accounts about Rabi’a
and other major figures from the formative period of Sufism as products of historical and cultural memory.
Because famous ascetics
like Rabi’a made their local communities noteworthy, many of their statements and acts were preserved through oral tradition, which entered Sufi literature through
later use by traditionists
and doctrinal specialists. Despite Elizabeth
Clark’s useful warning
about the unreliability of tropological and gendered
discourses, one should not automatically assume that just because a man writes about a woman,
the woman herself
cannot be seen. Although Rabi’a’s
female gender may have played a role in her portrayal as a teacher
of Love instead
of other aspects
of Sufi doctrine, it would be a mistake
to draw the conclusion that Abu Talib al-Makki made Rabi’a into a love mystic primarily because
she was a woman. Feminist
theory on the politics of gender and representation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it correctly
warns women historians not to allow our interest in creating a hermeneutic of remembrance (“the
lady must not vanish”)
to blind us to the fact that what seem to be women’s voices are sometimes
not women’s voices at
all.14 On the other hand, we must ask ourselves: Is it truly liberating for us to assume that premodern women were always destined to be the mouthpieces of men?
The
premise of the present chapter is that the earliest traditions about Rabi’a contain
important information on her actual doctrines and teachings. When I first began this study I assumed that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was entirely a narrative construct. I did not expect to find an actual
person behind the myth. However,
I now regard the Rabi’a
narrative as it has developed over the centuries as something like a historical novel produced by a writer’s
collective.
Evidence suggests
that a real woman from eighth-century Basra
lies at the heart of the story
but the saint and Sufi constructed by the authors
of her narrative is a significantly different person from the original. Over time, the figure of Rabi’a the ascetic and teacher of Basra found
in the earliest accounts
has achieved mythical
and universal status through the tropes of Rabi’a the
14 For a more detailed
discussion of the concept of “hermeneutic of remembrance” and its application to Sufi tabaqat literature,
see R. Cornell, Early Sufi Women,
48-53
Lover, Rabi’a the Sufi, and (as we shall see in Chapter 5) Rabi’a the Icon. However,
despite the authorial license
that has taken place, a distinct individual still emerges from the Rabi’a
narrative. Although the present
study is primarily
concerned with the rhetorical and tropological
representations of Rabi’a
in Sufi literature, this is not to deny the possibility that a “real”
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya actually did teach, did practice asceticism, and did develop
a mystical doctrine
that was based (at least in part) on the love of God. In historiographical terms, to assume that Rabi’a was nothing but a myth would be to deny the very possibility of using tradition
as a source for history.
The present chapter will bring the historical Rabi’a back into the narrative by tracing the outlines of the figure
of Rabi’a the Sufi in early Sufi literature. The central
question of the chapter is: What does it mean to say that Rabi’a
was a Sufi? Surprisingly, despite
Rabi’a’s widespread fame as a figure of Sufism,
this question is difficult to answer. Even Margaret Smith could not provide an answer in her book Rabi’a the Mystic. For example, her chapter on Sufi
doctrine is not about Rabi’a’s
Sufism, but instead
is a general introduction to Sufism that depends
for the most part on later Sufi doctrines.15 In subsequent chapters
of her book, Smith merely cuts
and pastes accounts of Rabi’a’s
statements using definitions of Sufism formulated by Sufi theorists who lived centuries after her. Of the five key tropes
of the Rabi’a narrative that are
examined in the present study, only Rabi’a
the Lover and Rabi’a the Ascetic receive
significant attention in Rabi’a
the Mystic.
Smith’s tendency
to discuss Rabi’a’s
Sufism anachronistically in light of later doctrines is not unique. Most medieval Muslim hagiographers and almost everyone
who has written
about Rabi’a after Smith have done the same thing. For this reason,
we must first ask the question,
“What did it mean to say that someone was a ‘Sufi’
in Rabi’a’s time?”
This question is important
because many of the traditions of Sufism that we know today did not develop
until a generation or more after Rabi’a’s
death. Most contemporary scholars of Sufism
agree that one cannot speak meaningfully about Sufism as an institution until the mid-ninth
century CE. Although
the term, “Sufi,” was used in Rabi’a’s time, contemporaneous references to the term are both rare and contradictory. In fact, we need to ask: Was the “real” Rabi’a even a Sufi at all?
In answering this
question, I shall argue that the essential asceticism of Rabi’a and her
contemporaries marked an important transition between the ascetic
pietism of the eighth century CE and early Sufism
as it developed in the ninth century
CE. As we saw in Chapter 3, the
concept of essential asceticism was central to the development of Islamic Love mysticism. The connection between essential asceticism and love is apparent in some of the earliest
accounts of Rabi’a’s teachings. This is why I stated
at the end of Chapter
2 that whereas the trope
of Rabi’a the Teacher
depends in part on the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic, the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic
finds its fullest expression in the trope of Rabi’a the Lover. In a similar way, the trope of Rabi’a the Lover leads to the trope of
Rabi’a the Sufi.
The
key to these connections can be found
in the fact that asceticism, love mysticism, and Sufism are all ways of knowledge. On the path toward the knowledge of God that begins with asceticism, the servant-devotee is led by her devotion
to become a lover of God. At this point,
15 See Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 71-76 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 47-52. Instead of using
Rabi’a’s own statements, Smith uses quotations from the
later Sufis Makki (d. 996 CE), Munawi (d. 1621 CE), Abu Sa’id
Abu al-Khayr (d. 1041 CE), Rumi (d. 1273 CE), Mahmud al-Shabistari (d. 1320
CE), modern Orientalists such as R. A. Nicholson and E. J. W. Gibb, and even an
early Christian mystic.
she is also an essential ascetic
because all of her spiritual practices are focused
on the object of her devotion. Because she no longer has instrumental goals,
her asceticism changes
from renunciation of the World to detachment from it. She now realizes
that any involvement with the World— even to renounce
it— is a distraction from God. The reorientation of the ascetic’s spiritual focus from denial
of the World to absorption in God is expressed through
the rhetoric of Love
mysticism. As a result,
the ascetic takes on a new identity
as God’s intimate
and becomes a “knower”
of God (‘arif bi-llah). In a famous
aphorism, Rabi’a describes this state as follows:
“The fruit of true knowledge (ma’rifa) is constant orientation toward God (iqbal).” In this
aphorism, the word iqbal connotes both the orientation of the essential ascetic toward God and
God’s response to her orientation. In the language
of Love mysticism, both lover and Beloved are present for each other. This is the meaning of Rabi’a’s comment
on Jesus’ saying
from the Sermon on the Mount:
“Knock and the door will be opened.”
“The door is already open.” she
says, “But the question is, who wishes
to enter it?”16 The wisdom
of knowing that the door to
God is always open comes from the intimate knowledge
of God (ma’rifa) that is the goal of the
essential ascetic and love mystic.
It is a special form of knowledge that goes beyond
the external knowledge (‘ilm)
provided by religious laws or dogmas.
In Sufi doctrine, knowledge, love, and wisdom come together
in the heart. However, Rabi’a and her contemporaries were not the first to use the concept of the heart in this way. As we shall see, the metaphor
of the heart was used in similar
ways in the Hebrew Bible,
the New Testament, and the Qur’an.
Already before the coming of Islam, the heart had become a favorite
metaphor for Christian mystics, who adapted the biblical metaphor
of the heart to the philosophical doctrines of Plato
and the Neo-Platonists. Early Muslim ascetics
in Iraq and Syria
adapted their use of this metaphor in part from these previous
models. A deeper
understanding of the heart appears to have developed
among Muslim ascetics
in Rabi’a’s time. This can be seen in
the fact that only a generation or so after her death Sufis from Basra, Baghdad, and Syria began to construct sophisticated and elaborate doctrines of the inner life of the soul based
on the metaphor of the heart. For example,
al-Harith al-Muhasibi, who was born and raised like Rabi’a in Basra, defined Sufism as “the science of
hearts.”
For Rabi’a and other essential ascetics
of her generation, attaining knowledge
of God depended on the “turning” or reorienting of the heart away from the World.
This concept is expressed in Islam by the term tawba,
which is the Arabic word for repentance, but literally means “turning.” As we saw in Chapter
2, metanoia, the Greek
term for repentance used by pagan philosophers and early Christian
mystics, also means “turning.” In both tawba and metanoia, two acts of turning
are involved: the renunciant turns away from the World
and turns toward God as the source of knowledge and truth. This dual act of turning is expressed in the
first statement of Rabi’a in the epigraph
to this chapter:
“Verily, the Knower
of God (‘arif) asks God
to grant him a heart.
So [God] grants
it to him from Himself.
When he possesses the heart, he then offers it back to his Lord and Master,
so that in [God’s] repossession of it he will be protected, and will be veiled in its concealment from created beings.” According to this statement, the knowledge that Sufism embodies
depends on the mutual turning
of God and the mystic toward
each other. When Rabi’a offers
her heart back to her Lord, this act of devotion
expresses the ethic of essential
asceticism because nothing
in the world has value other than God.
16 See Chapter
1 and Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 80.
It also expresses an ethic of love because
the heart, as a symbol of the self, is “turned over” as a gift to the Beloved.
II.
Locating Rabi’a the Sufi: What Was A “Sufi” in Eighth-Century Islam?
Nowhere in the study of Islam is the search for origins more full of difficulty than in the search for the original
meaning of the term “Sufi.” Etymological theories of the origin of the term
do not provide a clear answer. One theory states
that the term “Sufi” originally referred to ascetics that wore woolen (suf) garments; another
claims that it referred to religious devotees
who patterned their lifestyle after the “people
of the porch” (ahl al-suffa), early Muslim ascetics
who prayed and invoked
God at the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina;
other theories claim that it referred to those who followed a path of moral and ethical purity (safa),
or that it referred to those who patterned
their spirituality on the Greek philosophical concept
of wisdom (Gr. sophia). Not only have Western writers
advanced such theories
but they can also be found in premodern Muslim works as well, both inside and outside of the Sufi tradition.17 Even the
sophia-sufiyya etymology, which many contemporary Muslims assume to have been the creation of Western Orientalists, was first thought
up by a Muslim: its origin can be traced
at least as far
back as Abu Rayhan al-Biruni’s (d. 1048 CE) Kitab al-Hind (Book
of India).18
Modern attempts to clarify
the meaning of the term “Sufi” by relying on simplified or generalized definitions have also been of little help. For example,
Annermarie Schimmel defines early Sufism in Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975) as follows: “Sufism
meant, in the formative
period, mainly an interiorization of Islam, a personal experience of the central
mystery of Islam, that of tawhid,
‘to declare that God is One.’”19 Among the problems
with this statement is that it relies on a theological definition of Sufism
that came relatively late in the formative period of
Sufism— the beginning of the tenth century
CE.20 One might also add that the term “Sufism”
is itself originally a Western concept,
being a translation of the Arabic
word tasawwuf, and that it
has its own problematic genealogy.21 It will become
clear in the following pages that Schimmel’s
17 The British
Orientalist R. A. Nicholson claimed
to have found 78 etymologies for the term “Sufi” in Muslim sources. See
Massignon, Essay, 106.
18 According to Biruni, the term “Sufi” was derived
from a misunderstanding of the Greek word sophia,
which Muslims
linked etymologically to the Arabic terms suf and
al-suffa, mentioned
above. See Ainslee Embree, ed., Alberuni’s India, Edward C. Sachau trans. (New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, 1971), 33-4.
19 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 17
20 The notion
that Islam involves
the internalization of tawhid as a mystical experience first appears in
Sufi
writings about a
century after Rabi’a’s death. It is
most commonly associated with the figure of Abu al- Qasim al-Junayd (d. 910
CE), who is often credited with being the first Sufi theologian. It can also be found in the doctrines of
Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896 CE), a resident of Basra whose teachings influenced Abu
Talib al-Makki. In his writings
Tustari speaks of mystical encounter with God as a recompense for the
internalization of tawhid. See Gerhard Böwering, The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam: The
Qur’anic Hermeneutics of the Sufi Sahl At-Tustari (d. 283/896) (Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 172-5.
21 For a good introduction to the genealogy
of the concept “Sufism,” see Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala
Guide to Sufism (Boston and
London: Shambhala Books, 1997), 1-31, especially the section, “The Orientalist
‘Discovery’ of Sufism,” 8-17. It is
also important to note that the term tasawwuf,
which in Arabic literally means “doing suf” or “practicing wooliness,” is meaningless when taken out of the context
of Sufism as a doctrine or institution.
notion that Sufism involves
the interiorization of the theological concept of tawhid is not
supported by the earliest references to the term “Sufi” in Islamic sources. Although her
theological definition of Sufism is generally true today, when applied to the origins
of Sufism it is
a claim to be argued, not assumed a
priori.
Among the earliest extant treatises on Sufism, Abu Nasr al-Sarraj’s (d. 988 CE) Kitab al-
luma’ is the most explicit
in affirming the problematic genealogy of the term “Sufi.” After a
section that details some of the etymologies of the term mentioned above,
Sarraj adds another section titled, “Refutation of one who says that we have not heard mention of [the term]
al- Sufiyya in the past because it is a neologism” (al-Radd ‘ala man qala lam nasma’
bi-dhikri al- sufiyya fi-l-qadim wa huwwa ism muhdath).22 The presence of this discussion in Kitab al-luma’
proves that the authenticity of Sufism was called into question very early in its history.
Sarraj acknowledges that the term al-sufiyya did
not exist in the first two generations of Islam.
However, he maintains that the practice
of tasawwuf is dependent on the Sunna
of the Prophet Muhammad, his Companions, and their Successors. As for al-sufiyya being a neologism, he says
that some people claim that this term was first
coined in Baghdad.
This probably refers
to the Baghdad school of Sufism associated with Abu al-Qasim
al-Junayd (d. 910 CE) and his circle.
Sarraj refutes this assertion by claiming that the early
theologian al-Hasan al-Basri
(d. 726 CE) once reported seeing
a “Sufi” at the Ka’ba
in Mecca. When he tried
to give the man some money, the “Sufi” refused
the gift, saying,
“I have four dawaniq (3/4 of a dirham)
with me and this is sufficient.”23
This story is important
because chronologically it indicates that early systematizers of Sufism such as Sarraj dated the origins
of the term “Sufi” to the eighth
century CE, the same
period in which Rabi’a lived. In addition,
Sarraj associates the earliest Sufis
with an ascetic life- style, which, as we have seen, is also well established for Rabi’a. This indirect connection to Rabi’a is further
confirmed by Sarraj
when he cites a tradition
in which Rabi’a’s
student Sufyan al-Thawri states,
“Were it not for Abu Hashim the Sufi, I would not have learned
about the subtle effects of egoism (daqiq al-riya’).”24 This tradition tells
us that Sarraj
associated early Sufism with ethical and moral training. This recalls Rabi’a’s
pedagogy of ta’dib, which formed the basis
of the trope of Rabi’a the Teacher
discussed in Chapter 1.
Sarraj’s mention
of a figure called Abu Hashim “al-Sufi” (d. ca. 776 CE) identifies one of the earliest
ascetics in Islam to refer to himself
as a Sufi. The same person also appears in Jahiz’s
treatise al-Bayan wa al-tabyin, which was written
nearly 150 years before Sarraj’s
Kitab al- luma’. In Jahiz’s
book, Abu Hashim is mentioned
along with other Sufis named Kilab, Kulayb, Hashim al-Awqas, and Salih
ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil.25 Jahiz, who was not a Sufi himself,
refers to these individuals as ascetic ritualists (nussak) and includes them in his book because
of the eloquence
22 Sarraj, The Kirab al-Luma’, Arabic
text 21-22
23 Ibid, 22
24 Ibid; Sarraj also reports
that before the Prophet Muhammad
began to preach
Islam, a person
known as a
“Sufi” once came
in from the desert to visit Mecca outside of the normal pilgrimage season; he
performed the ritual of circumambulating the Ka’ba and then went back into the
desert. This pattern of behavior
recalls a common trope in the stories
of early Christian anchorites. By recording this story Sarraj
seems to suggest that before
Islam the term Sufi was regarded as a
synonym for Hanif (unaffiliated
monotheist).
25 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 1, 195
of their speech.26 In Chapter 1 it was noted that Jahiz regarded
Rabi’a the same way, although
he did not call her a Sufi. Louis Massignon claims,
without attribution, that Abu Hashim was the first person in Islam
to refer to himself as a Sufi.27 Other information on Abu Hashim
can be found in the hagiographical anthology Hilyat al-awliya’ (The
Ornament of the Saints) by Abu
Nu’aym al-Isfahani (d. 1037 CE). The main sources for Isfahani are two of the earliest hagiographical works on ascetics
in Islam: Kitab al-ruhban
by Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al- Burjulani (d. 852 CE) and Tabaqat al-nussak by Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi
(952-3 CE).28
Abu Hashim appears under two separate
headings in Hilyat al-awliya’, which indicates that Isfahani
was not sure whether both sets of accounts referred
to the same person. In neither
entry, however, is he called “Abu Hashim
al-Sufi.” In one notice, which is based in part on Ibn al-A’rabi’s Tabaqat al-nussak, he appears as “Abu Hashim
Fadim.” In the other notice,
which is based on Burjulani’s earlier
Kitab al-ruhban, he appears
as “Abu Hashim al-Zahid” (the Ascetic
or Renunciant). As an early
Muslim ascetic, Abu Hashim
was a firm believer in the World/Nonworld dichotomy discussed in Chapter 2. This is clearly visible
in the following statement, which originally came from Burjulani’s work: “God Most High has characterized the World
as desolate (inna Allaha wasama al-dunya
bi-l-wahsha) so that those who seek Him will
find solace in its opposite
and that those who find satisfaction in Him will reject it. Thus, those who know God are alienated [from the World]
and are desirous
of the Hereafter (fa-ahl al-
ma’rifa bi-llah fi-ha mutawahhishun wa ila al-akhira
mushtaqun).29 Abu Hashim
is also reported to have said, “If the World is all palaces
and gardens and the Hereafter is nothing but caves, the Hereafter would still be more desirable than the World
because of its permanence compared
with the impermanence of the other.”30 Apart from their affirmation of the World/Nonworld dichotomy, what is most significant about
these statements is Abu Hashim’s
use of the term ahl
al-ma’rifa bi-llah, which literally means, “The Folk of the Knowledge of God.” Evidence suggests that in Rabi’a’s
day this appellation referred to the Sufis. As we shall see later on in this
chapter, the concept of ma’rifa was
associated with Sufis and Proto-Sufis, as opposed to other
kinds of ascetics, in early Islam.
In the entry on “Abu Hashim Fadim,” Isfahani states that Abu Hashim was noted for
ascetic ritualism
(nusk) and for having
been an expert in Sufi practice (al-tahqiq bi-l-tasawwuf).31 This is as close as Isfahani comes to calling him a Sufi. He also confirms that Abu Hashim
knew Sufyan al-Thawri by quoting a variant of Sarraj’s account
in which Thawri
credits Abu Hashim with instructing him on the subject
of egoism.32 Isfahani also relates a story in which Abu Hashim sees an ascetic
who served as a judge
being taken away from the house of the Abbasid vizier Yahya al-Barmaki after
having been arrested
and beaten. Upon observing this scene, he
26 Ibid, 194
27 Massignon, Essay, 105; Massignon reports
that Abu Hashim
was born in Kufa. Kufa was also the home
of his
contemporaries Sufyan al-Thawri, Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad, and Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna (see
Chapter 1). Perhaps for this reason Massignon also assumes that Kufa was the place where the term “Sufi”
was first used.
28 Both of these works are discussed
in Chapter 1.
29 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 10, 225
30 Ibid
31 Ibid, 112
32 In the entry
based on Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban, Abu Hashim also states, “Cutting
a mountain in two
with a needle is easier than emptying hearts of vanity” [Ibid, 225].
exclaims, “I seek refuge
in God from a knowledge that bequeaths this [type of treatment], and destines the one who possesses it to be seen the way I see him!”33 The rhetorical style of this anecdote brings to mind some of Rabi’a observations on ethics discussed in Chapter 1. As a trope,
it illustrates the rejection of worldly power
and responsibility that was associated with the ascetic practice
of ethical precaution (wara’). By Isfahani’s time,
the rejection of government
service by the Piety-Minded had become a common theme of Islamic
hagiography.34
The emphasis on ethical
precaution in Isfahani’s notices on Abu Hashim al-Sufi closely resembles al-Harith al-Muhasibi’s view of the earliest
Sufis in Kitab al-makasib (The Book of Outcomes). This treatise, which was written
nearly two centuries before Hilyat al-awliya’ but only a generation or so after Rabi’a’s death, is one of the earliest works to mention
the Sufis as a
distinct group.35 In this work, Muhasibi uses two different
terms for the Sufis: al-sufiyyin, the plural of “Sufi,” and al-mutasawwifa, literally “practitioners of tasawwuf.” This latter
term signifies that something
resembling formal Sufi doctrine had already been conceptualized by the
first half of the ninth
century CE. Although
Rabi’a is not mentioned in Kitab al-makasib,
Muhasibi does mention Sufyan al-Thawri as a Sufi. For Muhasibi
the term “Sufi”
referred primarily to renunciants and ascetic ritualists (zuhhad and
nussak) who specialized in ethical
precaution. In fact, Kitab al-makasib was
written as a treatise on ethical precaution and references to the Sufis mostly
appear in the chapter titled,
“Schools of Ethical
Precaution among the Predecessors” (Madhahib al-salaf
fi-l-wara’).36 A key characteristic of the Sufis as described in this chapter is the pursuit
of both outward and inward purity. This suggests that Muhasibi was more
inclined to link the etymology
of the term “Sufi” to safa, the Arabic word for purity, than to
suf, the Arabic word for wool.
In Kitab al-makasib Muhasibi discusses three types of wara’ that correspond closely to the example
of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions: (1) a purely
social form of wara’ that entails avoiding all discussion of other people
and their affairs;
(2) a more symbolic form of
wara’ that requires
the ascetic to avoid everything that is not unambiguously licit or illicit
(halal or haram) or about which
there is moral
or ethical doubt;
(3) a more subtle form of wara’ that
is based on the following hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: “You will not be among the truly God-
fearing until you leave aside everything in which there is no harm, out of fear of the harm that may
be in it.”37 Those who adhered to one or more of these rules,
says Muhasibi, were a small number of religious scholars, specialists in Hadith,
devotees of the Qur’an, and the Sufis.
He also notes that some sects (tawa’if) in the city of Basra made the avoidance of morally doubtful
things (option 2 above) the basis of their asceticism.
33 Ibid, 112; Isfahani
also attributes a variant
of this account
with a different final
statement to Burjulani: “I seek refuge in You [God], from a
knowledge that is of no benefit” [Ibid, 225]. Yahya al-Barmaki rose to
prominence under the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi, who ascended the throne in 775
CE, just one year before Abu Hashim’s purported death in 776 CE (Massignon, Essay, 105).
34 This can also be seen in another reference
to the word “Sufi” by Sufyan al-Thawri, which appears in
Qushayri’s Risala: “I heard Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi
saying: ‘I was informed that Sufyan Thawri said: Five species of creatures
are the rarest:
a scholar who is an ascetic, a Sufi who knows the law (faqih Sufi), a rich man who is
humble, and a descendant of the Prophet who is a Sunni (sharif sunni).” Qushayri,
al-Risala, 148
35 For a discussion of this work, see Chapter
2 above.
36 Muhasibi, Kitab al-makasib, 205-12
37 Ibid, 205
Because Muhasibi does not mention Rabi’a
in this work,
it is not possible to determine
which of these doctrines she followed. However,
most of the Sufis that he identifies followed the third, tradition-based form of wara’; this corresponds to what the theologian Abu Hamid Ghazali would later refer to as “the renunciation of the permissible” (al-zuhd fi-l-halal).38 Muhasibi particularly liked
this form of ethical precaution because it forbade
mendicant begging. In al- Makasib
he associates begging,
of which he strongly disapproves, with Rabi’a’s eastern contemporary Shaqiq al-Balkhi, who apparently learned
this practice from Buddhist monks (see
Chapter 1).39 In fact, much of al-Makasib concerns the renunciation of actions such as begging that are ethically questionable but not legally
forbidden. Muhasibi refers
to this practice as “avoiding that in which
there is no explicit harm”
(tark ma la ba’s bi-hi).
Although Muhasibi
does not provide
a definition of Sufism in Kitab al-makasib, it is
clear from his references to those he calls “Sufis”
that he considers the term equivalent to “The Pure Ones.”
This can be seen both in his criticism and in his approval of certain Sufi practices.
For example, he criticizes as “great ignorance
and error” the refusal of some Sufis
to take alms if
this could be understood as profiting the recipient in any way. The obvious
point of his criticism
is that such Sufis considered themselves too pure to accept
help from others.40
Muhasibi’s portrayal of the earliest
Sufis as advocates of ethical purity
fits the image
of another figure who is often identified as one of this group, Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil. Although there is no clear death date for this individual, traditions make him a contemporary of the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi, who ruled from 775-785
CE. This would make Salih a contemporary both of Abu Hashim
al-Sufi and of Rabi’a, who, as we saw in Chapter 1, acted as Sufyan al-Thawri’s mentor during the first three years of al-Mahdi’s reign. In fact, an account
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa depicts Salih as visiting Rabi’a,
although the lack of a chain of transmission makes it
impossible to use this tradition as a historical source.41 In Essay on the Origins
of the Technical Language of Islamic
Mysticism, Louis Massignon
mentions a group of “Shiite
Sufiyya” from Kufa, who included the figures Kilab and Kulayb.
These same individuals are identified as Sufis
by Jahiz along with Abu Hashim al-Sufi
and Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil.42 In Kitab al-bayan wa al-
tabyin Jahiz reproduces an address by Salih to the Caliph
al-Mahdi. This quotation is worth repeating in full because
some of the terminology in the address
recalls Massignon’s hypothesis about the existence of a group
of “Shiite Sufiyya.”
Salih ibn ‘Abd
al-Jalil came to see the Caliph al-Mahdi and asked him if he could be allowed
to speak. “Speak, “ al-Mahdi said. Salih said: “Since access to you has been made much easier for us than it
has been for others, I will take this opportunity to speak
38 Ibid, 205-6; see also, Ghazali, Ihya’, vol. 4, 229 (Kitab al-faqr
wa al-zuhd); Ghazali
attributes the origin of this concept to Ibrahim ibn
Adham (d. 778 or 790 CE), who also appears prominently in al-Makasib, although he is not mentioned as a Sufi. Ghazali’s approach to Sufism was strongly
influenced by Muhasibi’s ethics. For
a discussion of this influence, see Smith, An
Early Mystic of Baghdad, 269-91.
39 According to Muhasibi, Shaqiq al-Balkhi taught
that striving to earn a living was forbidden (haram) for
ascetics
because it implied
a lack of trust in God. See idem, al-Makasib, 194-9.
40 Ibid, 207
41 See Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa
in Sulami, Early Sufi Women 278-9.
42 Massignon, Essay, 116; According to Massignon, Kulayb
is said to have written
a book called Kitab al-
mahabba
wa-l-waza’if (Book of Love and Invocations). According
to Ibn al-Jawzi (Sifat al-safwa, vol. 3,
381), Kilab was one of the “weepers” (bakka’un)
of Basra. He is said to have
accompanied Salih on the visit to Rabi’a cited above.
on their behalf
as well as on behalf of the Prophet. This
is by virtue of the burden around our necks that requires us to command the
good and forbid evil, and because the excuse
of concealing the truth (taqiyya)
no longer applies to us, and especially because you seem to be a person of
humble demeanor and have vowed to God and those who bear His word that you will
privilege the truth over everything else. You
and I have been brought together in this inquest in order to fulfill what we
have promised God we would deliver. We are bound to accept the consequences of
our promise; otherwise, God will look into our inner and outer intentions and
see that we are clothed in garments made of lies. The Prophet’s Companions used to say: ‘When God conceals His
knowledge from someone, such a person is tortured by ignorance.’ However, an even worse torture is reserved
for one who is given the opportunity to take knowledge from God, but turns his
back on it. When God grants knowledge to a person
and he neglects to put
what he has been
given to use, he has indeed ignored
God’s gift to him
and has belittled it. Therefore, accept the gift that God has given you through our
speech truly and sincerely, but not as an excuse to boost your vanity and
promote your reputation. Rest assured that we will not condemn you for what you
do not know, and that we will not belittle what you do know or remind you of
what you have forgotten. For God
granted the Prophet peace and security in the face of what befell him, and
protected him from overstepping the limit, for He always shows the way to every
exit. God said: ‘If [at any time] an
incitement to discord is made to you by the evil one, seek refuge in God, for
He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing’ (Qur’an, 41:36). So let God be the watcher over your heart so that by means of it
other hearts may be enlightened through your privileging of the truth and
disavowing the passions. If you do
not do this it will not only result in your actions being exposed as a failure,
but it will also reveal the effects of God’s command on you as well. There is no strength and no power other
than through God!”43
Because Jahiz does not give background information for this anecdote, it is not clear
whether Salih had been brought
to al-Mahdi’s inquest
under duress or came of his own accord.
However, the very fact that he appeared
before a formal
tribunal, along with his reference to taqiyya— a practice associated with Shiism in which one conceals one’s
true beliefs out of fear of
harm to oneself or one’s family— supports
the possibility that he was one of the “Shiite
Sufiyya” mentioned by Massignon.
In Hilyat al-awliya’, Isfahani portrays Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil as a person who was not
afraid to speak truth to power. He quotes him as saying,
“The people of insight (ahl al-basa’ir) look upon the kings of the World disparagingly, whereas the folk of the World look upon them adoringly and with awe.”44 Unlike Jahiz, however,
Isfahani does not call Salih a Sufi; rather, he characterizes him as one who has a “taste”
for obedience to God (al-mustaladh bi-l-ta’a) and adds that he was noted for his unquestioning acceptance of God’s will (tawakkul). He also states that a group called
“God’s Obedient Ones”
(al-muti’un li-llah) were to be found
in Iraq at this
time. Might these have been Massignon’s “Shiite
Sufiyya”? In support
of this conjecture, the following statement by Salih might be understood to mean that he was a member of this group:
“God’s Obedient Ones have lost their taste for both the life of the World and the Hereafter. God will say to them on the Day of Judgment,
‘I have caused you to suffer for my sake in the World
on account of your desires
and have made this known to you today. By my glory,
I created the Heavenly Garden (al-jinan) only for you!’”45
43 Jahiz, al-Bayan, vol. 2, 222-3
44 Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 8, 317; this statement
also recalls Marshall
Hodgson’s concept of a self-styled group
of the Piety-Minded (see Chapters 1 and 2).
45 Ibid
The notion that God’s
Obedient Ones have lost their taste for both the World and the Hereafter because
of their love for God recalls two of the most famous statements attributed to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. In the earlier
of the two, which appears
in Makki’s Qut al-qulub, she says: “I do not worship God out of fear of God. If I did, I would be like the disobedient slave-girl
who only works when she is afraid. Nor [do I worship God] out of a love for heaven.
If I did, I would be
like the disobedient slave-girl who only works when she is given something. Instead, I
worship God out of love for him alone and out of yearning for him.”46 In an even more famous statement, which first appears
in ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’, Rabi’a says: “Oh Lord, if I
worship you out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell. If I worship you in the hope of Heaven, forbid it
to me. But if I worship you for your own sake, do not deprive me of your eternal beauty.”47 Because neither
of these statements appears in the earliest sources
about Rabi’a, it is impossible to determine if she really said them. However, they reflect the essential
asceticism and devotionalism that characterized the practices of the earliest
Sufis in Abbasid
Iraq.
Although early
references to Sufis
are scattered and inconsistent in Muslim sources,
the meaning of the term seemed
to have revolved
around a common
and identifiable set of spiritual attitudes and practices. Because
of this, one can use the most authenticated accounts
in the works of Muhasibi, Jahiz, Isfahani, and other early Sufi and non-Sufi writers
to draw a rough outline
of what I shall call “Proto-Sufism” in Rabi’a’s time. This set of beliefs
and practices formed the
basis for what would become
the more theologically oriented Sufism of the tenth
and eleventh centuries CE. A summary
of these beliefs
and practices is reproduced below:
1.
The
earliest Sufis were ascetics, whose worldview was defined by the World/Nonworld Dichotomy.
2.
The earliest Sufis conceived of their
spiritual path primarily as the pursuit of outward and inward purity.
3.
Because their path was based more on practice
than on theology, many but not
all of them, were also practitioners of ascetic ritualism
(nusk).
4.
The internalization of ascetic
practices by the earliest Sufis was expressed as essential asceticism and sometimes as Love mysticism.
5.
The social practices of the earliest
Sufis were characterized by a strongly moralistic asceticism
(wara’), which was integrated into a highly
disciplined regime of moral and spiritual training (ta’dib).
6.
Their practice of ethical precaution
(wara’) led many of the earliest
Sufis to criticize the
pursuit of worldly gain, although most do not appear to have been political dissidents.
When seen in light
of the above considerations, the earliest traditions about Rabi’a al-
‘Adawiyya lead to the conclusion that even if she was not called a Sufi in the sources that mention her, she should
at least be considered a Proto-Sufi. The trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic
conforms closely to the beliefs
and practices summarized above. This suggests
that Proto-Sufism did not depend on the interiorization of theology, as Annemarie Schimmel
supposed; rather, it depended on the interiorization of ascetic practice. This focus on practice over theory is reflected
46 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94
47 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 74; see also,
Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 169.
in one of the earliest accounts
of Rabi’a’s sayings,
which appears in Jahiz’s al-Bayan wa al-
tabyin. In this account Rabi’a
is asked, “Have you ever performed any action (‘amal) that you
knew would be accepted by God?” She replies, “If there were anything, it would be my fear that
my works would be held against me.”48 To repeat
a major argument of Chapter 2,
Rabi’a’s asceticism can be termed “essential” because it involves
the interiorization of ascetic attitudes and practices. In essential
asceticism, renunciation of the World is transcended and ascetic practice
is interiorized because the ascetic has reached the ultimate goal of asceticism: to attain what Walter
O. Kaelber described
in The Encyclopaedia of Religion as “a more thorough absorption in the sacred.”
When it is viewed
from the perspective of essential asceticism, the goal of the ascetic
is much the same as that of the mystic. Once the ascetic
self has been absorbed into the sacred, there is no more need to conceive of asceticism as renunciation because
the World has lost all importance. All that matters
is God. This attitude is reflected in Rabi’a’s statement that her asceticism entailed
“leaving aside all that does not concern
me and cleaving to the One that always is.”49 Besides defining
her essential asceticism, this statement also illustrates how asceticism is related to the more mystical paths
of Love and knowledge. Rabi’a’s
phrase, “cleaving to the One that always is” expresses the ascetic’s devotion
to God in terms that reflect
the rhetoric of Love mysticism. This statement also alludes to spiritual reorientation, which is central to the concept
of Sufism as a path of knowledge. In the next section of this chapter
we shall see how for Rabi’a
and her fellow Proto-Sufis the heart was conceived as the meeting-place of love and knowledge and as the site where
the transformation of natures that is essential
to spiritual realization takes place.
III.
The Heart as a Metaphor
in Early Islamic Mysticism
a.
Scriptural Antecedents
In Kashf al-mahjub (Unveiling the Veiled),
an influential manual
of Sufism from the
second half of the eleventh
century CE, the Persian Sufi ‘Ali al-Hujwiri quotes ‘Ali al-Isfahani, an associate of the famous Baghdad
Sufi and theologian Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd (d. 910 CE), as
saying about the heart: “From the time of Adam to the Resurrection people cry, ‘The heart, the heart!’ I wish that I might find someone
to describe what the heart is or how it is, but I find no
one. People in general give the name of ‘heart’
to that piece of flesh, which belongs
to madmen and ecstatics
and children, who really are without heart. What, then, is this heart, of which I hear
only the name?” Hujwiri explains,
“That is to say, if I call intellect the heart, it is not the heart; and if I call spirit the heart, it is not the heart. All the evidences of the Truth subsist in the heart, yet only the name of it is to be
found.”50
The word “heart” (qalb) in either its singular or plural form is mentioned
134 times in the
Qur’an. It is also used frequently in the Hadith,
and since Rabi’a’s
time it has become one of the most
important spiritual metaphors in Sufism. The fact that the Sufi heart
is primarily a metaphor, and not an empirical “thing,”
lies at the root of ‘Ali al-Isfahani’s frustration in the
48 Jahiz, al-Bayan wa al-tabyin, vol. 3, 108
49 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 81 and Isfahani,
Hilya, vol. 10, 108
50 Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, 144
quotation from Kashf al-mahjub. This is because
a metaphor has no single,
accurate, or “true” definition. As Hujwiri explains,
one can summarize the ways in which the word “heart”
is used; however, because it is a metaphor
one can never find a single, essential
meaning for the concept.
However, the use of the heart as a metaphor is not just a Sufi practice; it is also an
important metaphor in the Qur’an.
In the Qur’an, the heart is often depicted as the seat of the conscience or of moral
and emotional states:
it may be haughty and tyrannical (qalb mutakabbir jabbar, 40:35);
it may be repentant (qalb munib, 50:33); it may be hardened
(qasat qulubuhum, 2:74); it may be diseased
(fi qulubihim marad, 33:12);
it may be anxious or fearful (fi qulubihim al-ru’b, 33:26);
it may be at peace
if it possesses faith (qalbuhu mutma’inun bi-l-iman, 16:106).
The Qur’an also describes the heart of the Prophet
Muhammad as the site of divine revelation, whether through
the agency of the angel
Gabriel (2:97), or through a being called
“The Trustworthy Spirit” (al-Ruh al-Amin, 26:194). The heart may be described, like human beings
in general, as God-fearing (taqwa al-qulub, 22:32); also like the human
being, it is capable of recalling God’s teachings (lahum qulubun
ya’qiluna biha, 22:46). Reflecting the negative
aspect of humanity, the heart may be blind (22:42) or otherwise veiled from the truth (4:155).
Often it is described as the seat of knowledge and understanding: when it fulfills
its true nature,
it helps the believer understand and respond
to God’s message
(wa ja’alna ‘ala qulubihim
akinnatan an yafqahuhu, 17:45).
However, when it goes against
its true nature,
it cannot understand God’s message (lahum qulubun la yafqahuna biha,
7:179). Because it is the site of the person’s
most secret feelings and thoughts (32:51),
the heart is predisposed to recall eternal
truths (dhikra li- man lahu qalb, 50:37).
This is because for the believer, as for the Prophet Muhammad, the heart that is purified can become a receptacle for the divine
presence: “[God] it is who has revealed
His presence to the hearts of the believers (anzala al-sakinata fi-l-qulub al-mu’minin), that they may add faith to their faith” (48:4).
In summarizing the metaphor
of the heart in the Qur’an, one could say that all of the above
descriptions allude to the heart as the place where the ordinary
self is united with the transcendent self: it is the place
where God “inscribes” faith on the believers and strengthens
them with His spirit (kataba fi qulubihim al-iman
wa ayyadahum bi-ruhin
minhu, 58:22). When the
Qur’an states, “God did not create two hearts in a man’s
body” (ma ja’ala Allahu
li-rajulin min qalbayni fi jawfihi, 33:4), it implies
that all notions
of a “divided self” are either false or
deluded. The true human self is an integral unity, undivided within itself and spiritually united with God.51
In most respects, the rhetorical
use of the heart in the Qur’an is
identical to its use in the
Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In these earlier
scriptures, as in the Qur’an,
the heart symbolizes the self and is the site of the deepest
thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the human being. In Hebrew, the word “heart”
(Heb. lev) can refer both empirically to the physical
heart in the human breast and metaphorically to the concepts
of emotion and understanding.52 The word
51
This interpretation is borne out by the remainder of
Qur’an 33:4, which compares the notion of two hearts in one body with other
metaphors that were taken as realities by the pagan Arabs, such as the zihar divorce, in which a husband’s wife is called
his “mother” to prevent remarriage and the practice
(common in the West today but forbidden in Islam) of calling one’s
adopted children one’s “own;” i.e., children by blood.
52 Biblical Hebrew
E-Magazine, November 2004 (http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/emagazine/009.html)
“heart” is used 833 times in the Hebrew
Bible.53 Its most frequent use is in the Book of Psalms, where it appears 125 times in 121 verses.
In the Psalms, the heart appears not only as the seat of
the emotions, but also as the speaker’s alter ego and as a metaphor for the entire
personality. In this latter sense, the Hebrew word lev is similar
in meaning to the Arabic term lubb or “kernel,”
which in Sufi usage denotes
the spiritual self or the inner essence
of the personality. Thus, it is
not surprising to find that virtually all of the metaphors for which the heart is used in the Qur’an can also be found in the Psalms. In the Psalms,
just as in the Qur’an,
one finds the motif of the
unitary heart used as a metaphor for the united self: “Teach me your way, oh Lord; I will walk in
your Truth; unite my heart
to fear your Name” (Psa.
86:11). Similarly, one can also find in the
Psalms a foreshadowing of the later Sufi metaphor in which the heart stands
for all aspects
of a human personality that includes both body and soul: “My soul longs, even faints for the presence
of the Lord, and my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Psa. 84:2).
Just
as in the Qur’an, in the Christian
New Testament the heart (Gr. kardia)
is described
as
something that can think (Mark
2:8), reflect (Luke
2:19), and understand (Matt. 13:15). In addition, the New Testament
describes the heart
as the seat of the morals and the conscience. When the heart is pure, the believer’s morals
are pure; when the heart is sullied,
the moral life is
sullied as well: “The good person out of the good treasure
of his heart produces good, and the evil
person out his evil treasure
produces evil, for out of the abundance of his heart his mouth
speaks” (Luke 6:45). In Paul’s Letter to the Romans one can even find a reference to God inscribing or “writing” on the heart as in the Qur’an: “They
show that the work of the Law is written
on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness,
and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even
excuse them” (Rom. 2:15). Finally,
as in the Qur’an as well, Paul describes the heart as the place where the Holy Spirit
resides: “He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints
according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:27).
b.
Possible Paths of Transmission
Around the time of the coming
of Islam, Christian
mystics in the Middle East began to make
metaphorical use of the heart in ways that recall the statements of early Sufis. The ascetic Hesychios of Sinai (fl. late sixth
or early seventh
century CE) stated,
“When the heart
has acquired stillness, it will look upon the heights and depths of knowledge, and the intellect, once quieted, will be given to hear wonderful things from God.”54 Similar correspondences with Sufi
statements about the heart can be found
in the sayings of “Makarios” the Great, an anonymous
monk and mystic who lived in Syria sometime between
the fourth and sixth centuries
CE.55 Much like Rabi’a’s
teacher Hayyuna discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, Makarios conceived of the heart as a bridal-chamber where the soul of the ascetic lover of God unites with the divine Beloved. In the following passage, Makarios describes the heart
as a place of spiritual transformation where the soul of the perfected or purified believer
is enabled to “see” God:
53 Strong’s Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon
(http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html)
54 McGuckin, Book of Mystical Chapters, 118-19
55 Massignon, Essay, 39; unlike Tor Andrae and Margaret Smith,
Massignon considered most
correspondences between
Christian and Muslim
mystical doctrines and practices to be fortuitous. Although he recognized that a “genealogical kinship” might exist
between Christian and Muslim practices, he felt that specific instances had to be proven rather than assumed.
What did the Lord
mean when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God?” Or again when he said, “Be perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect?” Did he
not promise to us in these words a state of final purification from all
wickedness? And is this not the final
setting aside of our ignoble obsessions and our ascent to the perfections of
the highest plane of virtues, which is itself the ultimate purification and
sanctification of our heart by means of its communion with the divine and
perfect spirit of God?”56
Of particular relevance to the mystical
language of Sufism
are the aphorisms of Isaac of
Nineveh, a Nestorian Christian monk from Beth Qatreya (modern
Qatar) who briefly
served as Bishop of Nineveh sometime
between the years 660 and 680 CE. The teachings of Isaac are important because he lived
through the Muslim
conquest of Iraq and flourished under the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the first Umayyads.
Often, both the form and content of his lessons
and aphorisms are suggestive of Sufi teachings. For Isaac, as it was for Rabi’a
and her Proto-Sufi contemporaries, the heart is the locus of the spiritual intellect
and the source of wisdom
that transcends the limitations of normal thought.
The transparency or clarity of the purified
heart— shafyut lebba
in Syriac— was an important subject of discussion for ascetics of the Syrian Christian tradition, both for the Orthodox
and for Nestorians like Isaac. For Isaac,
the heart that is
cleansed of impurities makes visible the forms of divine truths
that are obscured
by the rational mind and the material world.
For this early Christian Neo-Platonist, the heart takes over the place
of the head in the Greek philosophical tradition. The head, which contains
the rational faculty,
is the highest part of the body; however,
the heart, as a metaphor
for the deepest
part of the soul, is more
profound and thus “higher” than the head, just as the immortal
soul, which is located in the
body, is both “deeper” and “higher” than the mortal
body. As the following passage
from Isaac’s Third Discourse demonstrates, the depth of the heart allows it— through the mediation of ascetic
practices— to protect itself from the impurities that would otherwise affect the soul through the body:
Of what does the difference between purity of
mind and purity of heart consist? Purity of mind is different from purity of
heart, just as there is a difference between a member of the body and the whole
body. The mind is indeed one of the
senses of the soul. But the heart is
the ruler of the internal senses; that is, the sense of senses, which is the
root. If the root is holy, so also
are all the branches. But the root is
not holy even if in one of the branches there is holiness. The mind indeed with a little study of the
Scriptures and a little labor in
fasting and stillness forgets its former musing and is made pure, in that it
becomes free from alien habits. The
heart, however, is purified with great sufferings and by being deprived of all
mingling with the world, together with complete mortification in everything. When it has been purified, however, its
purity is not defiled by contact with inconsequential things. That is, it is not afraid of violent
battles, for it has a strong stomach which easily digests all foods hard for
others who are ill in their abdomens . . . Every purification which is achieved
easily, quickly, and with little labor is easily defiled. But the purity acquired
with great troubles over a long period and by the highest part of the soul does
not fear insignificant contacts with worldly things.57
56
McGuckin, Book of
Mystical Chapters, 155-6; St. Makarios also said with respect to the
doctrine of Love, “It was God’s own desire to have communion
with the human soul, and this was why he espoused it to himself as a royal bride and why he
purified it from all uncleanliness” (155).
57 St Isaac of Nineveh,
On Ascetical Life, Mary Hansbury, trans.
(Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s
Monastery Press, 1989),
50-51
As a rhetorical device,
the trope of the heart
as the ruler of the bodily senses
and the seat of
the personality goes back to Greek philosophy, where it can be observed,
for example, in the
works of Plato.58 In the ascetic tradition of Islam, the use of the heart as a metaphor for the
personality has traditionally been traced to al-Hasan al-Basri, from whom it was passed
on to later generations by his disciple Malik ibn Dinar (d. 745 CE). Since Ibn Dinar lived in Basra during
the time of Rabi’a, it is possible
that he was influential in establishing the heart as a metaphor
for Rabi’a and her contemporaries. In Chapter 2 it was noted that ‘Ubayda bint Abi Kilab, a woman ascetic and weeper from the Basra region, was a disciple
of Malik ibn Dinar. Ibn Dinar was also
an early teacher of Love mysticism and some later hagiographers, such as Ibn al-Jawzi and ‘Attar,
suggested that Rabi’a knew him.59 This is theoretically possible, since their lives overlapped enough for Rabi’a to have encountered Ibn Dinar early in her career. If this were the case, Ibn
Dinar would likely have been an important
influence on Rabi’a in both her doctrine
of Love mysticism and in her use of the heart as a spiritual metaphor.
Furthermore, it might also suggest why Sufi legends place Rabi’a anachronistically together with al-Hasan
al-Basri more often than
with Ibn Dinar, who was her more probable associate. Since Ibn Dinar was reputed
to be an exceptionally faithful transmitter of al-Hasan al-Basri’s doctrines, it is understandable that traditionists and storytellers would
conflate the identity
of the lesser-known pupil with his more famous teacher.
The same situation also might explain
why some statements that were originally attributed to al-Hasan al-Basri
later ended up as “Rabi’a’s” statements. For example,
in Ibn al- Jawzi’s biographical dictionary Sifat al-safwa, we are told that Rabi’a
said to Sufyan
al-Thawri, “You are but a set number of days. When one day goes, a part of you goes as well.”60 Although this aphorism seems to be authentic because its purported transmitter, Abu Sulayman
al-Dab’i, is known to have related
accounts about Sufyan
al-Thawri’s encounters with Rabi’a, there is no chain
of transmission to support it. This lacuna
is important because
a century and a half before
Ibn al-Jawzi, Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani attributed the same aphorism to al-Hasan al-Basri
in Hilyat al-awliya’.61 In this earlier version
the reporter of the story is Salih al-Murri, another
ascetic who has been linked to Rabi’a. Although Isfahani
similarly fails to provide a chain of transmission,
his version is corroborated by an even earlier account
by Jahiz, who attributed the same aphorism to al-Hasan al-Basri two centuries before
Isfahani in al-Bayan wa al-tabyin.62 Because
of Jahiz’s greater proximity
in time to both Rabi’a and Hasan, it is reasonable to conclude that if either one
58 In the Republic, Plato states, “The good, then, is the end of all endeavor,
the object on which every
heart is set, whose existence it divines, though it finds it difficult
to grasp just what it is; and because it can’t handle it with the same
assurance as other things it misses any value those other things have.” Plato, The
Republic, Desmond Lee, trans. (London: The Penguin Group, 1955), 230
59 See, for example, Ibn al-Jawzi in Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 278-9.
‘Attar’s accounts of meetings
between Rabi’a
and Ibn Dinar can only be taken as rhetorical constructs. In one account, ‘Attar has Ibn Dinar
relating a tradition about Rabi’a. This
would have been highly improbable, since at the time of his death, Ibn Dinar
would have been much more famous than Rabi’a, who was then only in her
twenties. In another account, ‘Attar
has al-Hasan al-Basri, Ibn Dinar, and Shaqiq al-Balkhi all visiting Rabi’a at
the same time. In actuality, Balkhi died nine years after Rabi’a and Hasan died when Rabi’a
was only eleven years old. Therefore, it would have been impossible for such a cast of
characters to assemble at the same time. See
Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism,
167-8.
60 Ibid. See also, Chapter 2 above.
61 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 2, 148
62 Jahiz, al-Bayan, 94
of these two figures
actually made this statement, it was more likely to have been Hasan than Rabi’a.
Besides providing a possible doctrinal
connection between Rabi’a and al-Hasan
al-Basri, Malik ibn Dinar is also important because
he was a transmitter of aphorisms and wisdom
traditions from both Christian and Jewish sources. For example, the section devoted
to his memory in Isfahani’s Hilyat al-awliya’ contains numerous references of this kind. The most interesting of these refer to Ibn Dinar “reading” Christian or Jewish
texts. In one account he states, “I read in the Torah:
‘Oh Son of Adam! Do not be discouraged to stand weeping
in my presence while you pray; for I am the God that is close to your heart and through the unseen you saw
my light!” 63 In another account
he says, “I read this in the Psalms (al-Zabur): With the
arrogance of the hypocrite the poor person
is burned.”64 Elsewhere
he says, “I was informed
that Jesus (peace be upon him) said, ‘Make your bodies endure hunger,
thirst, nakedness, and exposure to the elements, so that your hearts might
come to know [God].’”65 What might Ibn Dinar have been “reading”
to come up with such aphorisms? If he read Christian or Jewish texts, the language in which
he read them would have been Aramaic:
either Syriac or Hebrew Aramaic. However, it is important to note that for the most part Ibn Dinar’s
quotations are not actually from the
Torah, the Psalms,
or the Gospels. Instead, they appear to be apocryphal traditions that may have
circulated among the indigenous non-Muslim population of southern
Iraq. As such Ibn
Dinar could just as likely have learned
them in Arabic instead of in Syriac or Aramaic.
Further evidence that the metaphorical use of the heart in early Sufism may have been
influenced by non-Muslim antecedents can be found
in accounts transmitted by Ahmad ibn Abi
al-Hawari (d. 845 CE), a student and disciple of the Sufi Abu Sulayman
al-Darani (d. 830 CE).66
In Chapter 3 it was noted that Darani originally lived in Basra but later moved to a village
outside of Damascus in Syria.67 Ibn Abi al-Hawari was also from Basra and moved to Syria with his
teacher. After his arrival in Syria, he married the noted Sufi woman of Damascus, Rabi’a
bint Isma’il (d. before
845 CE), who appears in Sufi hagiography as the most famous namesake
of
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. It was also mentioned
in Chapter 3 that in exchange for giving up all of her
wealth to Ibn Abi al-Hawari, Rabi’a bint Isma’il
compelled her husband
to practice a celibate
form of marriage that was popular among
the lay ascetics
of early Syrian
Christianity.
Although they have been overlooked by most contemporary scholars of early Sufism,
Darani and Ibn Abi al-Hawari
are significant because
they were connected in various ways to the most
important centers of early Sufism:
Iraq, Syria, and Khurasan (present-day eastern Iran,
Afghanistan, and Central
Asia). Evidence also suggests that when they resided in Basra, they were aware of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya and her circle. For example, in his Book of Sufi Women
Sulami cites Ibn Abi al-Hawari
as the source of an account about Maryam of Basra, an alleged
disciple of Rabi’a who was noted for her practice
of Love mysticism.68 Both Sulami
and Ibn al-
63 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 2, 357
64 Ibid, 376
65 Ibid, 370
66 For information on Ahmad Ibn Abi al-Hawari
see Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya, 98-102; Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 10, 5-33; Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 836-7; and Massignon, Essay, 152-8.
67 Abu Sulayman’s nisba, “al-Darani,” came from the name of this village.
See Sulami, Tabaqat al-sufiyya,
75-82,
Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 9, 254-80, and Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 828-34.
68 See Chapter
1 and Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 84-5.
Jawzi cite accounts via Ibn Abi al-Hawari about
Bahriyya, a piety-minded woman (‘abida)
and “knower of God” (‘arifa)
from Basra who was a disciple of Shaqiq al-Balkhi.69
In Hilyat al-awliya’, Isfahani mentions that Abu Sulayman
al-Darani was a teacher of the
famous Egyptian mystic
Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri (d. 859 CE).70 Darani was also a close
associate and possible disciple
of Salih ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil,
who was mentioned above as one of the first to call himself a “Sufi.” In the Hilya,
Darani is the source of a statement
by Ibn ‘Abd al-Jalil (similar but not identical to the one quoted in the previous
section), concerning God’s favor toward the
group known as “God’s Obedient
Ones.”71 Might this suggest that the earliest
Sufis, Massignon’s “Shiite Sufiyya,” “God’s Obedient Ones,”
and Muhasibi’s “Pure Ones” were the same group? At this
point, there is not enough
evidence to say. However, genealogical connections such as these
demonstrate that much more research
needs to be done into the links between Proto-Sufis and
self-designated Sufis in the eighth and ninth centuries
CE.
Many accounts attributed to Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari
describe personal encounters with Christian monks or relate traditions that could only have come from Jewish interlocutors. In Hilyat al-awliya’ he recounts the following teaching
on renunciation from a monk at the Syrian
monastery of Dayr Harmila: “We find in our books that the body of the Son of Adam is created from earth but his soul is created from the heavenly
realm (malakut al-sama’). When the body is
made hungry and naked and suffers deprivation, the soul is freed to go back up to the place from
which it came. However, when the body has food, water, sleep,
and rest it fixes itself permanently in the place in which it was born, for there is nothing more beloved to it than the
World.”72 In another
account, Ibn Abi al-Hawari relates
a saying from the Prophet
Joseph: “My God, verily
I turn toward you with the righteousness of my father
Abraham Your Friend,
of Isaac Your Sacrifice, and of Jacob Your Israel.”
Then God revealed
to him: “Oh Joseph, did you turn toward me with the grace that I bestowed
on all of them?” Because
Ibn Abi al-Hawari is unclear about the meaning of this tradition, he goes to his teacher
to inquire about it. Darani
explains the tradition in the following
way: “Verily God approaches him first with the love of His friends,
then He comes to him according to the spiritual station with which
his heart is occupied.”73
c.
The Metaphor
of the Heart for Rabi’a and Her Contemporaries
The use of the heart
as a
metaphor for the self in the above exegesis illustrates a motif that appears
repeatedly in the notices on Darani in Hilyat al-awliya’. Among the Sufis
of his generation, Darani is most often associated with statements about the heart in this work.
69
Ibid, 148-9 and Ibn al-Jawzi Appendix to Ibid, 296-7; Ibn
al-Jawzi claims without attribution that Bahriyya led gatherings for invocation at her house in Basra (wa kana laha majlisun tudhakkiru fihi).
70 If this report were true, Dhu al-Nun would have studied
with Darani in Syria. See Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 9,
254-5.
71 Ibid, 255
72 Ibid, vol. 10, 5; the doctrine
of the soul as expressed
by this Christian
monk is Platonic in origin.
According to
Pierre Hadot, early Christian teachers frequently borrowed ideas from the
writings of pagan Neo-Platonists, such as in the following statement by St.
Ambrose of Milan: “A blessed soul it is which penetrates the secrets of the
Word. For awakening from the body,
becoming a stranger to everything else, she
seeks within herself
and searches, so as to find out whether she can, in some way, reach divine
being.” Hadot, Plotinus, 25 n.
5
73 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 10, 9
Although he was not the only early Sufi to use the heart as a metaphor, his prominence in the
Hilya indicates that Isfahani regarded
him as one of the most important specialists on the heart in the
formative period of Sufism.
74 In general,
Abu Sulayman al-Darani’s statements about the heart
can be seen as an early form of personality theory, in which the heart stands for the self and
the states of the heart
correspond to what we today
would call personality traits. As such,
his doctrine of the heart can be viewed as a forerunner of the more fully developed
personality theory of al-Harith al-Muhasibi, a fellow
native of Basra,
whose “science of hearts” (‘ilm al-qulub) was to have a ong-lasting influence on Sufism.
Based on Isfahani’s account
of his teachings, Darani’s doctrine
of the heart was founded on three central themes or
motifs:
1.
The
preoccupation of the heart, expressed by the metaphors of “filling” the heart (‘imarat al-qalb) and “emptying” the heart (khawa’ al-qalb);
2.
The condition
of the heart, expressed by metaphorical references to the “place” or station of the heart (manzilat al-qalb) and the cohesiveness
of the heart (ijma’ al-qalb);
3.
The knowledge
of the heart,
expressed by metaphorical references to the “awareness”
of the heart (ittila’ al-qalb), the
“vision” of the heart (basar al- qalb), and the “light” of the heart (nur al-qalb).
The first of these themes, the preoccupation of the heart, is closely
related to asceticism, and in particular to the concept
of essential asceticism. Here, “filling” the heart does not mean that
the heart is filled with God; on the contrary,
it means being preoccupied with material
concerns or passions. This metaphor
reflects a Platonic
ethic and is also reminiscent of early Christian teachings, in which renunciation or “emptying the heart” is equated with purification.
Darani explains this metaphor in the following way: “Sinful suggestions (al-wasawis) only come
to a heart that is full. Have you ever seen a thief going
to empty ruins,
scrutinizing them and entering them from any door he wishes? No. A thief only comes
to houses with material goods locked inside of them, seeking to open them so that he might steal what is in them.”75 In another
account he describes the preoccupation of the heart in terms
of the World/Nonworld dichotomy:
“When the World (al-dunya) comes to the heart, the Nonworld (al-akhira) moves away from it;
and if the World is in the heart, the Nonworld will never come to it. This is because the World is worthless (la’ima) whereas
the Nonworld is valuable (‘aziza).”76 In yet another
account, Darani explains the metaphor of emptying the heart in terms of the heart’s
“hunger” and “thirst”:
“When the heart is made hungry or thirsty,
it is purified and made valuable; but when it is satiated,
it is rendered blind and worthless.”77 This reference
to the purifying effects of hunger and thirst
allude to the practice of systematic fasting
as a form of bodily
mortification, which, as we have seen in Chapter 2, was more representative of Christian than early Muslim
asceticism. Although Darani’s reference
to the “hunger” and “thirst”
of the heart may refer metaphorically to a regime
74 The section
on Abu Sulayman al-Darani in the most recent edition
of the Hilya comprises 26 pages and is one of the longer sections in the
volume in which it appears. See Ibid,
vol. 9, 254-80.
75 Ibid, 257
76 Ibid, 260
77 Ibid, 266
of inward purification, it more likely
indicates that he and his followers practiced
fasting as part of their ascetic disciplines.78
This last statement by Darani links the theme of the preoccupation of the heart with the themes of the condition, station, and knowledge of the heart. For Darani, it was not enough to just
empty the heart of the World; each stage of filling the heart with the divine presence called forth greater responsibilities and hence a greater danger
of earning God’s
displeasure: “For each level that the station
(manzila) of the heart is raised,
the opportunity for divine punishment increases.”79 In order not to fail these responsibilities, one must maintain
strict ascetic discipline and associate only with those whose
company strengthens one’s resolve on the path toward God. As
the following statement
by Darani explains, the “cohesive heart” or united
self depends on a
complete transformation of the personality. This is to be accomplished with the help of one’s brethren among the Piety-Minded and the pursuit
of illuminative knowledge through the practices of meditation and retreat:
“Reject all pride in the mind’s knowledge
(radd sabil al-‘ajab bi- ma’rifat al-nafs). Instead, dedicate yourself
to the cohesion of the heart by committing few errors, seek the flawlessness of the heart (riqqat al-qalb) by sitting with the God-fearing, procure the illumination of the heart through constant
sorrow, seek the way to sorrow with constant
meditation (tafakkur), and seek the presence
of meditation through
the practice of retreat
(khalwa).”80
Many of the modes of expression that were used by Darani
to speak about the heart can
also be found in statements attributed to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and other Proto-Sufis of the eighth century CE. For example,
Kalabadhi cites the following statement by Rabi’a in al-Ta’arruf: “A group of people
came to visit Rabi’a in order to console her for some complaint. They said to
her, ‘What is your condition?’ She replied, ‘By God! I know of no cause for my illness, except that Paradise was revealed
to me, and my heart was drawn toward it. I think that my Lord was jealous of me, so He reproached me; for only He can make such a reproach.’”81 In this tradition, Rabi’a’s physical
condition mimics the condition of her heart. Echoing Darani’s
concern with the heart’s purity, she likens her heart’s
preoccupation with Paradise
to baser and more material preoccupations with the World. Her “illness” comes from the realization that even Paradise
is a created thing;
therefore, the only proper approach
for the ascetic
is toward God Himself, without regard for anything else,
even such a worthwhile thing
as Heaven. God, as the jealous Beloved, reproaches Rabi’a,
troubling her heart
and leaving her soul in an agitated
state. This state is
comparable to al-nafs al-lawwama, the “self-blaming soul” that would
later become an important
part of Muhasibi’s Sufi psychology.
78 The frequent
references to hunger by Darani in the Hilya
might also suggest that the statements about hunger attributed to Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya by the Andalusian Sufi Abu Madyan may have originated with Darani
or Ibn Abi al-Hawari. As mentioned in
Chapter 2, the statements about hunger in Abu Madyan’s Bidayat al-murid are
unique in the corpus of Rabi’a traditions. Throughout the period
of Umayyad rule in
Spain (755-1031 CE), Andalusian Islam was strongly influenced by Syrian
doctrines and practices.
Although little
is known about the early history of Sufism in this region, early Andalusian
Sufism most likely also followed
Syrian precedents. Since Darani and Ibn Abi al-Hawari were major Sufi figures from Syria, it is not unreasonable to
expect that when reports about Darani, or perhaps Rabi’a bint Isma’il, reached
Muslim Spain, they were conflated with reports about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
79 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 9, 257
80 Ibid, 266
81 Kalabadhi, al-Ta’arruf, 121; Arberry, The Doctrine
of the Sufis, 159
A similar depiction of the heart as a metaphor for the self can be found in an account from Hilyat al-awliya’ about Rabi’a’s contemporary Ibrahim ibn Adham. In this tradition the famous ascetic states: “View all of creation in your heart
without discrimination: preoccupy yourself with your sins instead of judging others
for their sins and make sure to utter beautiful words from a humble heart for the sake of God Most High. Reflect on your sins and repent them
to your Lord. Doing so will establish ethical precaution (wara’) in your heart,
so do not be greedy for anything other than your Lord.”82 For Ibn Adham as for Rabi’a and Darani, the heart
is the seat of spiritual judgment, and its condition affects
the ability of the ascetic
and mystic to “see”
spiritual realities. However,
in this tradition the heart is also depicted
as the site of moral judgment; thus, it requires
the ethical precaution of wara’ in order to become properly oriented toward God as the ultimate reality.
For Ibn Adham,
essential asceticism is the perfect
realization of ethical precaution, because it empties
the heart of all things
but God.
In
his Book of Sufi Women, Sulami mentions
a group of people that he calls arbab al-
qulub, “Masters of Hearts,” or specialists in the doctrine
of the heart.83 Just as with his references
to “weepers” and “those who cause others to weep” discussed in Chapter 2, this reference
to early Sufi “heart specialists” indicates
that when Sulami and other systematizers of Sufi doctrine looked back on the Proto-Sufis and ascetics of Rabi’a’s generation, they noticed that certain
individuals relied more heavily than others on the heart as a metaphor in their teachings. One of the early
Sufi women that Sulami highlights as a “Master
of Hearts” is Hukayma of Damascus, a contemporary of Rabi’a who was the teacher of Rabi’a’s Syrian
namesake, Rabi’a bint Isma’il.
In a teaching that anticipates Darani’s
motif of the “empty” heart,
Hukayma interprets the Qur’anic passage, “Except one who comes to God with a sound heart” (Qur’an, 26:89),
in the following way: “It means that when one encounters God, there should be nothing
in his heart other than Him.”84 Darani is said to have approved of this statement because he felt that the only
truly “healthy” heart (qalb salim) was one that had been emptied of the World
and was thus ready
to receive knowledge from God. Hukayma’s exegesis also expresses a similar sentiment
to one of the most famous statements attributed to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya: “Love for the Creator (al-
Khaliq) has preoccupied me from love for created
beings (al-makhluqin).”85 For both Rabi’a and Hukayma a heart that is spiritually sound is a heart that is empty
of all but God and is oriented toward Him alone.
One of the most important sources
of traditions about
Rabi’a is Tahdhib al-asrar
(The Primer of Secrets)
by ‘Abd al-Malik
al-Kharkushi (d. 1016 CE). As we saw in the previous
chapter, Kharkushi lived in Nishapur
at the same time as both Sulami and al-Hasan
al-Nisaburi, the author of ‘Uqala’ al-majanin. Taken together, the works of Kharkushi, Sulami,
and Nisaburi provide some of the most important
information currently available
on eighth-century Proto- Sufism and the circle
of women around
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Like Sulami’s Book of Sufi
82 Isfahani, Hilya, vol. 8, 16; a later version of this account
can be found in Qushayri’s Risala (258), where Rabi’a states, “I looked with my heart
at Heaven (nazartu
bi-qalbi ila-l-janna) and [God] corrected me, for He is the only one to do so. Therefore, I will never do this again.”
83 See, for example, the notice on Sha’wana of al-Ubulla in Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 106-7.
84 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 126-7
85 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 60; see also Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 78-9. Later versions
of this
tradition changed
its key phrase from hubb al-makhluqin (“love for created
beings”) to hubb al-makhluq (“love for creation or
created things”). This opened the
statement to more abstract and theological meanings.
Women, Kharkushi’s Primer of Secrets
portrays Rabi’a as a Sufi. In the following account
from this work, which also appears
as an epigraph to this chapter, she describes the heart and the
knowledge it contains as God’s
possessions: “Verily, the Knower of God (‘arif) asks God to grant
him a heart. So [God] grants it to him from Himself.
When he possesses the heart, he then offers
it back to his Lord and Master,
so that in [God’s] repossession of it he will be protected and will
be veiled in its concealment from created beings.”86
Unfortunately, no chain of transmission is given for this account,
so there is no way to
verify whether it really came from Rabi’a.
However, if it did, it is significant because doctrinally
it goes beyond other expressions of the heart-as-metaphor, including those of Darani, who also
spoke of the heart’s knowledge. Its closest analogue
among the sayings
of other Proto-Sufis is a tradition from Nisaburi’s ‘Uqala’ al-majanin that is attributed to Hayyuna. As we saw in Chapter 3, Nisaburi depicts Hayyuna
as Rabi’a’s teacher.
In this account, Hayyuna asks God to grant her stillness or peacefulness of heart and bestow divine acceptance upon her: “Oh God, grant me
stillness of heart through the contract of my complete
trust in you (hab li sukun al-qalb bi-‘aqd
al-thiqa bi-ka). Make all of my thoughts, ideas, and inclinations accord with your acceptance of me.
Do not make my fate deprive me of you. Oh hope of those
who seek hope!”87
What is most significant in these statements is that the heart is portrayed as God’s
property, and that the human
being possesses her heart on loan from God as the result
of a binding agreement or contract. Hayyuna
refers to a contract of trust (‘aqd al-thiqa), while Rabi’a speaks of giving the heart back to God as if it were the repayment
of a loan. Both statements
also refer to the concept of complete trust in God (tawakkul or al-thiqa bi-llah), which, as we saw in Chapter 2, was an important spiritual attitude for early
Islamic ascetics. Since both Hayyuna
and Rabi’a were practitioners of Love mysticism, one might imagine
that Hayyuna’s metaphor
of a contract is based on the Islamic
marriage contract (‘aqd al-zawaj), and that Rabi’a’s
metaphor of a loan or a gift alludes
to the female lover’s gift of her heart to her male beloved. In either of these
cases, the relationship between the mystic and God would be analogous to a spiritual marriage. The metaphor of marriage and the portrayal of the mystic
as God’s “bride”
is also supported by references to veiling (hijab) and concealment (sitr) in Rabi’a’s statement and by the supplication for God’s pleasure
and acceptance (rida’) in Hayyuna’s prayer. In both traditions the heart is portrayed
as a spiritual domicile: as in the Islamic marriage,
the bride takes up
residence in the husband’s home, where she is concealed
and protected from the gaze of
outsiders. By virtue of the contract of trust between
husband and wife,
she becomes “Mistress of the House,” although
the actual owner of the house is her husband.
Just as the bride knows that
her status is dependent on her husband’s good pleasure, the knower of God (al-‘arif bi-llah) is also aware that the condition of the heart as a home for the spirit
also depends on God’s good pleasure. This is why Hayyuna asks God to insure that the preoccupations of her heart remain in accord with the desires
of her heavenly bridegroom. Rabi’a’s
statement is more altruistic than Hayyuna’s in its expression of trust but its meaning
is essentially the same. Just as a successful
marriage depends on mutual trust between husband
and wife and the maintenance of a quiet and
peaceful home, so the gift of God’s
knowledge depends on a devoted
and trusting heart.
86 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 53
87 Nisaburi, ‘Uqala’ al-majanin,
150
IV.
Rabi’a the Knower
As Amy Hollywood has observed, in hagiography, when God is represented as the male lover in contrast to the female soul, “the cultural association of women with eroticism is [at the same
time] accepted, spiritualized, and, in part,
subverted.”88 The marital
imagery in Hayyuna’s and Rabi’a’s statements discussed
above represents an Islamic version
of this rhetorical form.
However, the presence of marital imagery
alone does not necessarily mean that real women’s
voices are present in these accounts. Often,
the use of such imagery
turns out to be another example of “men writing
women.” As Catherine M. Mooney has observed about the
hagiographic depiction of Christian women
saints in the Middle Ages, the presence
of nuptial imagery in “male hagiographic texts describing women’s
relationship with God appears to reflect
a particularly male concern that is not similarly echoed in many women’s self-representations.”89
Following Mooney, we might similarly
suggest that because
men transmitted the traditions of early
Sufi women, these texts reflect
male cultural associations, even when they appear to speak
with women’s voices. According to Mooney, domestic
imagery is more representative than nuptial imagery of the voices of real women.90 This observation is echoed by Caroline Walker Bynum, who claims that in the writings and statements of medieval Christian
women, “all women’s central
images turn out to be continuities.”91 That is to say, rather than dramatically using their unique status
to reject the values of the dominant
society as Leila Ahmed has claimed
for Sufi women, medieval women
mystics were actually
more likely to frame their depictions of spiritual life in terms of ordinary
life experiences.92
One can argue that the notion
of domesticity can also be found in the statements by Hayyuna and Rabi’a quoted above. However, the primacy
of nuptial imagery
in them seems better to support
the assertions of Mooney and Bynum. One of the most important contributions of Amy Hollywood’s research to the feminist study of hagiography has been to demonstrate that the
subversion of women’s
stereotypes in medieval
works of spirituality is more often
due to men than to women.
While women’s stories
most often express
the language of daily life, it is men
who favor dramatic stories of life changes
and role reversals. At times, men may find it useful
to subvert gender stereotypes in order to make a doctrinal point,
as was done by the Andalusian Sufi Ibn
‘Arabi and the German mystic
Meister Eckhart.93 Such twists and turns of rhetorical form make it hard to draw conclusions about voice from the statements of female Christian saints or Sufi women alike. As Hollywood’s analyses
of hagiography and feminist theory
demonstrate, to indulge in “universal claims
made with regard
to particular historical places, times, and evidence,
88 Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild
of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame and
London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 7
89 Catherine M. Mooney, “Voice,
Gender, and the Portrayal of Sanctity,” in Mooney, ed., Gendered
Voices: Medieval
Saints and Their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1999), 12
90 Ibid
91 Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women’s
Stories, Women’s Symbols,”
in idem, Fragmentation and
Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval
Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 48
92 Leila Ahmed,
Women and Gender in Islam (New
Haven and London:
Yale University Press,
1992), 96
93 On Ibn ‘Arabi see Sadiyya Sheikh,
“In Search of al-Insan: Sufism, Islamic Law, and Gender,”
Journal
of the American Academy
of Religion, vol. 77 (4), 2009, 781-822.
On Eckhart, see Hollywood, op.
cit.
is
dangerous both to scholarship and to feminist
political and ethical
aims, for it works to obscure
crucial differences between
women themselves, as well as between men.”94
Such a warning is appropriate with respect to Rabi’a in particular, because
the main subject of her teachings
is not gender, but knowledge. Whatever else the “real” Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya may have been, she was certainly
a woman of knowledge. Indeed, the trope of “Rabi’a the Knower of God” (Rabi’a al-‘arifa bi-llah) is intimately related to the trope of Rabi’a
the Lover. This trope provides
a thread that links the earliest accounts
about her in Burjulani,
Muhasibi, Jahiz, and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and key medieval depictions of her in Makki, Sulami, Ghazali, and ‘Attar, to modern scholarly versions of her life and teachings, such as those of
Margaret Smith, ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi,
and Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq. The figure of Rabi’a
the Knower also lies behind
the figures of Rabi’a the Teacher and Rabi’a the Ascetic. Not only
has love been portrayed as a way of knowing
since biblical times but also Rabi’a’s reputation as the founder of Love mysticism in Islam is based on the premise
that she, like Plato’s Diotima,
she was “a wise woman in [Love] and many other branches of knowledge” (see Chapter 3).
Although the Rabi’a who appears in medieval Islamic
literature occasionally cries out,
weeps, or falls into a faint when male hagiographers try to describe
her with gender-based stereotypes, it is mostly in modern romantic versions
of Rabi’a that the image of the wise and knowledgeable woman is replaced
by the dreamy lover of New Age spirituality. Even ‘Attar, who as we will see in the next chapter, made up the story of Rabi’a’s life that is used by nearly all of
today’s romantic writers,
felt compelled to assert, “When
a woman is on the path of God Most High [as Rabi’a was], she is a man and cannot
be called a woman.”95
Two centuries before ‘Attar,
Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Sulami had something
similar in mind when he portrayed
Rabi’a as the quintessential Sufi woman. Although
he did not go so far
as to call her an honorary man, he made a point of stressing how some of the most honored men of early Islam
sought out her knowledge.96 Anyone
who doubts that Sulami considered Rabi’a as wise as a man should recall
his description of her encountering a criminal who had been crucified
for immoral acts. Rather than cringing, weeping,
or fainting at the sight before her, she looks directly at the suffering
person and says, “Upon my father! With that tongue you used to say, ‘There is no god but God!” Then she mentioned the good works that the man had done.97 In this
anecdote, Rabi’a combines
a rebuke of the condemned
man’s sins with the merciful
recollection of his good works, thus expressing an Islamic notion of justice
in which a punishment that is
deserved is not averted but God’s mercy still leaves the door open for forgiveness.
Rabi’a’s observation about the condemned man also expresses what Amy Hollywood has called the “ethics
of detachment” in hagiographic literature. In this trope, the saint steps aside in
matters of moral judgment and allows God’s
justice to proceed
in its own way.98 According
to
94 Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin
Wife, 197
95 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 61 and Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 155; the latest
major work on
Rabi’a— Jean Annestay, Une Femme Soufie en Islam: Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya (Paris: Éditions
Entrelacs, 2009)— provides a good example of how romantic narratives
continue to depend on ‘Attar. Although
Annestay acknowledges in several places that ‘Attar’s accounts are historically
anachronistic, he nonetheless relies on them as if they were true.
96 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 74-5
97 Ibid, 80-81
98 Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin
Wife, 193-6
Hollywood, feminist
theory regards the ethics of detachment as the expression of a “male bias
toward rationality, disembodiment, and justice.”99 However,
she argues, there is no necessary
correlation between male gender and either rationality or justice, nor is there a necessary connection “between
disinterestedness and rationality, or between the ideal of justice and a rule- based ethical system. By the same token, there is no necessary disjunction between embodiment
and rationality or justice.”100
Although it would be an exaggeration to regard all Sufi women
as “culture-critiquing female heroes”
(a term coined
by Marcia Hermansen and with which
Leila Ahmed agrees),
it is true that certain female saints are meant to transcend gender
stereotypes, even if the men who
write about them cannot do this themselves.101 Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya is a figure of this type. The
ethics of detachment that she displays in Sulami’s depiction of her reflects
the virtues of muruwwa (“manliness” or maturity) and hilm (patience, forbearance, and good judgment)
that are key elements
of the Islamic trope of the wisdom teacher (see Chapter 1). The cultural
importance of these characteristics is that they signify the presence of intellect and sound reason
(both denoted by the term ‘aql), properties that patriarchal Islamic
society associated more with men than
with women. Indeed,
the presence of these traits
in Rabi’a is what led Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar to state that she should
be regarded as a man rather than as a woman. For ‘Attar Rabi’a
was a unique woman of knowledge
who displayed the maturity, forbearance, and judgment of a man.
This is why he made a point of placing her outside the category of women. In addition, although Rabi’a’s virtues are consistent with the ethics
of detachment described
by Amy Hollywood, one should not assume that just because
detachment is associated with a woman it connotes
a passive personality. Quite the opposite
is the case: to recall Toshihiko Isutzu’s
statement cited in Chapter
1, one should instead think of such characteristics as the qualities
“of a [person] who governs
and dominates others, and not of those who are governed
and dominated.”102 In other words,
as the possessor of the qualities of reason, wisdom,
and detachment, Rabi’a
the Knower was a figure
of power.
For many Sufi writers,
Rabi’a is a figure of power because
the knowledge she possesses
gives her the ability to make remarkable insights. However, for the figure
of Rabi’a the Sufi— as opposed to that of Rabi’a the Teacher— the knowledge that conveys this ability is not only expressed by sound reason and judgment.
Sufism is indeed
a way of knowledge, but because it is
also a form of mysticism it seeks knowledge that goes beyond
the knowledge of ‘aql or formal reasoning. For the Sufi, it is not enough
to know about something; instead, what is most
important is to know the ways of knowing
as thoroughly as possible, to tap into the essence
of knowledge itself. Rabi’a
could impart memorable
insights to those
who learned from her because she possessed this deeper type of knowledge. For the Sufi hagiographers who wrote about her, it did
not matter whether
or not she called herself
a Sufi. Because her statements demonstrate that she possesses the type of knowledge that is the hallmark of Sufism, she could only have been a
99 197
100 Ibid, 198
101 See Marcia
Hermansen, “The Female
Hero in the Islamic Religious Tradition,” in The Annual
Review
of Women in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma
and Katherine K. Young (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1992),
2:130. As noted above, Amy Hollywood
has pointed out that most often it is male writers, rather than the women they
represent, who are the real culture critics.
102 Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran, 207
Sufi. Thus, the distinction made in the present chapter
between the figures
of Rabi’a the Sufi and the
other tropes in which she appeared was for premodern
Sufi writers a theoretical distinction at best— if they ever thought
of such a distinction at all. For them the figures
of Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a the Ascetic,
and Rabi’a the Lover were indistinguishable from the figure of
Rabi’a the Sufi.
In addition to focusing on
the “roots” or essence of knowledge, the Sufi approach to knowledge
seeks a greater
understanding of the “fruits” of knowledge. To put it another way, knowing how one
knows leads to a new way of thinking about
what one knows. The person who knows the material world knows about things— this informational form of knowledge
operates on the outside
(al-zahir), on the surface
of reality, so to speak.
Outside knowledge is what the Qur’an refers to when it says that God taught Adam the “names”
of all things (Qur’an, 2:31).
To know the “name” of a thing is to know its identity
and to know it as a fact: it means to know what
a thing is and how to make use of it. This kind of practical, theoretical, or scientific knowledge
is fundamental to living in the world and the one who possesses
it is better off than the one who
does not.103 In Arabic
a person who has attained
expertise in such knowledge is called ‘alim
(“one who knows,” pl. ‘ulama, “scholars”) or khabir (“knowledgeable one” or “expert”). The value of this type of knowledge is underscored by the fact that the divine names al-Khabir
and al- ‘Alim (a variant
of ‘alim which means “continuously knowing”)
appear in the Qur’an.104
However, for the Sufi this external type of knowledge does not go far enough.
Even in the world of ordinary
human experience, the person who knows a thing most thoroughly knows
more than just its form or purpose. For example,
to really know a favorite
chair is to have had the
experience of sitting in it, feeling its shape, and knowing how it suits the body; to truly
know a loved one is to know the person intimately, in ways that are not accessible to another. In a similar vein, the Sufi desires
to know the reality of things, to obtain “inside”
knowledge (‘ilm al-batin),
to know things at their
source and root. This is the type of knowledge that separates Sufism
from other forms of knowledge in Islam. In Sufism, the ultimate goal of the search for knowledge is God,
because God is the source
of all things. However, as the source
of all things God is also the source of all knowledge. This realization leads to the central paradox
of Sufi mysticism: How is one
to know God, the Reality
that everyone seeks to know, when He is both the Knower
and the Known?
Although he was not a Sufi, Jahiz had a sense of this type of knowledge when he called
Rabi’a the Teacher a “woman
of bayan.” For Jahiz, a true intellectual was one who understood ideas or concepts at their roots. As a Sufi theorist, Abu Talib al-Makki was
similarly aware that Rabi’a possessed a special kind of knowledge
when he called her muhiqqa: by using this term he
103 For a modern
discussion of how the “names” of things impart theoretical or scientific
knowledge, see Bediüzaman Said Nursi (d. 1960), The Words: The Reconstruction of Islamic Belief and Thought, trans.
Huseyn Akarsu (Somerset, New Jersey, The Light Inc., 2005). For Nursi, Adam, the father of humanity,
was taught the “names of all things” (i.e., the 99 Divine Names of Islam) as an
inspiration for the natural sciences: “Each natural
science, which discusses the reality of entities, can be a true science
full of wisdom only by discerning the regulating, directing,
administering, sustaining, and all-embracing manifestations of the Divine Name
the All-Wise [al-Hakim] in things; in
the benefits and advantages of those things; and by being based on that Name”
(274-5).
104 See the above-quoted discussion by Nursi and Qur’an 66:3: “She asked,
‘Who informed you of this?’
And [the Prophet]
said, ‘The Eternally
Knowing and the All-Informed told me of this’” (qala naba’ani
al- ‘Aleem al-Khabir).
meant that she was a Sufi woman who could teach others how everything “works”
or “fits together” in both the inner and outer worlds
of reality.105 Each of these
writers in his own way saw
Rabi’a’s wisdom as unique. Through
the wisdom of her teachings she could strip away the veil
of appearances and reveal something about the true nature of things. Metaphorically, one could say that she embodied
James Geary’s description of the aphoristic teaching: “Inside an aphorism it is minds that collide
and the new matter that spins out at the speed of thought is that
elusive thing we call wisdom.”106 As Sufis and Zen teachers
can both affirm,
creating a good aphorism is more difficult than creating a good argument. This is because
teaching by aphorisms requires a deeper and more profound
type of understanding than is required for most arguments. To put it another
way: the ability
to convey a paradox requires
a paradoxical type of knowledge.
However, Rabi’a’s
ability to teach
with aphorisms was not her only intellectual gift. As a muhiqqa, she also provided
a deeper understanding of moral conduct
and even of the Shari’a.
By intimately knowing the proper relationship between what pertains
to God (huquq Allah) and what pertains to the human
being (huquq al-insan), she possessed the ability to act appropriately at all times and in all contexts. As explained in Chapter 1, in the value system of early Islam, this sense
of appropriateness was an important
sign of hilm. Rabi’a’s
ability to accord everything its proper
right or due (a notion
expressed by the term haqq) compelled
her to cast a critical
eye over her acts
and those of others. Statements such as, ‘By God, I am ashamed
to ask for the world from
the One who owns the world, so how can I ask for the world from one who does not own it?” express this sense of propriety. The same can be said for the “tough love” that she gave to Sufyan
al-Thawri: “How can you ask for [safety
from the World] while you are still soiled with the
World?”107 It is in this sense of Rabi’a as a muhiqqa and
not in terms of modern
feminist theory that one can
most accurately call her a “culture-critic.”
Through her critical observations of human behavior, Rabi’a prompted her students
and interlocutors to weigh their thoughts
and actions on an internal
scale of values that was more
sensitive than the outward scale of the Shari’a. This ethic constituted a sort of fiqh al-batin, an inward
scale of motives
and values, in which behaviors were judged morally
rather than legally. Rabi’a’s approach to fiqh went
back to the original root of this term, which means, “to understand.” We can see in several
of her reported statements that her
fiqh involved the
interrogation of moral and ethical
states. Perhaps the best illustration of this aspect of her knowledge can be seen in an account from Makki’s Qut al-qulub
that was discussed
in Chapter 2. In
this tradition, Sufyan
al-Thawri asks Rabi’a,
“Inform us by what means God has endowed you with
such subtleties of wisdom. Every act of worship has a rule behind it and every
act of faith has an inner
meaning, so what is the meaning of your faith?”
Rabi’a replies: “I do not worship
God out of fear of God. If I did, I would be like the disobedient slave-girl who only works when she
is afraid. Nor [do I worship God] out of a love for heaven.
If I did, I would be like the
disobedient slave-girl who only works
when she is given something. Instead, I worship
God out of love for Him alone and out of yearning for Him.”108 In this story, the jurist
Sufyan al-Thawri rather than Rabi’a states
the premises of fiqh al-batin by
saying, “Every act of worship
has a rule behind it and every act of faith has an inner meaning.” Rabi’a’s answer illustrates how fiqh al-
105 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 95
106 Geary, The World in a Phrase, 16
107 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 76-7
108 Makki, Qut al-qulub, vol. 2, 94
batin is
supposed to work. In the generation after
her death, the notion of fiqh al-batin would become important for Sufi ethics through
the writings of al-Harith al-Muhasibi. Indeed, the very term muhasaba from
which the name al-Muhasibi
is taken refers to the method of self-
examination on which fiqh al-batin is
based.
In Sufism as it has
developed since Rabi’a’s time, knowledge about the outer nature of
things is designated by the term‘ilm,
whereas knowledge about the inner nature of things is referred to as ma’rifa.109 The term ma’rifa does
not appear in the Qur’an,
nor does it figure
prominently in Hadith. However, in the Qur’an the word ‘ilm is used approximately 750 times
and encompasses all forms of
knowledge, with special emphasis
given to the concept of
understanding, particularly of the revelations and signs of God. Although
the word ma’rifa is not
used in the Qur’an, terms
derived from the Arabic root ‘arafa (“to know” or “to be familiar with”) are used more than 70 times in the Qur’an and revolve
semantically around the concept of knowledge as recognition.110 Sometimes, the past participle ma’ruf (“known”) is used in the
Qur’an to designate actions that are lawful or morally
transparent, as in the phrase,
“commanding the good (al-ma’ruf) and forbidding evil” (Qur’an 9:71). Other forms
of the verb ‘arafa are used in
the Qur’an as well, but neither the verbal noun ma’rifa (“knowledge”) nor the active participle
‘arif
(“knower”) appears, despite
the fact that they were to become key terms in the technical
vocabulary of Sufism.
The word ma’rifa as a term for inner knowledge began to be used by Sufis and Proto-
Sufis in the eighth century
CE, although it was also used in this period
to designate knowledge in general. Evidence for the development of ma’rifa as a technical term can be found in the sayings of a number of early Sufis, as in the statement
by Abu Hashim al-Sufi discussed
above: “Those who truly
know God (ahl al-ma’rifa bi-llah) are alienated from [the World]
and are desirous
of the Hereafter.” Here, as previously noted, a specific
group of the Piety-Minded is singled out as
the “People of the Ma’rifa of
God.” In this phrase ma’rifa denotes both knowledge and familiarity: those who truly know God are by implication also the “friends”
or “protégés” of God
(awliya’
Allah, Qur’an 10:63).
One may also note that during this same period
ma’rifa became associated with the goal of essential asceticism, thus providing a doctrinal bridge between early Sufism and more widespread forms of asceticism in Islam.111
A technical discussion of ma’rifa that comes
close to how this concept
was understood in Rabi’a’s time can be found in ‘Ali al-Hujwiri’s Kashf al-mahjub.112 This work has already been
109 John Renard
distinguishes these terms by defining ‘ilm
as “discursive knowledge,” “acquired knowledge,” or “traditional
knowledge.” He defines ma’rifa as “experiential knowledge,”
“infused knowledge,” “intimate knowledge,” or “mystical knowledge.” See idem, Knowledge of God in Classical
Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology (New York and Mahwah, New
Jersey, Paulist Press, 2004), 7.
110 Ibid, 13-14
111 Renard places the first Sufi use of the concept of ma’rifa in the ninth century
CE, and identifies
Muhasibi as
making the first “systematic effort to establish the foundations of Sufi
thought as a legitimate religious discipline” (Ibid, 22). However, accounts of early Sufis and
Proto-Sufis in works such as Isfahani’s Hilyat al-awliya’ make
it clear that an understanding of ma’rifa that was very similar
to the Sufi concept had developed by the second half of the eighth
century CE.
112 See Hujwiri,
Kashf al-mahjub, 266-77. In the discussion that follows, I depart from R. A. Nicholson’s
English
translations of some of Hujwiri’s key concepts. For example, Nicholson translates ‘ilm as “cognition” and hal as “feeling.” I find these translations to be superficial, and thus inappropriate to the meaning that
Hujwiri tries to convey.
cited above for its famous statement
on the paradox of the heart. Hujwiri’s
discussion of Sufi knowledge (which he terms ma’rifat
Allah) is useful
for the present
discussion because it retains
as sense of the importance of outward knowledge that characterized the Proto-Sufism of Rabi’a’s
generation. For Hujwiri
al-‘ilm bi-llah, outward knowledge
of God, is essential for understanding
Islamic law and dogma, and hence is the foundation for all religious knowledge. By contrast, ma’rifa, the inward
knowledge of the Sufis, is a more advanced form of knowledge that comprises both the in-depth knowledge
of things and attributes (ma’rifa ‘ilmiyya), and the knowledge of states, contexts,
and conditions (ma’rifa haliyya). Hujwiri states that ma’rifa is
superior to ‘ilm because it is the most comprehensive form of knowledge and leads to the deepest understanding of God. Although possessing ‘ilm-knowledge of God is necessary because
it is “the foundation of all blessings
in this world
and the next,”
it is spiritually of lesser
worth because “the worth of everyone
is in proportion to ma’rifat Allah, and he who is without
ma’rifa is worth nothing.”113
Hujwiri also draws a further distinction between ‘ilm and ma’rifa: The main problem with ‘ilm as
a way of knowing God is that this form of knowledge requires one to “turn away”
or distance herself from the object of knowledge
in order to gain understanding. If one applied
this logic to the knowledge of God, it would mean that she would have to distance
herself from God in
order to know Him. Thus, all that can be known of God through
‘ilm are outward
manifestations of divinity, such as God’s
laws, dogmas, or divine attributes. For the Sufi this does not
go far enough. However, in the knowledge
that comes from ma’rifat
Allah, one’s approach
to God is not limited in this way. As with ‘ilm,
the knowledge of ma’rifa also requires
a “turning away,” but in this case knowledge
is gained not by turning
away from God, but by “turning away from
everything that is not God.” Thus, one who possesses true knowledge of God is able to attain
an even better
“objective distance” by seeing the World, so to speak,
from God’s perspective.114
Hujwiri’s discussion of ma’rifa is
helpful for understanding some of the statements
attributed to Rabi’a that explain her essential asceticism. For example, when she is asked how she
has attained her high spiritual
station, she replies,
“By leaving aside all that does not concern
me and by cleaving to the One who always
is.”115 According to Hujwiri’s concept
of knowledge, this would
mean that essential
asceticism involves the repositioning of the self with respect
to the World in order to achieve a more profound
perspective. Hujwiri’s concept
also provides an explanation for another of Rabi’a’s aphorisms that has been discussed in this chapter:
“For everything there is a fruit (thamara) and the fruit of ma’rifa is orientation toward God (iqbal).”116
The most important point in this statement
is that for Rabi’a ma’rifat Allah is both a goal and a return.
Although orientation toward God is the “fruit”
or outcome of ma’rifa, it is also the
beginning of ma’rifa because one cannot know God until one has turned toward God. The concept of orientation is expressed in this aphorism
by the verbal noun iqbal, which means
“turning toward” or “orienting oneself
toward” something. As we have seen, this term is also
related conceptually to the word tawba or “repentance,” which similarly comes from a root that means, “to turn.” “Turning
to God in repentance” is the first
step on the path of asceticism
113 Ibid, 267
114 For the entirety of this discussion, see Ibid, 269-271
115 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-Asrar, 81
116 Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 76-7 and Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-Asrar, 49
because turning away from the World only makes sense if one turns toward God
in place of the
World. The paradox of Rabi’a’s
statement is that the more one knows
God, the more one turns toward Him. Although turning
toward God is supposed to come before knowledge of God, a greater knowledge of God reinforces and makes permanent
the essential ascetic’s
“turn” toward the divine.
Thus, in the most advanced
spiritual state when the Sufi becomes a lover of God, both God
and the human being are permanently “turned”
toward each other.
This last comment also recalls the title of one of al-Harith al-Muhasibi’s most important
doctrinal works: al-Qasd wa al-ruju’ ila Allah (God
as the Goal and the Return). This book
contains the earliest extant reference
to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and significantly, it is the only
citation of Rabi’a to be found in all of Muhasibi’s works. In this citation Rabi’a
refers to the practice of night-vigils and describes the “knower” of God as a lover
of God: “The night has come, the darkness has mingled, and every lover is left alone with his beloved.
Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.”117 This statement describes
the same condition of mutual orientation as in the aphorism
about ma’rifa and iqbal discussed above: in the state of knowledge-as-ma’rifa, the lover and the Beloved turn toward each other in a state of mutual
regard.
Another statement about orientation, and which also includes a metaphorical reference to
fruit (thamara), can be found
in a well-known tradition that describes one of Rabi’a’s
dream visions. This moral
of this story,
which first appears
in Makki’s Qut al-qulub, is about what is
lost when the worshipper forgets
God and falls into heedlessness. The story is worth repeating
in full because Rabi’a’s
statement that “the fruit of ma’rifa is orientation toward God” acts as a sort
of exegesis for this dream narrative:
Someone reported
that Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (may God Most High have mercy on her) said: “Once I offered prayers and invocations to
God (tasbihat) all night until just
before dawn. Then I fell asleep and
saw a beautiful bright green tree, indescribable in its beauty and greatness,
and adorned with three kinds of fruit unlike any I have known to be of this
world. They resembled the breasts of virgins: one of them was white, the other
was red, and another was yellow. They
shone like moons and suns in the midst of the tree's bright greenness.” Then she said: “I admired their beauty and
asked, ‘To whom does the tree belong?’ A
voice answered, ‘It belongs to you because of your earlier glorification and
praise of God.’” Rabi'a said: "I continued to circumambulate the
tree, and then I noticed on the ground a fruit which was the color of gold. So I remarked, ‘It would be better if this
fruit was on the tree with the rest of the other fruit.” Then the voice said to me, ‘It was there, except when you were
glorifying God, you thought about whether or not the dough had risen. As a result of this, the fruit fell off
the tree.’” This is a lesson for
those who are endowed with insight and a warning for those who fear and
remember God.118
Let us put aside for a
moment the reference in this
tradition to fruit that look like virgins’ breasts, for according to feminist scholars
of hagiography this metaphor seems more suitable
for a man’s voice than for a woman’s.
What is most significant about this story in Sufi terms is that it highlights knowledge of God as a form of recollection or remembrance (dhikr), which corresponds to the Qur’anic
understanding of the root verb ‘arafa. Besides drawing its inspiration from the Qur’an,
the Sufi concept
of knowledge-as-remembrance was also inspired
by the traditions of Platonism and Neo-Platonism, in which knowledge is portrayed as the
117 Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah, 104
118 Makki, Qut al-Qulub,
vol. 1, 189
remembrance or recollection of the ideal forms of things. Unlike the term ma’rifa, however, which does not appear
in the Qur’an, the term dhikr can be found in the Qur’an and Sufi notions
of dhikr follow the Qur’anic models
quite closely. Various
forms of the verb dhakara (“to mention,” “to recall,” “to invoke the memory of”) occur 290 times in the Qur’an.
Even more, several verses
in which the word dhikr is
used in the Qur’an employ the term in ways that
resemble later Sufi usage. Two examples
of such verses are the following: “We did not send
down before you aught but a man; so ask the People of Remembrance (ahl al-dhikr) if you do not
know” (Qur’an, 16:43); “It is only through
the remembrance of God that the heart is made peaceful (ala bi-dhikri
Allah tatma’innu al-qulub, Qur’an 13:28). The first verse refers to a group known as the People
of Remembrance: Sufis have long taken this designation for themselves.
Sufis understand the second verse as constituting divine authorization for sessions of dhikr as
invocation, a practice that has become a key characteristic of Sufism.
Doctrinal and hagiographical works that convey traditions about early Sufis indicate that the
practice of dhikr, much like the concept of ma’rifa, began to gain importance in the second half of the eighth century CE, during Rabi’a’s
lifetime. Although most early references to dhikr as a spiritual practice
in Sufi sources
come from a generation or two after
Rabi’a, certain key figures, including Rabi’a herself,
are credited with establishing this practice. For example, in the
chapter on dhikr in
Tahdhib al-asrar, Kharkushi quotes
Rabi’a as making the following supplication: “My God, I ask you to make my aspiration in the World my remembrance (dhikr) of you
in the World; and [to make my aspiration of you] in the Hereafter
the vision of you.”119
Kharkushi also quotes Abu Sulayman
al-Darani as saying,
“One who knows
his Lord (man ‘arafa rabbahu) finds that his heart is panicked because
of the recollection (dhikr)
of Him; it is preoccupied in service to Him, and it weeps at his mistakes.”120 In addition, Ibrahim ibn Adham is
quoted as saying:
“One who does not find three habits (mawatin) in his heart finds the door to God locked before him. [These are]: the recitation of the Qur’an;
the remembrance (dhikr) of God the Great and Glorious; and
prayer.”121
These traditions are important
both for what they say and for what they do not say. First, Darani’s use of the verb ‘arafa indicates that the concept
of ma’rifa in the sense of “knowing God well” was already well established in the generation following Rabi’a’s death. The same can
be said for the correspondence between the knowledge of God and the remembrance of God. The fact
that Kharkushi cites Darani as speaking of dhikr is significant, because the early Sufi who is
most often quoted by Kharkushi on the practice
of dhikr is Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, who may have been a disciple of Darani. However,
it is also important to note that these early mystics do not yet seem
to have settled on a common understanding of dhikr or on how exactly
the concept of dhikr relates to the concept
of ma’rifa. Rabi’a’s understanding of dhikr has to do primarily
with the recollection of God’s actions
in the world. In Rabi’a’s
statement dhikr connotes remembrance through observation and reflection; thus, it is related to the concept
of tafakkur (“consideration,”
“reflection,” or “meditation”), which also begins
to appear in the discourse of early Sufis
around this time. Darani, on the other hand, seems to think of dhikr as an act of momentary recollection— as if God suddenly comes to mind and startles
the worshipper into awareness of His
presence. For Ibrahim
ibn Adham, dhikr appears to be a form of invocation, because
he
119 Kharkushi, Tahdhib al-asrar, 318
120 Ibid
121 Ibid
speaks of it as a practice
to which the heart becomes
accustomed. However, despite
these differences, all of these statements relate the concept
of dhikr to the symbolic image of the heart
as the seat of the spiritual intellect. This provides further
evidence that the concepts of heart,
knowledge, and remembrance had already
become defining elements
of Proto-Sufism as it
emerged at the end of the eighth century CE.
V.
Conclusion: Rabi’a the Sufi and the Limits of the Real
The similarity between the reported teachings of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and the early
Sufi doctrines of al-Harith
al-Muhasibi has been noted more than once in this study. In fact, virtually every one of Muhasibi’s currently published works addresses at least one of the tropes of the
Rabi’a narrative discussed so far. For example, Muhasibi’s book al-Masa’il
fi-l-zuhd (Teachings on Renunciation) covers many of the themes
discussed in Chapter
2, “Rabi’a the Ascetic.”122
Much the same can be said of Kitab al-makasib (The
Book of Outcomes), which, as we have
seen, was a treatise on the practice
of ethical precaution (wara’).123 In two other
works, al-Rizq al-halal wa haqiqat
al-tawakkul ‘ala Allah
(Allowable Provision and the Reality
of Reliance on God)
and al-Masa’il fi a’mal
al-qulub wa-l-jawarih (Teachings on the Actions
of the Heart and the Limbs),
Muhasibi discusses the practice of ethical precaution in relation to what I have called “essential asceticism.”124 Muhasibi also discusses the relations between
essential asceticism, ethical precaution, and Sufism in al-Qasd wa al-ruju’
ila Allah (God
as the Goal and the Return).
He also discusses these issues in his most famous book, al-Ri’aya li-huquq
Allah (Attentiveness to the Rights of God). This last work conforms so closely to Rabi’a’s reported
views on knowledge and asceticism that it can be seen as reflecting what Makki probably
had in mind when he called
Rabi’a a muhiqqa in
the chapter on Love in Qut al-qulub.
Abu Talib al-Makki’s use of the term muhiqqa to describe Rabi’a may have been based on
Muhasibi’s teachings because
by his time the latter’s
ethical theories had become widely known through the influence of the famous
Sufi of Baghdad,
Sari al-Saqati (d. 866 CE).125 However, the influence of Muhasibi’s concepts
on the development of Sufism
brings up another possibility with regard to the similarity of Muhasibi’s and Rabi’a’s doctrines. Might the figure of
Rabi’a the Sufi as she appears in Qut al-qulub and
other Sufi works
after Makki have been
colored by Muhasibi’s views on Sufism? In other words, might the image of Rabi’a as an early proponent of Sufi doctrines have more to do with Muhasibi than with the real Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya? Do we have here an early
Muslim example of male writers
using the figure
of a famous woman to “think through various
troubling intellectual and theological problems
that confronted male theologians,” in the way that Elizabeth A. Clark described for Gregory of Nyssa
and Macrina? Did the early systematizers of Sufism assume
that Rabi’a the Sufi was a teacher
of essential asceticism and the doctrine
of the heart because Muhasibi
had already made these
doctrines noteworthy?
122 This work can be found in ‘Ata, ed., al-Masa’il
fi a’mal al-qulub, 41-87.
123 Ibid, 171-245
124 See Ibid and Muhasibi,
al-Rizq al-halal.
125 Sari al-Saqati was Abu al-Qasim
al-Junayd’s maternal uncle.
On the relationship between Saqati
and
Muhasibi
see Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad, 39-41.
Although this possibility is intriguing, I am inclined
to think that it was not in fact the case. I do not believe that the figure of Rabi’a the Sufi was nothing
more than a trope constructed by later writers out of Muhasibi’s depictions of early
Sufism. One can cite several
arguments in support of this conclusion. In the first place, we can be certain that the trope of Rabi’a
the Lover did not originate with Muhasibi. Although Muhasibi
was the earliest
Sufi to quote Rabi’a on Love
and he refers to the subjects of Love and intimacy with God in his works,
he was not himself a practitioner of Love mysticism. Even though he agreed with Rabi’a that attaining
intimacy with God was an important goal of the Sufi path,
he did not express this goal in the way that
Love mystics did. Muhasibi cites Rabi’a’s
statement on Love in al-Qasd wa al-ruju’ ila Allah not because it agrees with his own approach but because it provides an alternate perspective on the concept of mystical
knowledge.
We can also be certain that the tropes
of Rabi’a the Teacher and Rabi’a the Ascetic were not
based on Muhasibi’s doctrines either. This is because
some of the earliest traditions that support these tropes
appear in the works of non-Sufis, who could not have been influenced by Muhasibi. For example, although
Muhasibi and Jahiz were contemporaries and both came from
Basra and moved to Baghdad,
Jahiz’s disapproval of Sufism made it highly unlikely that his
depictions of Rabi’a were influenced by Muhasibi’s ideas. The same can be said for Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur, another non-Sufi
who wrote about Rabi’a in the generation after Jahiz. Finally,
we can be fairly
sure that the similarity between
Rabi’a’s and Muhasibi’s teachings are not tropological because the tradition
of early Sufism contains many examples of similar doctrines expounded by Sufi men, some of which have been cited
in this study.
Why would male Sufi
systematizers have to express these
theological issues through
a Sufi woman when there
were plenty of early
male ascetics, including proponents of the doctrine of Love, who could serve
the same purpose?
The question of correspondence between the doctrines
of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and al- Harith al-Muhasibi provides yet another
example of the issue of narrative representation and truth that was discussed at the beginning of this chapter. How is one to know who influenced whom? If the figure
of Rabi’a the Sufi was not dependent
on Muhasibi’s model of Sufism,
then might Rabi’a have influenced Muhasibi?
At the present time, it is impossible to answer this question
definitively. The mere fact that Muhasibi cites
a statement by Rabi’a is not enough
by itself to prove
that she influenced his doctrines in any significant way. All we can say is that Muhasibi
shared some of the doctrines
that were attributed to Rabi’a, especially the concept of essential
asceticism. However, it is important
to point out that I am not the first person to have noticed
this correspondence. Even medieval
writers noticed this. For example,
in the chapter devoted to Muhasibi in Hilyat al-awliya’ Abu
Nu’aym al-Isfahani cites
Rabi’a as a proponent of Muhasibi’s
approach to asceticism. In fact, he uses the very statement that I used in Chapter
2 as the key illustration of the concept
of essential asceticism: “Leaving aside what does not concern me and
cleaving to the One who always is.”126 Clearly, Isfahani saw Rabi’a as agreeing with Muhasibi’s
approach to asceticism. This and other citations
of Rabi’a in Hilyat al-awliya’ are
significant because there is no chapter
devoted to her or to any other Sufi woman in his work. Although Rabi’a is not the only figure of early Sufism to appear in Isfahani’s chapter
on Muhasibi in the
Hilya, her presence indicates
that its author saw their doctrines as significantly similar.
The
126 Isfahani, Hilya,
vol. 10, 108
modern scholar Margaret Smith also appears
to have noticed a correspondence between the doctrines of Rabi’a and Muhasibi. In her work on Muhasibi,
An Early Mystic of Baghdad, she cites
the same statement
as Isfahani does and speculates that Muhasibi “may well have known
[Rabi’a] in his youth, and whose fame must certainly
have come to his ears.”127 Although
Smith does not attempt
to establish a direct doctrinal connection between Rabi’a and Muhasibi,
one cannot help but wonder if it was only a coincidence that her two most significant books are on these figures.
In dealing with an iconic figure such as Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, whose statements
are often encountered but for whom information is both scarce
and problematical, it is hard to determine in any individual case whether one is faced
with historical evidence
or with what Hayden White called “the fictions of factual representation.” Keeping this fact in mind is especially important when assessing the trope of Rabi’a the Sufi because
Sufi tradition assumes
both that Rabi’a
really existed and that she was a Sufi. In summarizing the figure of Rabi’a the Sufi in early Islamic literature, four themes stand
out as being of key importance: (1) essential asceticism; (2) the doctrine of Love; (3) the doctrine
of the heart; and (4) the doctrine
of knowledge-as-ma’rifa. As we have seen, each of these doctrines except for Love was central
to Muhasibi’s teachings as well. Although Love was not a key concept for Muhasibi, he did discuss
it in his works in the
context of intimacy with God. A century
and a half later, Abu Talib al-Makki
would develop the concept of Love further
and make it central to his own approach to Sufism and to his portrayal of Rabi’a the Lover. Thus, a further
question arises: if the figure
of Rabi’a the Sufi was not just a
trope constructed out of Muhasibi’s Sufi doctrines, is it possible
to speculate that a doctrinal genealogy might be drawn
from Rabi’a through
Muhasibi to Makki,
and from Makki to Ghazali and other Sufis? A genealogical connection between Muhasibi and Makki through
Ghazali has long been established. What would make this genealogy different is that Rabi’a now comes in from
the margins to become central
to the development of several
important Sufi doctrines. In this model, she is more than just a famous Sufi woman or an exponent of Love mysticism. She now emerges as an important
contributor to the doctrine of the heart and the Sufi approach
to knowledge.
As the previous chapters
of this study
have shown, circumstantial support for such a
theory of Rabi’a’s influence can be found
in the earliest accounts about Rabi’a related
by Burjulani, Muhasibi, Jahiz,
and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur. As stated in Chapter 1, the depictions given in these accounts
come as close as one can get to the “real” Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. What makes them different from later accounts
is that Sufi narrative forms were not likely to have
shaped their contents. Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
were not Sufis,
and although Muhasibi
and Burjulani were Sufis, they were still close to the early ascetic
and ethical traditions of Islam and hence were not affected
by later Sufi narrative tropes.
Most, if not all, of their accounts
about Rabi’a came from traditions that originated in the city of Basra
and its environs. As such, whatever tropes
they contained were more likely
the byproducts of local memory
than the result of literary artifice. As Jan Vansina
has demonstrated, such orally derived
traditions can be taken
127 Smith, An Early Mystic of Baghdad, 215; for some unknown reason,
Smith does not cite Isfahani
as the source for this
quotation. Instead, she incorrectly
attributes it to Muhasibi and mentions the quotation by Dhu al-Nun al-Misri
that follows it in the Isfahani passage as if it too came from Muhasibi. Apparently, Smith misread these statements
in the Hilya, thinking incorrectly
that they were in Muhasibi’s voice rather than Isfahani’s.
as historical evidence so long as it is not forgotten
that it is, in Vansina’s words, “evidence at second, third, or nth remove.”128 Thus, the picture
that emerges from such evidence,
although it may be blurry, is more empirical than the sharper
image painted by myth.
The essential asceticism that is reflected in the image of Rabi’a
represented by these accounts is important to more than just the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic. It is also important to the
tropes of Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Lover,
and Rabi’a the Sufi. The key concept
that links all of these tropes
together is the notion of essential knowledge through God (al-ma’rifa bi-llah). Rabi’a has remained a famous figure in Sufi literature in part because
her teachings stress the
centrality of God as the source of all forms of knowledge. In Sufi narratives she personifies in turn
the essence of asceticism, which is devotion,
the essence of devotion, which is Love, and the essence of Love, which
is knowledge. The metaphor of the heart,
which is also depicted as important to her teachings, symbolizes essential knowledge
because it is the dwelling
place of both the love of God and spiritual knowledge. When one combines
Rabi’a’s alleged statements on the heart with Abu Sulayman
al-Darani’s doctrine of states of the heart, one is well on the way to developing the type of Sufi personality theory that would later become famous in the works of
Muhasibi. Although one can only speculate on the full extent of the historical Rabi’a’s influence on Muhasibi
and other early figures of Sufism, evidence
of such a possibility is clearly present
in the textual fragments
of hagiography and oral tradition
that come from the early sources.
In his book Philosophy
as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot criticizes Michel Foucault for anachronistically ascribing modern “technologies of the self” to figures
of antiquity.129 Although Hadot is unclear about
what he means by this critique, presumably he is referring
to Foucault’s argument that the Greco-Roman world witnessed the growth of an “individualism” (Foucault properly puts this term in quotation marks) that “accorded
more and more importance to the
‘private’ aspects of existence, to the values
of personal conduct,
and to the interest that people
focused on themselves.”130 Although I am not convinced that Hadot understood Foucault correctly, I do believe that a similar
charge of anachronism can be leveled
at modern writers (discussed in Chapter 6) who see Rabi’a as the embodiment of modern concepts
of self and personhood such as individualism, self-expression, and autonomy.
In his important study of
the philosophical concept of the self from antiquity to modern times, Richard Sorabji shows that the self has been conceived
in many different ways. Although all forms of selfhood
involve some sense
of “me and me again,”
this does not mean that people
have always viewed themselves as individuals are viewed today.131 This realization is important in assessing
the impact of a tropological figure such as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. As a literary construct she displays not an individual self but a universalized set of character traits. Even when she
appears outside of the genre of Sufi writings, as in the works of Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir
128 Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, 69
129 Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life,
206-7; on the concept of “technologies of the self,” see Michel
Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in
Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton eds., Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
(Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts
Press, 1988), 16-40.
130 Michel Foucault,
The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality Volume
3, Robert Hurley,
trans. (New
York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1986), 41
131 See Richard
Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights
about Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
2006), especially “The Varieties of Self and Philosophical Development of the Idea,” 32-56.
Tayfur, we still only see Rabi’a the figure but
not Rabi’a the person.
Because she exists today
only as a figure of literature, Rabi’a
the person must always remain,
as Pierre Hadot says of Socrates, atopos: “unclassifiable.”132 When Rabi’a states
in Qut al-qulub, “I do not worship God out of fear of God. If I did, I would be like the disobedient slave-girl
who only works when she is
afraid,” this is not the quotation of an autonomous individual. Rather, it is an example of the
literary trope of the persona, which ultimately goes back to the Platonic
and Stoic notions
of the self as the expression of an ideal character type. With the notion of self-as-persona, a figure puts on
a character type as one puts on a set of clothes.
As Sorabji demonstrates, in classical times (and by extension in premodern Islam where these
notions were used as well)
writers used representations of the self to create
an image of their subjects
that conformed to noble or heroic
ideal types.133 In such cases,
the ideal character type, not the private self,
was what mattered
the most. In this type of representation, there is no way to distinguish a character’s “real self” from the
literary persona. Indeed,
for those who adhered to this ethic the real self was the
persona. To paraphrase Hayden White, with respect to a persona,
the content is the same as the form.
The same can also be said for all of the depictions of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya that appear in Islamic literature. In whatever
trope she appears,
all we can see is the persona,
not the individual person in the modern
sense of the word. Although
I stated at the beginning of this chapter
that I have come to see a real person emerging
out of the Rabi’a narratives, all that I meant to convey
by this statement was that a real person known as Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya probably lived in the city
of Basra or its environs
in the eighth century CE. I cannot
claim that a real personality emerges from the Rabi’a narratives, even in the earliest ones. If her real personality was in fact different
from her persona we would not be able to see it. The great irony of the figure of Rabi’a the Sufi is
that her individuality— that which makes
her unique— lies in her universalizability, not in her individuality. Her example is meant in part to teach future generations that since our personas are formed by our roles in life, if we want to acquire a better persona we need to take on a better role. As
we shall see in the next two chapters, with respect to the reality
of her personhood, there is simply
no way of knowing where the Rabi’a of myth ends and the Rabi’a of “real life” begins.
132
Hadot, Philosophy
as a Way of Life,
57; as noted in Chapter
1, Socrates is for Hadot the classic
example of a figure whose literary persona has become indistinguishable
from real life.
133 Sorabji, Self,
157-171
CHAPTER 5
RABI’A THE ICON (I): THE SUFI IMAGE
All classical
culture lived for centuries on the notion that reality could in no way
contaminate verisimilitude; first of
all because verisimilitude is never anything but opinable: it is entirely subject to (public) opinion; as Nicole
said: ‘One must not consider things as they are in themselves, nor as they are
known to be by one who speaks or writes, but only in relation to what is known
of them by those who read and hear’ . . . In verisimilitude, the contrary is
never impossible, since notation rests on a majority, but not an absolute
opinion. The motto implicit on the
threshold of all classical discourse (subject to the ancient idea of
verisimilitude) is: Esto (Let there be, suppose . . .).
— Roland Barthes,
“The Reality Effect,”
in The Rustle of Language, 147
I.
Rabi’a Remembered: Myth, Icon, and the “Reality
Effect”
The previous chapter introduced Roland Barthes’ concept
of “the reality effect” (l’effet
du réel) to the study of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya. This concept,
which I took from an essay by Elizabeth A. Clark, was used as an analytical tool to demonstrate how the trope of Rabi’a
the Sufi became so fixed in the historical memory of Sufism
that doctrines that were developed in later periods were read back anachronistically into Rabi’a’s time. The reality
effect was also important
to the development of the trope of Rabi’a the Lover. In strictly
historical terms, whether
the “real” Rabi’a could
even be called
a Sufi is open to question. In addition, although
the earliest extant quotation of Rabi’a is about her love of God, the Love mysticism that she eventually came to personify was more a product of the tenth
century CE when Abu Talib
al-Makki wrote about her than of her own era. As Barthes explains
in an essay that introduces the reality effect,
in some master narratives the “paper time”
of the reality effect replaces
chronological time with “a
reminiscence or a nostalgia, a complex, parametric, non-linear time whose deep space recalls the mythic time of the ancient cosmogonies.”1 Tropes such as Rabi’a the Sufi and Rabi’a the Lover
constitute what Barthes
calls “referential illusions.” Referential
illusions are literary
constructs that take on the appearance of reality and create a shift in historical memory. For Barthes,
because referential illusions
take on the appearance of facts, they are comparable to myths; thus, the
writers that use them can be viewed as agents of myth.2
Most
scholars who use the concept of the reality effect take the concept from Barthes’
essay, “L’Effet du Réel,”
in his book Communications (1968). However, this was not the first use of this concept.
Barthes first introduced the reality effect
a year earlier in the essay, “Le Discours de l’Histoire,” in Informations sur les sciences
sociales (1967).3 This earlier essay provides a better understanding of the reality
effect than the essay in Communications because it
discusses the concept from the perspective of the theory of discourse. This approach allows one
1 Roland Barthes,
“The Discourse of History,” in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 130-131
2 Ibid, 131-2
3 Translated as “The Discourse of History” in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 127-140.
to draw a comparison between Barthes’ concept
of the reality effect and the ideas of Hayden White. Both Barthes and White use the linguistic theories of Roman Jakobson to conduct a structural analysis “of the universals of discourse . . . in the form of units and general rules
of combination.”4 Both theorists
also separate the narrative form of
discourse from its content and assert that the form of discourse
provides new content
on a meta-level that can be found
within the structures (i.e.,
the “units and general rules”)
of historical writing.
What White calls the
“content of the form” can be found in what Barthes calls the “thematic
units” of discourse that underlie historical narratives. White refers to these units as “tropes,” as in the title of his book Tropics of Discourse. Although
tropes can be found in all historical narratives, for Barthes
they are especially prominent
in premodern narratives that do not fit modern Western definitions of “objective history.”5 According
to Barthes, this more “fluid”
approach to narrative
is a common characteristic of premodern
historical writing. Among the genres of premodern
historical writing, none was more “fluid”
and thus susceptible to tropological construction than the genre
of hagiography or sacred biography.
Thomas J. Heffernan, who
popularized the concept of sacred biography in sainthood studies, defines this genre of literature as “a narrative
text of the vita of the saint written
by a member of the community
of belief. The text provides
a documentary witness
to the process of
sanctification for the community and in so doing becomes
itself a part of the sacred tradition it serves to document.”6 Clearly,
many of the writings dedicated
to the memory of Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya, both premodern and modern, can be characterized as sacred biography according to
Heffernan’s definition. It should also be evident
that the narratives that make up sacred
biography depend to a large
extent on the reality effect
as defined by Roland Barthes.
In fact, Heffernan discusses
the interpretation of sacred biography
in semiotic terms that are very
reminiscent of Barthes: “Narrative in this genre is primarily
a medium for symbolic
representation, since the essential thing
(res) being signified (the presence of the divine
in the saint) exists
outside a system
where sign and signified can be empirically validated. It follows that our reading and interpretation of such narrative should take seriously its symbolizing
structures.”7 According to this statement, it seems that Barthes and Heffernan are saying the same thing.
However, on closer examination one can see that this is not actually the case.
Heffernan’s approach
to historiography is not based
on the analysis of narrative structures, as
Barthes’ is. Instead, Heffernan’s view of sacred
biography is based on the French Annales
tradition of social
history, which regards
hagiographic texts as documents
rather than as literature.
An important assumption of this perspective is the belief that hagiographic accounts are not myths. According to Heffernan, hagiographic texts provide
“documentary witness” to social
attitudes and mentalities that exist outside of the text itself. Even if one cannot objectively prove the miracles of saints, some form of objective truth is still
present beyond the text. In Annales- type studies of sainthood, the empirically unverifiable reality of the divine acting
through the saint is replaced by the empirically verifiable reality of public opinion
as expressed through
the
4 Ibid, 127
5 Ibid, 134
6 Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their
Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York
and Oxtord, U. K.: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 16
7 Ibid, 11
contents of the hagiographic text. In Heffernan’s words, the reality
of public opinion
is “witnessed” by the text, which is to be read by the modern historian
as a social document. Thus, for
Heffernan, the hagiographic text reflects a socially generated image of the saint. The historical “truth” of a saint like Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is not to be found
in the details of her vita but rather in how the community
views her in the image that it constructs of her. In this type of
historiography, the literary
form of the hagiographic text, which is so important
for Barthes and White, is less important than the public perception of celebrity or reputation.
While the Annales-based historiography of Thomas Heffernan deserves
much credit for helping to open sacred
biography to systematic study, it only tells part of the story. It is very important that hagiographic texts provide insights
about local theologies, worldviews, and social relations; these should neither
be overlooked nor trivialized. However it should also be
recognized that the stories in sacred biographical texts can create public opinion as well as reflect it. To illustrate this point, I will give an example
from personal experience. In 2007, I was at a
conference in Morocco that was attended by Iraqi scholars
from the Al-Khoie
Foundation in London. While most of these scholars
were from Baghdad,
two of them were from Basra.
During one of the breaks in the conference, I informed them of my research on Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya and asked if any of them knew the location
of Rabi’a’s tomb in Basra.
Since the site of
Basra in Rabi’a’s
time was some distance away from the city of Basra today,
a heated discussion took place in which several
locations around Basra were mentioned
as possible sites of
the tomb. Unfortunately, I did not write down the names of these locations at the time and forgot about them until about six months later. At that time, I tried to contact
the scholars from Basra
again to see if they could recall
the places that they had mentioned. The reply I received was surprising. Not only had these scholars
forgotten the locations
that they had discussed at the
conference but they referred me to the text of Wafayat al-a’yan (Death Notices of the Notables), a thirteenth-century biographical dictionary by the Syrian historian Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282 CE). As
we shall see later in this chapter,
Ibn Khallikan conflated stories of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya and Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus and claimed that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s tomb was not in Basra but
in Jerusalem. Differently from before, the scholars from Basra now insisted that Rabi’a was buried in Jerusalem. Because of Ibn Khallikan’s authoritative reputation, they were willing
to take the clearly
mistaken claims of Wafayat al-a’yan over
local knowledge and more verifiable historical accounts
that placed the tomb of Rabi’a in the Basra region.
Jerusalem is not the only alternative site for Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya’s tomb. Some accounts
have her buried in Egypt and a tomb ascribed
to Rabi’a can be seen today in Cairo. Other sites
exist as well, including tombs in Damascus
and Afghanistan. We have already
seen in the previous chapters that the earliest
accounts about Rabi’a locate both her residence
and her burial place in the region of Basra. However,
as Barthes states
in the epigraph to this chapter,
empirically verifiable truth is largely
irrelevant to narratives that become myths. Verisimilitude is what matters most. With myths, Barthes says, “one must consider things only in relation to what
is known of them by those who read and hear.” This maxim helps explain the story of my
encounter with the scholars from Basra. For these scholars, the verisimilitude or reality effect
of a historically incorrect account in well-known medieval text from Syria was so great
that it caused them to forget
the location of a tomb that is somewhere in the vicinity
of their own city.
To
this day, I still have not found anyone from Basra who can tell me exactly
where Rabi’a is
buried. This does not mean that her burial place does not exist.8 However, it does illustrate the power of sacred biography
to create public opinion, even at the expense of local traditions that are likely to be
more accurate.
In Barthes’ terminology, the misplacement of Rabi’a’s tomb by the scholars of Basra was due
to a “referential illusion” that shifted the structure of the Rabi’a narrative so much that the
illusion took the place of better-established historical evidence.
The authoritativeness of the
Syrian Ibn Khallikan’s narrative was greater than that of local knowledge, even for these
Iraqi residents of Rabi’a’s
home city. To put it another
way, for these
scholars, Rabi’a the literary
myth was indistinguishable from the Rabi’a of history.
In Barthes’ terminology, the reality effect
is the result of a dialectical process
in which “the extrusion
of the signified outside the ‘objective’ discourse” leads to a confrontation between the “real” and its alternative expression. This confrontation results
in a new meaning that is taken for
the “real” itself.
Because historical memory
partly depends on the reality
effect of narratives, for Barthes, “historical discourse
does not follow
the real, it merely signifies
it, constantly repeating this happened, without this assertion ever being anything
but the signified wrong side
of all historical narration.”9
In the historiography of the Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya narratives, the most
important text to establish the reality effect
of “this happened” was the chapter
on Rabi’a in Farid al-Din al-
‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’ (Memorial of the Saints).
Since the time of its publication at the
beginning of the thirteenth century
CE, the narratives in ‘Attar’s
text have influenced most subsequent versions of Rabi’a’s life, including modern works of historical scholarship. ‘Attar’s depiction of Rabi’a
is thus significant historically because
it has become the foundational text for most subsequent versions of the Rabi’a myth. For most Muslims even today, the truth of ‘Attar’s
version of Rabi’a’s life has become so obvious as to require
neither comment nor critique. In Barthes’ terminology, it inhabits
the domain of the “falsely
obvious.”10
Barthes’ book Mythologies
(1957) is useful as an introduction to the myths that constitute
the Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya narrative because unlike many students of myth, he attempts to separate
myth from religion. For Barthes,
myth is the expression of “what goes without saying”
in an historical narrative. In other words,
it is a type of meta-discourse in which meaning
is transformed into a literary image.11 Religious myths are a subset of this broader concept.12 Barthes’ approach
to myth is useful for the analysis
of the Rabi’a myth because
although Rabi’a
8
A history of Basra on the Iraqi web site ‘Ashiqat al-ward (Lover of Roses) claims
that Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya’s grave can be found in the cemetery adjoining the
tomb of al-Hasan al-Basri in the suburb of al-Zubayr, which was the site of
Basra in Rabi’a’s time. Also in this
cemetery are said to be the graves of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya, Maryam of Basra,
Shu’ba ibn al-Hajjaj, and the Umayyad-era poet al-Farazdaq. See al-Basra al-fayha’: ta’rikh wa hadarat
al-‘arab (Basra the Fragrant: History
and Culture of the Arabs), 8-9, http://www.a3ashk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=529.
9 Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” 139; italics in the original
10 Roland Barthes,
1957 Introduction to Mythologies, Annette Lavers, trans.
(New York: Hill and Wang,
1972), 11; I agree with Barthes’
term “falsely obvious”
only in a strictly empirical sense: I recognize
that the stories and statements that ‘Attar attributed to Rabi’a are important examples
of spiritual wisdom
and “truth,” regardless of who authored them.
11 Ibid, 11 and 131
12 Barthes discusses
only one religious
myth in Mythologies: The Iconography of Abbé Pierre
(47-49). All
of the other myths in this book are secular, and include such subjects as The World of Wrestling, Romans in Films, The Poor and the Proletariat, and The Brain of
Einstein.
al-‘Adawiyya was a religious figure, the myths that are connected with her all began as literary
narratives.13 These include
the four “thematic
units” or tropes of the Rabi’a narrative discussed in the previous
chapters: Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a
the Ascetic, Rabi’a
the Lover, and Rabi’a the Sufi. In fact, for some early non-Sufi writers
such as Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir
Tayfur, one may even
question whether the religious aspect
of the Rabi’a myth was important at all. For these
writers she was not a religious figure per se but a more general
exemplar of ethical
or rhetorical ideal-types. For Jahiz in particular, Rabi’a’s importance was purely literary:
she was important for him only in so far as she helped him make a rhetorical point. In the next chapter
we shall see that
the modern Egyptian
philosopher and historian
‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi
made use of Rabi’a
in much the same way.
Another theorist
whose approach to myth is useful for the study of the Rabi’a myth is the Russian philosopher and historian
Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev (1893-1988). Although
Losev was one of the most important Russian
intellectuals of the twentieth century,
he remains largely unknown in the West because his works were banned by the Soviet
Union for more than 50 years.
Losev’s first book was on the subject
of myth. This work, The Dialectics of Myth (1930), was banned by the Soviet government because of its reliance on philosophical idealism
and phenomenology, along with its advocacy
of Russian Orthodox
mysticism.14
Losev approaches myth much
like Barthes, but his framework for analysis is phenomenological rather than linguistic. However,
both scholars are more interested in the structure of myth than in its contents. Also like Barthes,
Losev does not consider myth to be an
exclusively religious phenomenon: “Myth as such,
pure mythical nature
as such, does not
necessarily have to be religious in principle . . . Religion brings
into myth a specific content
that makes it a religious myth, but the structure
of myth itself
by no means depends on whether it is
filled with religious or some other content.”15 Losev further agrees
with Barthes that myth is expressive. However, for Losev myth is expressive primarily
in a phenomenological sense:
“Myth is not the substantial, but an energistic self-affirmation of a person.
It is the assertion of a
person not in her deepest
and ultimate root,
but in her manifestational and expressive functions.”16
As
the phrase, “pure mythical nature,”
implies, Losev also differs from Barthes in his
idealism. This was partly due to his deep religious belief in a mystical form of Russian
13 Two
recent and well-regarded Religious Studies works on myth completely overlook
the contribution of narrative theory (whether by Barthes or anyone else) to
this field. Robert A. Segal, Theorizing about Myth (Amherst, Mass.:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) restricts its analysis to the fields
of Religion and the Anthropology of Religion. And despite the use of the word, “narrative,” in the title,
Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and
Scholarship (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), mostly
ignores narrative theory and never mentions Barthes. Neither of these works is thus of much value for the study of
the narrative construction of myth in Sufi or other hagiographic texts.
14 See the biography of Losev in the Introduction to Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev, The Dialectics of Myth,
Vladimir
Marchenkov, trans. (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1-15. After publishing
this work, Losev was arrested and
condemned to a labor camp. He soon
became blind and was lucky to survive his ordeal. In 1931 Maxim Gorky criticized Losev for being a “blind, insane,
and illiterate professor who had failed to die in a timely fashion”
(14). Ironically, his sentence was suspended in 1933 at the intercession of Gorky’s wife, who was then the head of the Soviet Red Cross.
15 Ibid, 92; the italics
in this and other quotations come from the published text.
16 Ibid, 93
Orthodoxy.17 According to Losev, when a person is turned into a mythical figure,
she becomes an idealized image: “Myth is a depiction of
a person, i.e., her pictorial
emanation, her image.”18 However, this image is not a philosophical ideal
but a phenomenon— she is an idealized expression. As phenomena, both the myth and the person behind
the myth coexist
at the same time. Some form of reality,
no matter how indistinct it may be, remains behind the image. “Myth
is not a person as such, but her face; and this means that the face is inseparable from the person, i.e., myth is inseparable from her.”19 If Losev’s
phenomenology of myth were applied
to the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, one could say that the “face” of Rabi’a — the mythical
identity that she possesses— has become the “reality” of Rabi’a over time. Because
of this, her mythical
“face” is seen by those
who revere her as expressing objective reality, no matter how much
contrary evidence is provided. As part of what Losev
calls “myth in history,” every
new narrative depiction of Rabi’a engages
dialectically with previous
narratives as part of a hermeneutic
process in which new “faces”
or identities are generated without
ever fully resolving the contradiction between the myth and the person behind the myth.
However, behind this play of faces or masks, a phenomenologically “real” person can still
be said to exist, even if she is not empirically real. For Losev this explains
the verisimilitude of the myth as icon, which, in the case of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, comprises her literary
and public images together.
Apart from what she symbolizes for Sufi writers,
Rabi’a is also an icon for
millions of ordinary Muslims. Even the Egyptian atheist
and Existentialist philosopher ‘Abd al- Rahman Badawi was able to see a certain
reality behind the Rabi’a myth, although he could not accept her religious meaning.
In his book Shahidat
al-‘ishq al-ilahi (The
Martyr of Divine
Love), Badawi tells about his visit to the tomb ascribed
to Rabi’a in Damascus in December 1947. He
describes how an old man who had been devoted
to the tomb for over 50 years insisted to him
that Rabi’a protected the neighborhood of the tomb from French
bombs during the Damascus
revolt of 1925. Badawi acknowledges the phenomenological reality
of this “face”
of Rabi’a when he exclaims at the end of this story, “And still the memory (dhikra) of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya lives on universally in the souls
of the people of Damascus
and Syria!”20
Losev describes the
verisimilitude of myth in a way that seems to prefigure Barthes’ discussion of the reality
effect. However, he avoids using biased expressions such as “the falsely
obvious,” which reveal
Barthes’ secular skepticism of mythological representations. Instead, for Losev, each “face” of the mythical
image is real in its own way:
Dialectics
demands a simultaneous recognition
that a person is identical to her
manifestations and energies, and at once different from them. There is one thing, one and the same thing— a person with
living functions, but this does not prevent the person as such being different
from her own states and energies . . . The face, the mythical visage,
17 Losev was suspected by the Soviets
of “Onomatodoxy.” This term refers
to a sect of Russian Orthodoxy devoted to the recitation of the Divine Name, and which advocated
martyrdom over submission to Soviet rule. Even after
his release from the labor
camps, Losev continued to be anathematized as a “militant mystic.” After his wife’s death it was revealed that the two of them had
secretly taken monastic
vows and lived together in celibacy. See Ibid, 7 and 13-14
18 Ibid, 93
19 Ibid
20 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 100; viewed
in historical terms,
the “real” Rabi’a
could never have
been buried in this Damascus
tomb.
is inseparable
from the person and is therefore the person herself. But the person herself is
different from her own mythical visages, and therefore she is neither her own
face, nor her own myth, nor these mythical visages.21
In other words, for Losev the mythical image of a saint such as Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya acts as an icon.
When reading or listening to a narrative about Rabi’a, the hagiographer’s audience contemplates (or venerates) the literary image
of Rabi’a much as one would contemplate (or venerate) the painted
icon of a saint in a Russian
Orthodox church. The Lebanese writer Widad
El Sakkakini looks at Rabi’a
in much the same way when she states, “I am looking
at Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya as if through eternity, or at the door of the infinite.
In her right hand, she is holding a
thick book of pages without
blemish, the first of which she is about to turn. She goes over it
contemplatively and tenderly.”22 This figural representation is not the same as the “real” person
that the icon depicts, but it is not completely different from her either. Especially when one contemplates the iconic image of Rabi’a through hagiographic narratives, one “sees” the spiritual reality that each narrative
represents.
In certain ways, Losev’s view of myth is similar to the Dutch theologian
Hendrik M. Vroom’s notion of how religious stories
cause us to “see otherwise,” or better yet, to “see more
truly.”23 This insight
is what lies behind Losev’s
contention that the iconic representation of a mythical figure
like Rabi’a or an Orthodox
Christian saint is not an empirically “real” person but is
not unreal either. Using the biblical
story of David and Bathsheba as an example,
Vroom argues that religious stories or myths
make truth claims
on four different levels simultaneously:
historical truth claims relate an allegedly historical event; fictional
truth claims tell
the story not as
it empirically occurred
but “as what could have happened in order to yield insight;”24 moral
truth claims provide the background lesson, or the “moral” of the story; and religious truth claims
provide insight into the story
as it is connected to God. The crucial point is that none of these
truth claims can be separated
from the others without doing harm to the insights
that the whole story provides. The fact that a religious story is empirically fictional (i.e., that an event did not happen in precisely the way that the historical truth claim asserts)
makes no difference to the moral and religious truth claims of the story.
The insights that they provide
are still real. In fact, with respect to these latter claims,
the meaning of the fictional
story is likely to be “truer” than what
actually did or did not happen. Losev would not have disagreed
with this assertion. Unlike the ideologically secular
Barthes, he was deeply religious and suffered decades
of persecution for persisting against Soviet Communism in his Russian
Orthodox beliefs. He would have been the last
person to claim
that the mythical
image of a saint portrayed
by hagiography was less
important than the “historical person.”
The key concepts
in Losev’s theory of myth are visage, form, image, and outline.
However, unlike Thomas Heffernan’s notion that sainthood is a reflection of public opinion,
for
21 Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, 93
22 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 9; in the original Arabic text Rabi’a turns the first page of the Book of
Life with her left hand, forewhadowing the life of bondage and sexuality that El Sakkakini
imagines her to have lived in her youth (see below). Idem, al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 10
23 See Hendrik
M. Vroom, “Religious Truth: Seeing Things As They Really Are, Experience, Insight,
and
Religious
Stories,” in Frederiek Depoortere and Magdalen Lambkin, The Question of Theological Truth: Philosophical and Interreligious Perspectives (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, 2012), 115-135. 24 Ibid, 128
Losev, “Myth is in no sense
any kind of reflection. It is always a manifestation, immediate and naïve reality,
a seen and tangibly felt sculptural quality
of life.”25 For the Annales-influenced
historian Heffernan, the theologies that provide the religious truth claims of sainthood are dogmatic: they act as models for how the saint is supposed to be perceived. For Losev, myth is
not dogmatic but creative. Dogma,
which is the absolutization of myth, stands
outside of time. Myth, however, is part of time because it expresses a form of becoming.
To illustrate the historical aspect of myth, Losev uses the example
of the Russian myth of the
blossoming fern on St. John’s
Eve. For the Russian Orthodox
believer, this fern can help find
hidden treasures, open iron doors,
and do other extraordinary things.
Yet if one takes away the
“historical” moment of Saint John’s
Eve, the fern becomes like any other
object, “any stone
lying along the road with other refuse.”26 For Losev, the association of the myth with an historical
memory shows that the myth of the blossoming fern is inseparable from history. On any other day, the fern ceases
to be meaningful. As Vroom might say, part of its meaning
lies in its historical truth claim:
it refers to a miracle
story of St. John. According to Losev, for a myth to
be truly meaningful, it must have a historical context,
even if that context only exists in what
Barthes would call “paper time.”
In a similar way, the meaning of the myth of Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya is also grounded in both its historical and fictional truth claims: in Losev’s
terminology it is a story
traced through the visages,
forms, images, and
outlines of narrative
depictions that portray
Rabi’a the Icon at different
moments in time.
This chapter and the next
will examine the trope of
Rabi’a the Icon in two key versions of the Rabi’a myth. The present chapter
will examine the highly influential vita of
Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya composed
by the Sufi Farid al-Din
al-‘Attar (d. 1220).
Chapter 6 will examine the revision of ‘Attar’s vita of
Rabi’a by the secular Egyptian
historian and Existentialist philosopher ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi
(1917-2002) and the dramatic use of Badawi’s
depiction of Rabi’a
by a feminist writer and Egyptian
filmmakers. Each of these depictions corresponds to a particular
moment in the historical development of the Rabi’a
myth. As Roland
Barthes has noted,
the stories recounted in myths do not rely primarily on empirical facts but on verisimilitude. The myth of Rabi’a lives on in the present,
“uncontaminated by reality”
as Barthes would say,
because its verisimilitude is reinforced by public opinion.
On this point,
Barthes and Heffernan would agree. The public judges the truth of a myth neither on the basis of empirical facts nor on all
that may be said or written about the person
behind the myth but in relation to what resonates best with the basic experiences of the audience.
As Hendrik Vroom rightly points out, these experiences determine the truth
of the insights contained in religious stories
or myths. However,
it is also important to remember that in the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya everything that
the public knows about her first appeared in a literary
text. As Losev would say, the dialectics of myth in sainthood narratives are found
at the points of contact
between sacred biography and its audience, where the visages or forms of
verisimilitude are generated
and revised. As we shall see in these
two chapters, Rabi’a the Icon appears in both Sufi and secular
literature as an unfolding series of
images on successive pages of “paper time” that are bound together
in a never-ending process of identity formation and reformation. The purpose of these chapters
is to explicate the
development of these identities in “paper time.”
25 Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, 100
26 Ibid, 101-2
II.
FROM VISAGE TO VITA: ‘ATTAR’S
OUTLINE OF THE RABI’A MYTH
a.
Composing Rabi’a’s
Image: ‘Attar’s Hagiographic Predecessors
In the premodern historiography of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya,
three Sufi authors stand out for developing the most durable
tropes of the Rabi’a myth. The first of these is Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 996 CE), who was primarily
responsible for the trope of Rabi’a the Lover. As we saw in
Chapter 3, developing this trope
did not mean that Makki was the first to associate Rabi’a
with Love mysticism. This connection was established in the ninth
century CE by the early
Sufi al- Harith al-Muhasibi. However, Makki took Muhasibi’s and other early accounts about Rabi’a and reinterpreted them in light of the Platonically inspired
Love theory that was popular
in the intellectual and court circles
of the Abbasid capital of Baghdad. By portraying Rabi’a in his book
Qut al-qulub as a sort of Muslim
Diotima, he could highlight the mystical elements
of Plato’s Love theory and weave them into his own theory of Sufi knowledge. In a way that was similar to previously established patterns in the works of Plotinus
and early Christian
mystics, Makki combined Platonic
Love theory with the well-known trope of the heart as the seat of the spiritual
intellect and made Love the key to the knowledge of God through
mystical union. By using the figure of Rabi’a to symbolize the station of Love, he not only established her reputation among the
highest ranks of Love mystics
in Islam but also enshrined
her as the chief representative of this tradition. Whatever her actual teachings
might have been, Rabi’a’s mythical
visage henceforth would always include the trope of Rabi’a the Lover.
The
second Sufi author to add important elements
to the Rabi’a myth was Abu ‘Abd al-
Rahman al-Sulami (d. 1021 CE). Although
Sulami has long been known as an important early hagiographer and writer on Sufi doctrines, his reputation has increased in recent years due to the
edition and publication of many of his works. We now know that his doctrinal works
were Sufi “best-sellers” in his time and that he was one of the most influential early theorists of Sufism.27
Although Sulami disapproved of ordinary women, he believed
that Sufi women merited what feminist scholars have called a “hermeneutic of remembrance” so that their contributions to Islamic spirituality would be recognized. As women, they were more likely to be misunderstood and their teachings were likely to be overlooked. Sulami’s solution for this problem
was to publish a hagiographic memorial
of Sufi women, Dhikr al-niswa al-muta’abbidat al-sufiyyat (Memorial of Female
Sufi Devotees). I have referred
to this work many times in the preceding
chapters.
Significantly, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is the first Sufi woman to be mentioned in Sulami’s
book. By highlighting her in this way, he created
another important image
for the Rabi’a
myth: Rabi’a the Iconic Sufi Woman.
This too was not a new development. Makki could not have
depicted Rabi’a the Lover as a Muslim
Diotima unless he also thought
of her as an important Sufi. Likewise, Sulami also took an established image of Rabi’a
and embellished it with a new
interpretation. For Sulami,
Rabi’a was the paradigm of the theology
of servitude that he proposed as the defining characteristic of
Sufi women.28
27 On the popularity of Sulami’s works in his time see al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Ta’rikh Baghdad, vol. 2, 245.
28 For a detailed discussion of Sulami’s theology
of servitude, see R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 54-60.
For Rabi’a and the other Sufi women who represented this model of spirituality,
becoming a “slave of God” (fem. amat Allah) was the first step in becoming a “friend of God”
(wali Allah) or Muslim saint.
The ascetic and devotional acts that they performed enabled
them to overcome the limitations of their female
natures. As Sulami
illustrates, early Sufi women
could travel without a chaperone, mix in social gatherings with men, teach men privately
and in public, and develop themselves intellectually in ways that were impossible for other women.
Most importantly, it was no longer
possible for male critics to claim that Sufi women were
deficient in religion and intellect like other women.29 By means of the theology
of servitude, the highest degrees of spiritual knowledge were accessible to them. As Surayra, a Sufi woman
of the mid-tenth century
states in Sulami’s
book, “When servitude
(‘ubudiyya) vanishes,
only lordship (rububiyya) remains.”30
The notion that Sufi women
approached God through a theology of servitude allows Sulami’s image of Rabi’a to be contrasted doctrinally with that of Makki. In Makki’s depiction of Rabi’a, her devotion
to the Divine Beloved and intimate access
to God’s secrets
are aspects of a spiritual path in which knowledge of God is based on Love. However,
for Sulami Rabi’a
is not primarily a Love mystic
as she is for Makki.
Instead, Sulami’s Rabi’a
is more of an ethicist
or moralist, which brings
her closer to the depictions of non-Sufi writers
such as Jahiz
and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur (see Chapter
1). However, this does not mean that Sulami completely ignores the trope of Rabi’a the Lover. In one account he even describes her as being inebriated from the love of
God. However, he subordinates the trope of Rabi’a the Lover to that of Rabi’a the Teacher,
much as Plato did for Diotima in The
Symposium.
Besides portraying Rabi’a as the iconic Sufi Woman, Sulami also played a major role in developing two other tropes. The first of these is the trope of Rabi’a the Slave, which, as we shall
see, was made into a major part of the Rabi’a myth by Farid al-Din al-‘Attar. Sulami takes the first step in this direction by claiming that Rabi’a was a client
(fem. mawlat) of the Arab clan of
Al ‘Atik.31 We saw in Chapter
1 that the institution of muwalat or personal
clientage was the most
common means by which non-Arabs
became Muslims from the period of the first Islamic conquests through the end of the Umayyad dynasty
(ca. 634-750 CE). Because many mawali
were freed slaves or the Muslim-born children
of slaves, it is easy to see how Sulami’s
assertion could develop into the notion
that Rabi’a herself
was a slave. In addition, this trope may have
been reinforced by the conflation of muwalat servitude with Sulami’s theology
of servitude, such that Rabi’a the Slave of God became Rabi’a the Slave of Man.
The third contribution of Sulami to the Rabi’a myth was
his enhancement of the trope of Rabi’a the Sufi by stressing
her knowledge of God over
her other spiritual attributes. By
highlighting this aspect of Rabi’a’s
identity, Sulami sought to reinforce
the notion that Sufism
was primarily a way of knowledge. As discussed in Chapter 4, each of the visages
that make up the composite image of Rabi’a the Sufi depends on the notion that she knew God intimately. By
29 This
notion was based in part on a famous hadith in the collection of Bukhari. See Rkia E. Cornell, “’Soul of A Woman Was
Created Below’: Woman as the Lower Soul (Nafs)
in Islam,” in Jerald D. Gort, Henry Jansen, and Hendrik M. Vroom editors,
Probing the Depths of Evil and Good: Multireligious Views and Case Studies (Amsterdam and New York: Editions
Rodopi, 2007), 257-280.
30 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 246-7; Surayra also said, “The greatest cause of God’s disapproval is the
inability to understand.”
31 Ibid, Early Sufi Women, 74-5. It was demonstrated in Chapter 1 that this claim by Sulami is factually
mistaken.
portraying Rabi’a
as a mystic who knew God better
than her contemporaries, Sulami demonstrated that she was equal in rank to the male Sufis that he memorialized in Tabaqat al-
Sufiyya (Generations of the Sufis),
the hagiographic anthology
that he devoted
to men.32 In his
Book of Sufi Women he portrays Rabi’a
as a master of most of the moral and spiritual virtues associated with male Sufis,
including truthfulness, critical
self-awareness, devotion to God, and profound doctrinal knowledge.
However, in his portrayal
of Rabi’a the Sufi, Sulami
does not attempt
to obscure her gender, nor does he assert, as ‘Attar would later do, that she should be regarded as an honorary man. Unlike other Sufi women in his book, who are identified as teachers by the masculine term ustadh, Rabi’a
the Teacher is identified by the feminine
term mu’addiba (female trainer).
She also exhibits clichéd
female traits such as weeping
and expressing her love for God emotionally. However, Sulami does not portray these traits as necessarily signs of weakness,
nor do they diminish Rabi’a’s reputation as a Sufi teacher. Her weeping is not for herself but for others and
her love for God is not only a matter
of emotion but is also part of a developed
form of Love mysticism. The overall
impression that is left by Sulami’s portrayal of Rabi’a is of a wise,
independent, and self-confident spiritual master who remains a woman despite
taking on roles that are normally associated with men. Her value for Sufism is proven by the fact that as a
woman she is accepted in a man’s world.
This image was to change among later generations of Muslim writers.
In fact, an important difference between the earliest portrayals of Rabi’a, which culminate in the eleventh- century writings of Sulami,
Kharkushi, and Ghazali,
and later medieval
portrayals, which begin toward the end of the twelfth
century, is that later writers
are more explicitly concerned with
Rabi’a’s femininity. One of the first of this later group of hagiographers was the Hanbali theologian Jamal al-Din ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201 CE). Ibn al-Jawzi’s highly gendered portrayal
of Rabi’a stands in marked contrast
to that of Sulami and his predecessors, who were less concerned
with highlighting gender
distinctions. Unlike Sulami,
who is not worried about the sexuality of Sufi women because
their spiritual vocation
makes them immune
to women’s deficiencies, Ibn al- Jawzi feels
the need to de-feminize Rabi’a
in order to make her more acceptable to men. To do
this, he depicts her as an old woman (‘ajuza) “who looked like a shrunken, old water-skin and appeared to be on the verge of
collapsing.”33
Ibn
al-Jawzi’s attempt to neutralize Rabi’a’s
femininity by depicting
her as an aged and
emaciated ascetic
was a rhetorical technique that had already
been established by Christian
hagiographers. For example,
in the vita of
St. Pelagia of Antioch attributed to Jacob of Edessa
(ca. fifth century CE), the saint at the end of her life is portrayed in a way that is simiilar to Ibn al- Jawzi’s depiction of Rabi’a:
I failed to
recognize her because she had lost those good looks I used to know; her
astounding beauty had all faded away, her laughing and bright face that I had
known had become ugly, her pretty eyes had become hollow and cavernous as the
result of much fasting and the keeping of vigils. The joints of her holy bones, all fleshless, were visible
beneath her skin through emaciation brought on by ascetic practices. Indeed, the whole
32 See Sulami, Tabaqat al-Sufiyya.
33 Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, in R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 276-283
and idem, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 4,
22-4. This same trope would also be used by ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi in his modern historical representation of Rabi’a.
complexion of her
body was coarse and dark like sackcloth, as the result of her strenuous penance.34
Ibn al-Jawzi’s notice on Rabi’a
in Sifat al-safwa contains only a small portion of the accounts that he originally included in a now-lost work that was dedicated entirely
to her.35 Thus, there is presently no way of knowing if he used other tropes
from Christian hagiography in his portrayal of her. Such tropes would have been available to him because
the stories of early
Christian women saints
such as Pelagia
were popular in the Eastern
churches that represented Christianity in his native
city of Baghdad.
However, in Sifat al-safwa
there are hints
of what we might
find in this lost work. For example,
the theme of repentance, which is central
not only to the
story of Pelagia
but also to the hagiographies of other Christian
women ascetics such as Mary of
Egypt and Thaïs of Alexandria, is more evident
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s narrative than in previous accounts about Rabi’a.36 In addition, by focusing on Rabi’a’s emotionalism he implies that the
level of her reason or intellect was less than that of her male counterparts. He portrays Rabi’a
as weeping constantly and as practicing a highly-strung form of piety that borders
on hysteria.37
Unlike Sulami, who portrays Rabi’a as the equal of men in her spiritual
state, for Ibn al-Jawzi
although she is unique, she remains imprisoned in what Simone de Beauvoir
called “The Eternal Feminine.”38
b.
‘Attar’s Portrayal
of Rabi’a in Tadhkirat al-Awliya’
The most influential Sufi author to develop key tropes of the Rabi’a
myth was Farid al-
Din al-‘Attar (d. ca 1220 CE). Although
‘Attar was born in Nishapur
like Sulami, his portrayal of Rabi’a
in the hagiographic anthology Tadhkirat al-awliya’ (Memorial of the Saints) is very
different from that of his predecessor. At first glance,
the highly gendered
tone of his chapter on Rabi’a
makes it seem more similar
to Ibn al-Jawzi’s depiction than to Sulami’s. However, ‘Attar’s and Ibn al-Jawzi’s versions share very little in common. For a number of reasons,
it is best to think of ‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’ as a unique and original work. First, it is the earliest hagiography of Rabi’a in the Persian
language. Second, most of the stories
that ‘Attar relates cannot be found in any previous
work. One can find bits and pieces
of earlier accounts in ‘Attar’s chapter,
but the stories
in which they appear are more often
than not quite different from the originals. Many stories— such as the those of Rabi’a’s encounters with Hasan
34 Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 60
35 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 282-3
36 See, for example, Benedicta
Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic
Sources
(Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1987), 26-56 and 76-84. Widad El El Sakkakini recalls the image of Thaïs in
her biography of Rabi’a. Idem, First Among Sufis, 16
37 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 276-83;
the themes of repentance and personal weakness
are stressed so
much by Ibn al-Jawzi
that it is hard to avoid the impression that he believed
in the concept of original
sin— or at least original inadequacy— when it came to women’s natures. In a way that is different from the
ascetic weeping discussed in Chapter 2, Ibn al-Jawzi’s Rabi’a seems to weep for
the sins of all the daughters of Eve.
38 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second
Sex, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, trans.
(New
York: Vintage
Books, 2011), 4-5; for De Beauvoir, the Eternal Woman is forever imprisoned in
subjectivity: “Some even say she thinks with her hormones.” This is a very apt description of Ibn al- Jawzi’s portrayal of Rabi’a’s
emotionalism.
al-Basri— are anachronistic and seem to have been invented by ‘Attar himself.
Another difference between previous
depictions of Rabi’a and ‘Attar’s
version is that ‘Attar sometimes portrays Rabi’a as a miracle-worker. ‘Attar’s
depiction of Rabi’a is the first in which miracles are used as proofs of her sainthood. Finally,
‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a is unique because
for the first time it provides
a background narrative, what Losev would call an outline, for the Rabi’a myth. In other words,
it is a true vita or
bios in the Christian
hagiographic sense.
‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a is also different from its antecedents because it was written
both for Sufis and for the general
public. His purpose
in writing Tadhkirat al-awliya’ was to popularize the institution of Sufi sainthood. This meant that the work had to be accessible to both Sufis and non-Sufis alike.
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is the only Sufi woman to be highlighted in its
pages. For this reason, ‘Attar
is very concerned
to stress how different she was from other
women. His desire to portray
Rabi’a as a popular icon led him to use miracle stories
as proofs of her
sainthood. In addition,
he added commentary to tell the reader how he wanted her example understood. Because of his use of commentary and vernacular language, the level of verisimilitude ultimately attained by ‘Attar’s depiction
of Rabi’a is unequaled by any other Sufi
work before or since. For the vast majority of Muslims, including most Sufis, ‘Attar’s
outline of Rabi’a’s vita has
become the “true” account of the life of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
Because it was written
as the outline or back-story for a myth, ‘Attar’s narrative
of Rabi’a’s life is teleological and the message
it conveys is mainly theological. These aspects of ‘Attar’s depiction of Rabi’a
are illustrated in the following
quote from Jean Annestay, one of the most
recent authors to be influenced by ‘Attar’s narrative. For Annestay, who is a follower of the
Traditionalist writer Frithjof
Schuon (1907-1998), historical research must not be allowed
to challenge the verisimilitude of a saint’s vita.
This is because the truth of a saint’s life is not in the historical details of her life but in its “principial” or theological meaning:
In such a
perspective, the life of Rabi’a or of any saint, in order to be understood in
all of its fullness, must not only be related to a given historical epoch but
also to a strictly prehistoric or if one prefers, non-historic reality— that is
to say, prior to all history and all
temporality— in which it finds its principle and its end and which is its true
reason for existence. It consists, if
you will, of an anteriority that is neither horizontal nor temporal but
vertical or principial. It is a
vestige that refers back to the instantaneity of the eternal present and which
can be anecdotally or literally nothing but a trace recounted in a temporal
moment. Such a perspective is
rigorously the inverse of that of modern history.39
Although Annestay’s approach to Rabi’a is different from the literary and historical
perspective of the present study,
he depicts ‘Attar’s
authorial intent quite accurately. All of
Rabi’a’s hagiographers have sought to convey her “principial” meaning
(or as Hendrik Vroom would say, her story’s
“religious truth claims”)
one way or another. Indeed,
this meaning is a
crucial part of her mythical
identity. However, the principial meaning
of her story in modern times is not always
theological, nor is it always
religious. For example,
Widad El Sakkakini sees Rabi’a as a feminist icon: “Today I come, the last of the searchers, not to dispel this precious memory, not to clutch
on a handful of sand, but to release long-hidden pages in the East and West.
I stretch out with loving
hand to gather
them together, as they do the mementoes of a
39
Annestay, Une Femme
Soufie en Islam, 27-28; Annestay is not an academic but a cartoonist, who
has made a reputation for himself
in France by designing stage
sets and drawing
the panels for graphic novels.
Heroine fallen in the struggle, so as to enshrine them in a worthy place.”40 Although
Sakkakini’s secular view of Rabi’a’s principial meaning is very different from Annestay’s, she too follows
in the footsteps of previous hagiographers who portrayed Rabi’a as an icon. As with both Annestay
and ‘Attar, her portrayal of Rabi’a, although
secular, is still
teleological: “I was a star in the heavens, then I became an idea on
earth.”41
Like
the modern authors Annestay and El Sakkakini, when ‘Attar wrote about Rabi’a he
attempted to paint her image
with words. In Greek or Russian Orthodox
icons, the principial meaning of the icon is expressed through the forms,
postures, and gestures
of the main figure.
Because iconic figures are symbols rather
than living people,
their images serve as referents to narratives and theological texts that exist beyond the icon. In Medieval Latin Christianity, the iconic status of a saint was expressed through
the trope of admiranda, “something to be wondered
at.” Aviad M. Kleinberg has observed that in the Latin West, “medieval female saints tended to
belong more to the admirable than to the imitable pole of the spectrum.”42 One could
say the same about most of the women saints of medieval Islamic
hagiography. ‘Attar’s Rabi’a is also an
example of admiranda. She is more an icon to be wondered at than a personal example
to be followed. Although
her story embodies
many of the doctrines of Sufism, she is not portrayed as teaching a systematic spiritual method; instead, she stands for a set of spiritual
ideals. For this reason, ‘Attar’s portrayal of her is more passive
than Sulami’s is. In ‘Attar’s accounts
people come to pay their respects
to Rabi’a, just as they would to an icon. Those who come to ask her advice do so in a formal
and even ritualistic manner. When she goes on pilgrimage to Mecca, the Ka’ba seeks her out rather than the other way around.
In one pilgrimage story, she is depicted
in an ambiguous state between the beginning and end of her quest, neither back at her starting-point
in Basra nor at her goal in Mecca. In nearly every one of ‘Attar’s stories,
Rabi’a seems to be
posed, as if she were a figure in a painting.
To better illustrate how ‘Attar portrays
Rabi’a as an icon, the full text of the introduction
to her chapter in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ is reproduced below.
‘Attar prepares the reader to view
Rabi’a as an icon by placing her not only among the major figures
of Sufism, but also among other female religious icons
such as the Prophet Muhammad’s wife ‘A’isha and the Virgin
Mary. In addition, he provides commentary to explain her unique and inimitable status.
As part of his commentary, he stresses Rabi’a’s
difference from other
women by saying
that she was so far from
being an ordinary
woman that she should be regarded as an honorary
man:
This one is
illuminated by a special spark, veiled with the veil of sincerity, consumed with love and longing, enamored of
proximity and immolation, deputy of Mary the Pure, and accepted among men:
Rabi’a ‘Adawiyya (may God Most High have mercy upon her). If anyone asks
why her memorial is placed among the ranks of men, we reply that the Most
Honored of Prophets (may God bless and preserve him) says, “God does not
examine your forms.” In other words,
[spirituality] is not about forms but about pure intentions. If the saying is correct that two-thirds
of the religion is from [the Prophet’s
40 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 9; al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa 10; here as in
many other places, the English translation is more of a paraphrase than an
exact rendition of the Arabic. For
example, “the mementoes of a Heroine fallen
in the struggle” are actually
“the scattered bones of a [male] hero fallen in battle.”
41 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 7; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 7
42 Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their own Country: Living
Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the
Later Middle
Ages (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1997), 134-5
wife] ‘A’isha the
Righteous (may God be pleased with her), then it is also correct to benefit
from her maidservant (kanizkani-u fa’ida
garaftan). When a woman is on the
path of God Most High, she is a man: she cannot be called a woman. Thus it is that ‘Abbasa Tusi said, “When
on the morrow on the Plain of Resurrection they call out, ‘Oh men!’ the first
person to step into the ranks of men will be Mary.”
If Hasan
[al-Basri] would not hold a gathering unless [Rabi’a] was present, there is no
harm in recording her memorial among the ranks of men. Indeed, when it comes to the reality of what this folk (i.e.,
the Sufis) are about, all are without distinction in divine unity. In unity, how can your existence or mine
remain, much less “man” or “woman”? As Abu ‘Ali Farmadi (may God have mercy on
him) said, “Prophecy is the essence of glory and sublimity. High status and low status (mihtari va kihtari) are not part of it.”
Sainthood is the same. This is especially true for Rabi’a,
who in her age had no equal in
her behavior or knowledge of God (ma’rifat). She was considered one of the greats of
her age and was a decisive proof for those who lived in her time.43
In the endnotes to his translation of ‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a, Michael
Sells remarks on the
ambivalence of the portrayal of women in this and other passages
in the text. However, he concludes that ‘Attar does not try to “dewomanize” Rabi’a but “leaves
the issue of women as women
open.” Sells sees ‘Attar’s view of women as more positive than that of St. Augustine or the medieval Christian
writers who depicted
women saints as viragoes: women
in the guise of men. He finds justification for this position
in the statement by the Prophet Muhammad
that spiritual status is not about
forms but about
intentions and in ‘Attar’s assertion that in the station
of divine unity gender distinctions are unimportant. For Sells, comments
such as these
indicate that Sufi women can be honored as women without
being turned into honorary men.44 On this point, he agrees with Margaret Smith, who states,
“Such a conception of the relations between
the saint and his Lord left no room for the distinction of sex. In the spiritual
life there could be
‘neither male nor female.’”45
Although it is possible
to draw such a conclusion from this introduction, other statements
in ‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a seem to lead to a different conclusion. First, to claim, as Sells does,
that “no theological statement is made about the status of women” by ‘Attar
is incorrect. ‘Attar’s assertion that gender distinctions are transcended in the station
of divine unity
is nothing if not
theological. Another part of the problem is that Sells
draws his conclusions from comparisons with Latin Christian writers
on sainthood who were roughly
contemporary with ‘Attar.
The
43
‘Attar, Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, 61, translation from the Persian text by Vincent Cornell. V. Cornell’s translation differs in
several ways from that of Paul Losensky in Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 155. For
example, Losensky does not correctly translate the pronoun reference that
portrays Rabi’a as the maidservant of ‘A’isha.
Instead, he describes her as the maidservant of God. Losensky was apparently not aware that ‘Attar confused Rabi’a with the
earlier woman ascetic Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE), who was a maidservant of ‘A’isha. Modern
writers often go beyond such mistakes and take great liberties when translating this portion of ‘Attar’s
text. For example, Margaret Smith
adds a sentence that does not appear in ‘Attar’s original version: “As the
Prophet said, ‘The people are assembled (on the Day of Judgment) according to the purposes
of their hearts.’”
Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 19-20; (Rainbow Bridge),
2. As for Widiad El El Sakkakini, what she presents in her book as a
“translation” of ‘Attar’s introduction is in fact completely made up. Apart from reproducing ‘Attar’s reference
to ‘A’isha, her version bears no resemblance to the original and even makes use
of History of Religions scholar Rudolf Otto’s concept of the “Idea of the
Holy.” El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 42
44 Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, n. 9, 345
45 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 19; (Rainbow Bridge),
1
problem with this approach
is that Meister Eckhart and the late medieval Beguines
that he cites had no established historical or cultural
ties to ‘Attar’s time and place. When religious and cultural contexts are as far apart
as the distance between Western
Europe and Nishapur, one cannot be sure that similar
phenomena will have similar causes.
Had Sells looked instead for comparisons in the writings
of Christians from the Middle East, he might have seen things differently.
For example, in a recent article
on the Gnostic Christian Gospel of Mary (third to fifth century CE), Karen King discusses theological arguments about the transcendence of gender that are
very similar to those used by ‘Attar in his chapter on Rabi’a. King notes that three different approaches to gender can be found
in Gnostic Christian texts: (1) “The ideal (often
the transcendent or noetic)
is gendered as masculine; the lower (often
the material or passionate
nature) is gendered as female”;
(2) the ideal
is portrayed as male-female (androgynous), with the fallen condition divided into male and female;
(3) “the ideal is nongendered; gender and sexuality belong to the lower
sphere.”46 This last trope describes the approach to gender in Tadhkirat
al- awliya’. As ‘Attar
states: “When it comes to the reality
of what [the Sufis] are about, all are
without distinction in divine unity.
In unity, how can your existence or mine remain,
much less ‘man’ or ‘woman’?” However,
King was not able to correlate the trope of the nongendered ideal with any specific
social practice in early Christianity. She concludes, “The mere fact of a woman
in a
position of leadership does not necessarily reflect a positive
valuation of women.”47 This is an
important corrective to Margaret Smith’s
assertion that “the high position
attained by the women Sufis is attested
. . . by the fact that the Sufis
themselves gave to a woman
the first place among the earliest Muhammadan mystics.”48 Although ‘Attar and the author of the Gospel of Mary
both maintain that men and women exercise
leadership on the basis of spiritual maturity and not on the basis of gender, one must still ask, “To what end is this argument employed?”49
The question of ends or motives
becomes even more important when we find that ‘Attar not only uses the trope of the nongendered ideal, but he uses the highly gendered
or misogynistic trope as well. In the previously quoted passage he states: “When a woman
is on the path of God
Most High, she is a man: she cannot be called a woman.” This is clearly
an example of King’s
first trope, in which the spiritual ideal is gendered
as masculine and the opposite
of spirituality is gendered as feminine. Otherwise, why can’t a woman on the path of God be called a woman?
To depict Rabi’a like this is a way of saying that in her spiritual
knowledge she is a virago,
which is a perspective that Sells claims
not to find in ‘Attar’s
narrative.50
46 Karen King, “Why All the Controversy? Mary in the Gospel of Mary,” in F. Stanley
Jones, ed., Which
Mary? The Marys of Early Christian
Tradition (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 59
47 Ibid
48 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 21; (Rainbow Bridge),
3
49 King, “Why All the Controversy?” 60
50 A similarly
negative attitude toward
femininity can be found in the writings
of early Christian
theologians too. For example, St. Jerome (d. 420 CE)
stated, “She who serves Christ will cease to be a woman and will be called a
man.” Frances Beer, Women and Mystical
Experience in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge,
Suffolk, U.K. and Rochester, NY: The Boydell
Press, 1992), 4. With respect
to misogyny, even Gnostic
Christians were not very different from the orthodox. The Christian Gnostic Gospel
of Thomas states: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women
are not worthy of Life.’ Jesus said:
‘I myself shall lead her, in order to make her male, so that she too may become
a living spirit resembling you males. For
every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
The negative view of femininity that is implied
by ‘Attar’s attempt
to make Rabi’a into an honorary
man is even more explicit
in other passages,
which contain references to woman’s weak or corruptible nature.
In one story, the ascetic
Ibrahim ibn Adham (d. 776 or 790 CE) is confounded when the Ka’ba
leaves its location
in Mecca and goes to meet Rabi’a
in the desert. Despite this honor, Rabi’a is still described
by ‘Attar as a “weak woman” (Pers. za’ifa).51 It is not clear
from this example
whether Rabi’a is physically weak or weak by nature.
However, there is no such ambiguity
in another story,
in which the male ascetic
Salih al-Murri (d. 792-3 CE) refers
to himself as “an ignorant man” (mardi jahil) in contrast to Rabi’a, who is “a weak but
knowledgeable woman” (zani za’ifa
dana).52 This implies
that Rabi’a was able to reverse the normal hierarchy of gender
distinctions through her knowledge. Salih al-Murri, who is by nature
superior because he is a man, becomes
a lesser person
through his comparative lack of knowledge. However, one must not see this role reversal
as essential or as implying
that gendered hierarchies were not important to ‘Attar. Rabi’a
may have become
a different type of
woman through a unique series
of circumstances, but her inborn
nature remained the same: in her
essence, she was still a “weak woman.”53
Contradictory notions about gender are not the only contradictions that appear in ‘Attar’s
chapter. Equally significant are the anachronisms. The most noteworthy of these can be found in
the stories of Rabi’a’s encounters with the early
Sunni theologian al-Hasan
al-Basri (d. 728 CE).
There are thirteen
of these accounts
in the text, including the reference to Hasan in the
introduction, translated above.54 This example also provides a clue as to why ‘Attar placed
Hasan and Rabi’a in the same generation. According
to ‘Attar, “If the saying is correct
that ‘two-thirds of the religion is from [the Prophet’s wife] ‘A’isha the Righteous (may God be pleased with her),
then it is also correct
to benefit from her maidservant.” This statement indicates that ‘Attar confused Rabi’a with the earlier woman ascetic Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE), who was in fact
a maidservant of ‘A’isha and transmitted Hadith
from her. As we saw in Chapter
2, Mu’adha was the founder of the Basra
school of women’s
asceticism of which Rabi’a was the most famous
example. She also provided al-Hasan
al-Basri with Hadith accounts that she transmitted from ‘A’isha. Because of her reputation as a traditionist, it is reasonable to suppose that Hasan might have invited her to his teaching
sessions. We also know from early sources
that Mu’adha taught classes for women in Basra and that she had a number of well-known students.55 Given this
information, it is easy to see how the similar
fame and reputation of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, who came from the same clan as Mu’adha
in Basra, might have caused
later writers to confuse these
The Gospel of Thomas, Thomas O. Lambdin
trans., in The Nag Hammadi Library
in English, James M.
Robinson, general editor (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 130
51 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 64, Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 158
52 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awilya’, 69, Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 164; this statement appears
as an
addendum to an account
that originally came from Sulami,
in which Rabi’a
paraphrases part of Jesus’
Sermon on the Mount. See R. Cornell, Early Sufi Women, 80-1.
53 In another
account ‘Attar describes how a man of high status is amazed at “the spiritual
aspiration
(himmat) of this weak woman (za’ifa).” The implication here is not only that Rabi’a is unusual, but
also that she is acting against her nature. ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 71; Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 166 54 ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi also takes note of these anachronisms in his book on Rabi’a.
For him, Rabi’a’s
association with Hasan’s students
led to the impression that she associated with Hasan himself.
See idem,
Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 11 and 22.
55 See for example, Ibn Sa’d, al-Tabaqat al-kubra, vol. 8, 483.
two figures. Once again,
Roland Barthes’ point
about the verisimilitude of myth proves
to be true. In myth, “paper
time” nearly always
prevails over chronological time.
The tropes that ‘Attar used
to develop the Rabi’a myth were taken not only from Sufi literature but also from Islamic scripture
and even sometimes
from Christian sources.
Among the Islamic referents that he uses, stories of the prophets
from the Qur’an
are particularly important. In ‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a one can find allusions to at least three prophetic or semi-prophetic
figures whose visages are reflected
in Rabi’a’s iconic image. These are Moses, Jesus, and the
Virgin Mary. Moses is mentioned twice in the chapter. The first time he appears
is in a divine address in which God speaks to Rabi’a through
her heart “without
an intermediary” (Haqq Ta’ala bi vasita beh-dilash khitab
kard).56 The setting
of this account is in the desert
(badiya) between Basra and Mecca, where Rabi’a has lost her way. She cries out: “My God! My heart is desolate. Where am I to go? I am but a clod of dirt (kulukhi) and that House (i.e., the Ka’ba) is but a stone
(sangi). I need you!” Rebuking Rabi’a
for her presumptuousness, God says: “Oh Rabi’a!
You bathe in the blood of 18,000 worlds!
Don’t you see that when Moses (peace
and blessings be upon
him) desired a vision, we cast a small amount
of divine manifestation (tajalli) at the
mountain and it shattered into forty pieces?”57
The scriptural referent of this account
is a famous story in the Qur’an,
which describes God’s encounter
with Moses on Mt. Sinai. The key verse in the story is Qur’an 7:143, which portrays God as speaking
directly to Moses,
just as He did with Rabi’a. However,
Moses, like Rabi’a in ‘Attar’s story, wants more. He desires
to see God and says, “My Lord, show yourself
to me, so that I may look upon you.” God’s answer to Rabi’a in ‘Attar’s story recalls the ending of this
Qur’anic verse, in which God reveals himself
to the mountain in front of Moses and it shatters into many pieces.
This account in ‘Attar’s chapter
consists of a double recollection.
First, it recalls how God spoke to Rabi’a without an intermediary as He did to one of his prophets.
This token of divine favor serves in the account
as proof of Rabi’a’s sainthood. Second, the account recalls
not only the above passage
of the Qur’an but also a hadith that explains
the relationship between Muslim
saints and the prophets who are their models: “The scholars
(literally, ‘the knowers’)
are the heirs of the prophets” (al-‘ulama’ warathat
al-anbiya’).58
The second reference to Moses in ‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a is part of a commentary that indirectly explains this hadith. The setting for the commentary is one of the accounts
in which Rabi’a and al-Hasan al-Basri
appear together. In this story, Hasan comes to visit Rabi’a just as
darkness falls. Because
of her extreme poverty, she has no lantern to light her hut. So she blows on
her fingers, which burn like a lantern
until daybreak (Rabi’a tafa bar angushtan-i khud damid. Ta ruz angushtan-uyi chiragh
miyafurukht.).59 After relating
this story, ‘Attar
provides the following
explanation:
If someone should
say, “What does this [story] mean?” We
would say, “It is like the hand of Moses (peace and blessings be upon him).” If someone should say, “But he was a prophet.” We would say, “Whoever follows a prophet shares in a portion of
his miracles. If a prophet
is associated with a prophetic
miracle (mu’jiza), the saint is
56 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 63; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 157
57 Ibid
58 This famous
tradition appears in the Hadith
collections of Bukhari
(Kitab al-‘Ilm, 10); Abu Dawud
(Bab
al-‘Ilm,
1); Ibn Majja (Muqaddima, 17); al-Darimi (Muqaddima, 32); Ibn Hanbal,
5:196.
59 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 67; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 161; text translation by V. Cornell
associated with
saintly miracles (karamat) through
the blessings of following the example
of a prophet (beh-barakat-i mutabi’at-i
payghambar). As the Prophet
[Muhammad] (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “He who rejects even a small
portion of what is forbidden will attain a degree of prophecy.” In other words, he who gives back to the
Adversary (Satan) the smallest amount of the forbidden achieves a degree of
prophecy. [The Prophet] also said:
“The true dream is one-fourth of prophecy.”60
The comparison in this passage of Rabi’a’s miracle
with the hand of Moses
refers to Qur’an 20:22,
which describes Moses’
contest with Pharaoh’s
magicians. God instructs
Moses to put his hand down at his side. When he draws it forth again, it is white or shining
(bayda’a) and “without evil” (min ghayri su’in). In comparing Moses’
white hand to Rabi’a’s blazing
fingers, ‘Attar may have been thinking
of white phosphorous, which burns spontaneously when it encounters air. However, the argument of this story is not scientific but theological. Not only are the
miracles of the saints derived
from the miracles
of the prophets but the station of sainthood
itself is also related to prophecy. As the friends or protégés (awliya’) of God, Muslim
saints serve as deputies
(sing. na’ib) of the prophets. ‘Attar’s
references to Moses
in this chapter illustrate the argument that as a major Sufi saint, Rabi’a plays a semi-prophetic role.
The analogy between Rabi’a and Moses similarly applies
to Rabi’a and Jesus. In a story that comes just before
the first reference
to Moses discussed above, Rabi’a is on a pilgrimage to Mecca
and the donkey that carries
her belongings dies in the desert. When the other members of Rabi’a’s caravan offer to take her things, she sends them away, preferring instead to put her trust in
God. She then admonishes God, saying: “My God! Do kings treat an incapable
woman in this way?
You invited me to your House, but on the way you killed my donkey and left me alone in the
desert!” At this,
the donkey comes back to life and Rabi’a continues
on her way.61
The scriptural referent in this story
is the Qur’anic Jesus, who says in Qur’an 3:49:
“I heal the blind and the leper and bring the dead back to life with God’s permission.” However,
the story also has a gendered
message. Rabi’a refers
to herself as ‘awrat ‘ajiz, “an incapable
woman.” This lack of capability is juxtaposed against
Jesus’ miracle of reviving the dead, which is
one of the most powerful
miracles attributed to any prophet
in the Qur’an. In both Persian and Arabic the term ‘awrat refers to the sexual
organs of men and women or to any part of the body
that is shameful to view. Although its use as a synonym
for “woman” in this story
is metaphorical, it is far from the most respectful term that might
be used. Once again ‘Attar
reveals his ambivalence about gender.
Are we to read this story as an ironic
repudiation of the tendency of men to hold women in low esteem, as Michael Sells seems to think? Or should we see it instead
as another example
of Rabi’a being the exception
that proves the rule? Is this merely a way of dramatizing Rabi’a’s
miracle by accentuating how far she has left behind her essential nature as a woman?
Apart from Rabi’a, there are only two other female characters in ‘Attar’s chapter. These
are the Prophet Muhammad’s wife ‘A’isha and “Mary the Pure” (Maryam Safiya). As we have seen, ‘Attar describes Rabi’a as the maidservant of ‘A’isha. This not only brings to mind the earlier figure of Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya, but also ‘A’isha herself
(see Chapter 2), who was a
patron for the women ascetics
of Basra. However,
before ‘Attar compares
Rabi’a with ‘A’isha,
60 Ibid
61 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 63; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 157
he
describes her as the “Deputy
(na’ib) of Mary the Pure.”62 According
to Stephen J. Shoemaker,
Gnostic Christian texts from the Middle East often depict a “universal Mary” that takes on the attributes of both the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene.63 This also appears
to be the case with ‘Attar’s comparison of Rabi’a
with Mary the Pure. His main referent
for Mary the Pure is Mary
the Mother of Jesus in the Qur’an
(19:16-33), who is a model of chastity,
divine election, and complete trust in God.64 All of these
characteristics can be found in Rabi’a as well. The key
scriptural referent that links Rabi’a
to Mary is the following
Qur’anic verse: “Verily
the angels said: ‘Oh Mary! Behold,
God has elected you and made you pure, and raised you above all the
women of the world (Qur’an
3:42).” ‘Attar’s selection
of Rabi’a as the only woman to merit a chapter
in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ indicates that like Mary, she too has been raised “above
all the women of the world.”65
But the comparisons between
Rabi’a and the Universal Mary do not end here. The ghost of
Mary Magdalene is also present
in ‘Attar’s portrayal
of Rabi’a. This can be seen, for example,
in the statement that a group of people contended
(gurohi guyand keh) that Rabi’a “fell into
playing music but later repented”
(dar mutribi aftad va baz tawba kard).66 The trope of Rabi’a as a fallen woman and repentant
sinner like Mary Magdalene is a very minor part of ‘Attar’s narrative and the way that it is presented
in the text indicates that he doubted
its authenticity.
However, as we shall see in Chapter 6, it was to become an important
part of ‘Abd al-Rahman
Badawi’s modern Existentialist revision of Rabi’a’s
vita. In some Christian Gnostic texts Mary Magdalene is called “The Pure Spiritual One,” and Jesus
is said to have marveled
at her wisdom.67 This is strikingly reminiscent of ‘Attar’s
use of the term, “Mary the Pure.” Even in some
mainstream Christian texts Mary Magdalene
appears as a symbol for divine love and the life of contemplation.68
62
‘Attar, Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, 61; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 155; Margaret Smith translates this phrase as “a second spotless
Mary.” Smith’s depiction of Rabi’a as
a Second Mary was to influence subsequent works on Rabi’a in European languages. See Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 21; (Rainbow Bridge), 4 and Annestay, Une Femme Soufie, 18.
63 Stephen J. Shoemaker, “A Case of Mistaken Identity? Naming the Gnostic
Mary,” in Jones,
ed., Which
Mary?
8; an anonymous fourteenth-century Italian hagiographer evokes the trope of the Universal Mary when he states: “I do not trouble
myself about chronology in my meditation; it delights me to tell of the
Magdalene and what she did at this time according to my fancy . . . While I
think of her I must perforce think of Jesus and His Mother.” See Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 10.
64 See also Annestay (Une Femme Soufie, 191), who describes Mary in the Qur’an as, “the archetype
of the
holy woman par excellence.”
65 For Annestay, “The miraculous power
attributed to Rabi’a
derives entirely from Mary.” However,
for
him Rabi’a as the
Second Mary reflects the Latin Christian archetype of Mater Nutrix, or “The Nurturing Mother.” This is because
like Mary, Rabi’a
“turns herself into a channel
of grace and blessings, and thus is a privileged intermediary between
Earth and Heaven.” Ibid, 192
66 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 63; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 157
67 Ann Graham
Brock, “Setting the Record Straight—
The Politics of Identification: Mary Magdalene and
Mary the Mother in Pistis Sophia,” in Jones, ed., Which Mary? 51
68 Gregory the Great’s sixth-century Homily on the Feast of St. Mary refers to Mary Magdalene in a way
that seems to
foreshadow the later Muslim trope of Rabi’a the Repentant Sinner: “Mary
Magdalene, a woman of the city which was a sinner, washed out the stain of her
sins with her tears by her love of the truth,
and the word of truth is fulfilled
which says her sins are forgiven and she loved
much. She who had
previously been cold through sin was afterwards aflame with love.” Ward, Harlots
of the Desert, 12
Did ‘Attar intentionally combine the images of Mary
the Mother of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene when comparing Rabi’a to Mary the Pure? Although it appears that he may have
done so, this cannot be proven conclusively. However, it is clear that tropes related
to both the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene
can be found in ‘Attar’s
depiction of Rabi’a.
According to Karen King, “The virgin-mother reinscribes the
centrality of motherhood and women’s
subordination to men, while the depiction of Mary Magdalene
. . . contests gender
definitions, for example in promoting transcendence from sexuality and accompanying gender roles as the
ideal.”69 In light
of this observation, it is significant that ‘Attar’s Mary the Pure is a similarly
ambiguous figure. It is also significant that the tropes
of both Mary the Pure and The Repentant
Sinner are used to highlight
Rabi’a’s transcendence of sexuality and socially imposed
gender roles, just as King indicates
was the case for Mary Magdalene.
For some medieval Muslim
writers, the special
status given to Mary the Mother of Jesus
in the Qur’an meant that she was equivalent to a prophet.
In an essay on the controversy
surrounding the prophethood of women in Islam, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064 CE) noted that opinions on this subject
were divided into two groups.
The first group, which rejected
the prophethood of women,
cited two Qur’anic
verses that seem to indicate
that all prophets
were men: “We did not send before you anyone but men whom we inspired” (Qur’an 12:109); “None but men were sent before you whom we inspired” (Qur’an
16:43). The opposing
group, to which Ibn
Hazm belonged, supported the prophethood of women and based its argument on the Arabic phrase ma arsalna (“we did not send”) that appears
in these Qur’anic
verses. This group maintained that the verses
referred only to divine messengers (rasul, from the same root as arsalna), but said nothing
about women being prophets in general. Ibn Hazm added that since the
Arabic word for prophet (nabi) comes from a root meaning,
“to make known,”
anyone, even a woman,
could attain prophetic
or quasi-prophetic status if she makes God’s teachings known to
others.70
‘Attar’s statement, “When a woman is on
the path of God
Most High, she is a man: she cannot be called a woman,” seems to put him among the group that rejected
the prophethood of women.
If a woman on the path of God cannot
be called a woman, how can a prophet be a
woman? However, at other times he seems to hold the opposite
view. In one story, he even
addresses the issue of women’s
prophecy directly. In this story,
a group of men come to put Rabi’a to a test. They say to her: “All of the virtues
have been distributed among men. The crown
of maturity and good judgment
(muruvvat) has been placed
on the heads of men. The belt of
generosity has been tied around their waists.
And prophecy has never descended
upon any woman. What makes you special?” Rabi’a replies: “Everything you say is true. But egoism
(mani), self-love (khud dusti), self-worship (khud parasti), and [the conceit]
‘I am your highest Lord!’ (Qur’an:
79:24) have never come from a woman
either. And no woman has ever been a
transvestite (mukhannath).”71 In this anecdote Rabi’a claims that the alleged
weaknesses and deficiencies of women have preserved them from the sins of egoism and self-deification, which
69 King, “Why All the Controversy?” in Ibid, 57
70 Maribel Fierro,
“Women as Prophets
in Islam,” in Manuela Marin
and Randi Deguilhem, Writing the
Feminine: Women
in Arab Sources
(London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 184
71 “Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 71; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 166; mukhannath means transvestite
and not “pederast,” as in the Sells-Losensky translation.
are common among men. In the final statement
about women not being transvestites she appears to mean, “Women are what we are. We are real. We do not pretend
to be what we are not.”
As
in the previous story, ‘Attar’s opinion that gender distinctions are transcended in the
station of divine unity seems to go against the notion that women have no share in prophecy.
Could there not be a middle ground between
rejecting the prophecy
of women completely and stretching the Arabic
language to advocate
it as Ibn Hazm did? What if women saints were treated as honorary men? Even those who argued against the prophecy of women agreed that
Mary the Mother of Jesus
was a saint, as were Asiya the mother of Moses and Sarah the wife of Abraham.72 As ‘Attar says,
“Whoever follows a prophet shares
in a portion of his miracles.”
Would not an exceptional woman
such as Rabi’a,
who embodies the teachings of the prophets and thus shares in their mission,
be similar in some ways to a prophet too? If this is the case,
could not such a unique woman also enjoy a semi-prophetic status like Mary? This search for a middle
ground between prophecy
and sainthood seems to be what ‘Attar
had in mind when he compared Rabi’a to Mary the Pure. By assimilating Rabi’a the Icon to the image of the Universal Mary he could place her figuratively among the “men” of prophecy
and divine inspiration. In this guise, she was able to take on both the semi-prophetic role of Mary the Mother
of Jesus and the
gender-transcendent role of Mary Magdalene.
III.
EVERY PICTURE
TELLS A STORY: ‘ATTAR’S EMPLOTMENT OF RABI’A’S VITA
‘Attar’s literary iconography would not have been so effective
if his chapter on Rabi’a in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ was only a collection of sayings and tropes, as were most of the accounts
about Rabi’a written by his predecessors. None of the other Sufi writers mentioned in this study come to mind as easily as ‘Attar does when Rabi’a’s
name is mentioned. In the large number
of popular books and Internet notices
that one finds on Rabi’a today, the Sufi author
that is most frequently cited is ‘Attar.73 To quote the English rock singer Rod Stewart, if “every picture
tells a story,” then Rabi’a the Icon needed
a story to make her myth come alive. Using ‘Attar’s chapter as an inspiration, Widad El Sakkakini
justifies her feminist
interpretation of Rabi’a’s
life-story by making the same point:
“Because she has not written
her own biography, nor left for the ages to come
very much evidence
to make her familiar to us, Rabia needs some of her hidden story to be brought to life.”74 Aleksei
Losev might have added that Rabi’a the Icon needed more than just an image
or a visage; it also needed a frame or back-story to make her image more powerful. This is
why the vita that
‘Attar composed for Rabi’a must be considered his most important
contribution to her myth.
72 Fierro, “Women as Prophets,” 185
73 Popular works on Rabi’a in European
languages often contain
no historical references at all, not even to
‘Attar. For example, in La Vie de Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, Jamal Eddine Benghal
only notes that such sources exist: “Nous raconterons la vie
de Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya avec une petite romance sur une base de données
historiques éparses dans plusieurs écrits” (37). Popular works in Arabic usually include a short bibliography of
medieval and modern sources that are mixed together without distinguishing one
group from another. See, for example,
Ma’mun Gharib, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya fi
mihrab al-hubb al-ilahi (Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in the Prayer-Niche of Divine
Love) (Cairo: Dar Gharib, 2000), 125-6. In
such works, the main source of information is either ‘Attar or modern works
that rely on ‘Attar’s narrative.
74 El El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 73; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 117-18
But should ‘Attar’s vita of
Rabi’a be considered a work of religious tradition or religious
fiction? In other words, did ‘Attar make up the story of Rabi’a’s life entirely or did he take its elements from previous sources? Given our present
state of knowledge, the evidence suggests that he made the story up. Although a few of the anecdotes that ‘Attar uses in his chapter on Rabi’a
can be found in earlier
sources, most of them cannot
be found anywhere
else and the details of Rabi’a’s life that he outlines seem to originate with himself.75
However, it is clear
that ‘Attar wanted
these accounts to be accepted
as religious traditions because
they are arranged
one after the other in the “string
of pearls” format
common to the tabaqat genre
of medieval Islamic
literature (see Chapter
1). In this type of literature, the reader is not presented with a fully coherent and internally consistent narrative as in modern
biography. Instead, one is faced
with a collection of independent accounts, often in no
chronological order, and for which
the coherence must be provided
by the reader herself. The reader is supposed to approach such works in the way that a jeweler examines
a pearl necklace: one can approach each anecdote or narrative “pearl”
individually or one can reflect
on the entire narrative as a single unit, as when a jeweler
looks at the whole necklace
to determine its overall
workmanship and value.
Whether these accounts
make historical truth
claims or fictional truth claims (to use Hendrik Vroom’s
terminology), their arrangement in this way strongly indicates that ‘Attar intended their truth to be found
in their “principial” spiritual meaning and not in their
empirical factualness.
‘Attar’s predecessor Sulami, who also organized
his chapter on Rabi’a in this way, provides the reader with chains of transmitters for most of his accounts
to prove their authenticity.
This indicates that for Sulami,
the factual accuracy
of his narrative was important in order to support the authenticity of its message.
This may have been because
Sulami’s Book of Sufi
Women was written for Sufis, who viewed
its characters as real Sufi exemplars. In a sense, Sulami’s intended readers were like modern scholars who want to see footnotes
in a text to prove the
authenticity of its sources. In medieval Islamic
works, chains of transmission serve much the same
function as footnotes
do today. ‘Attar,
however, who wrote his book for more general
audiences, did not need to provide chains
of transmission. Instead,
he presents the accounts in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ as traditional knowledge
without citing the names of transmitters. His accounts are to be treated as authentic simply
because they are supposed to be old. Only a single
name appears as a source for any of the accounts in his chapter
on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya: this is Abu ‘Ali Farmadi, who is cited
as the lone source for only one statement and one anecdote.76
Abu
‘Ali al-Fadl ibn Muhammad al-Farmadi (d. 1084 CE) was a major Sufi of Khurasan. However, little biographical information is available on him. Trained
in Shafi’i jurisprudence, he was favored by the Seljuk
Turkish rulers of Iran, who gave him the title,
“Chief of the Sufi
Masters of Khurasan” (shaykh shuyukh Khurasan). Most sources claim that he was a teacher of the
famous Sufi and theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali; however, according to some accounts, the
75
‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi calls ‘Attar a “highly imaginative
man” (rajulun jamih al-khayal) and
makes the same points as those mentioned here.
See idem, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 12. However, he adds
the following comment to his assessment: “But we cannot reject everything that
‘Attar says in this respect entirely. For
the new documents (watha’iq) that are
revealed to us day after day support many of the accounts that ‘Attar transmits
to us (Ibid).” I have no idea what “documents” Badawi is referring
to and he does not cite them in his book.
76 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 61 and 64; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 155 and 158
latter’s younger brother
Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 1128 CE) was his actual disciple.77 In his youth Farmadi studied under several
well-known Sufis, including Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 1073 CE).78 Today he is best known as one of the links in the “Golden Chain” of spiritual masters of
the Naqshbandi Sufi order.79
Naqshbandi sources
mention that Farmadi
specialized in Love mysticism.80 From this we can surmise that he was probably aware of Abu Talib al-Makki’s depiction of Rabi’a the Lover, as
discussed in Chapter
3. The importance that Makki
gives to Rabi’a
in Qut al-qulub might account for Farmadi’s interest
in Rabi’a as noted by ‘Attar. However,
until the actual
works of Farmadi are discovered and studied by scholars, there
is no evidence that ‘Attar
relied on him for
anything other than the two references noted above. Because Farmadi
is the only person cited as
a source for any of the accounts
in ‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a, it seems that ‘Attar used his name and
reputation to give his narrative
the appearance of authority. This leads one to conclude
that the best way to regard ‘Attar’s depiction of Rabi’a in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’ is as a work of
spiritual fiction.
The very fact that ‘Attar set out to write a vita for Rabi’a
further supports the conclusion
that he set out to compose a story. As Hayden White
has shown, biographers who draw their information from multiple sources
often provide plots for their stories in order to tie up loose ends in
the narrative and develop their
characters more fully.81 Hagiographers are no different; indeed, this tendency is even more pronounced in sacred biography. This process of emplotment can clearly be seen in the vita that
‘Attar creates for Rabi’a. In the remainder
of this chapter I will detail the most important plot elements of this vita, with accompanying comments
on the roles these plot elements play in ‘Attar’s narrative:
1.
Rabi’a is the fourth
child in a family of four daughters. This is why she is called
Rabi’a (“The Fourth”).82
A common addition to this first major element
of ‘Attar’s plot outline has been to give
the name of Rabi’a’s father as Isma’il;
thus, the frequent
rendering of her name as “Rabi’a bint Isma’il al-‘Adawiyya.” This was due to the early conflation of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra with Rabi’a
bint Isma’il of Damascus.83 The conflation of the two Rabi’as may have started
as far back as the ninth-century Kitab al-ruhban (Book of Monks)
of Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al- Burjulani (d. 852 CE). Ibn al-Jawzi,
who corrects this mistake in Sifat al-safwa, nevertheless still
77
See, for example, J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (New York and
London: Oxford University Press, 1998 reprint of 1971 original), 32-33. According to Trimingham, Farmadi
was Ahmad al-Ghazali’s shaykh al-suhba, or master of personal
spiritual training.
78 J. A. Boyle, The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968),
297
79 The Tahiri and Ghafuri
Naqshbanid Golden Chains list Farmadi
as a disciple of Abu al-Qasim Gurgani
and claim that he
was the shaykh of Abu Ya’qub Yusuf al-Hamadani (d. 1140 CE). The Naqshbandi Haqqani Golden Chain claims
that he was a disciple of Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali al-Kharaqani (d. 1034 CE). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqshbandi_Golden_Chain. For a summary of Naqshbandi-Haqqani traditions about Farmadi, see Shaykh Muhammad
Hisham Kabbani, Classical
Islam and the Naqshbandi
Sufi Tradition (Washington, D.C., Islamic Supreme Council of America,
2004), 129-131.
80 The Haqqani
Naqshbandi web site calls Farmadi
“Knower of the Merciful and Custodian of Divine
Love.” This site also claims that he taught the Sufi technique of tasawwur, gazing
at the face of one’s shaykh in order to see the face of
the Prophet Muhammad. http://naqshbandi.org/chain/8.htm
81 White, Tropics of Discourse, 65-66, 73
82 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 62; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 155
83 See, for example, Badawi,
Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi, 15
calls Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s father
Isma’il. In fact, he states
that the fathers
of both Rabi’as
were named Isma’il.84
However, most authors after Ibn al-Jawzi
who refer to Rabi’a’s father
as Isma’il do not
cite Ibn al-Jawzi as their
source. More often,
they cite the Syrian historian Ahmad ibn Khallikan (d. 1282 CE), who refers to Rabi’a as “Rabi’a bint Isma’il al-‘Adawiyya” in Wafayat al-a’yan
(Death Notices of the Notables).85 Ibn Khallikan also calls Rabi’a
Umm al-Khayr, “Mother (or Source) of Goodness.”86 It is possible
that this epithet
recalls ‘Attar’s comparison of Rabi’a with the
Universal Mary, discussed above. It is also possible
that it reflects
the Eastern Christian practice of describing female
saints, like the Virgin Mary, as sources
of goodness. For example,
the Greek name Agatha is very close in meaning to Umm al-Khayr. Later
on in Ibn Khallikan’s
text, in a section that recounts Rabi’a’s
teachings to Sufyan
al-Thawri, he calls Rabi’a Umm ‘Amr (Mother of ‘Amr).87 From information contained
in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa, which Ibn
Khallikan cites in his notice on Rabi’a,
it appears that the name ‘Amr actually
refers to the son of the
earlier female ascetic
Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya,. The name of Mu’adha’s son was ‘Amr. Both
‘Amr al-‘Adawi and Mu’adha’s husband
Sila ibn Ushaym
al-‘Adawi were killed
in battle in the
late seventh century CE.88 This detail makes
it clear that Ibn Khallikan was but another
of the many hagiographers who confused the story of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya with the story of Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya.
As noted at the beginning of this chapter,
the authoritativeness of Ibn Khallikan’s work was so great
that in the Arab Islamic
world its verisimilitude overcame all doubts
about its accuracy. Thus, the inaccurate reference to Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya as Umm ‘Amr was taken by both
medieval and modern
writers as evidence
that Rabi’a was married and had a child (see Chapter 3). Ibn Khallikan also adds to Rabi’a’s vita by
narrating an account
in which she reproaches her father for eating food that was either obtained
or slaughtered in an unlawful manner. When he asks, “Do you believe that I can obtain only what is forbidden?” She replies:
“Being patient in the face of hunger in the world is better than being patient
in the face of fire in
the Hereafter.”89 If this anecdote
refers historically to anyone, it most likely
refers again to Mu’adha al-‘Adawiyya, whose origin was non-Muslim. Although she was associated with the
clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays like Rabi’a, she started out as a mawlat or client of the Prophet’s
Muhammad’s wife ‘A’isha.
As a new Muslim convert,
she would likely have doubted
the lawfulness of the food her non-Muslim father
provided. By attributing this story to Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya Ibn Khallikan reinforces a claim made by both ‘Attar and Sulami, in which Rabi’a
is similarly of non-Muslim origin.
2.
When
Rabi’a is born, her family is so poor that they have nothing with which to wrap
her, nor any oil for cleaning
her. The night after her birth, her father has a dream of
the Prophet Muhammad, who says that Rabi’a
is a noble lady (sayyida) who will
84 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, Ibn al-Jawzi Sifat al-safwa
Appendix, 314-15
85 Ahmad ibn Muhammad b. Abu Bakr ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-a’yan
wa anba’ abna’ al-zaman, Ihsan
‘Abbas,
ed. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1978),
vol. 2, 285
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid, 286
88 For a full reproduction and translation of Ibn al-Jawzi’s notice on Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya in Sifat al-
safwa see the Ibn al-Jawzi
Appendix in R. Cornell, Early Sufi Women, 264-9.
89 Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-a’yan, vol. 2, 285
intercede for 70,000 of his community. The Prophet also tells him to ask for 400 dinars from ‘Isa Radan, the Emir of
Basra. After hearing about this
dream, the Emir gives 10,000 dirhams as alms to the poor and gives 400 dinars
to Rabi’a’s father, who takes the gold and spends it.90
This plot element shows that
Rabi’a was predestined for greatness and also that she could practice a form of intercession (shafa’a) normally
reserved for the Prophet Muhammad.
Although minor
details of this part of the story
are sometimes changed
in modern versions
of Rabi’a’s vita,
for the most part later authors have preserved this portion of the outline
just as ‘Attar presents
it. For example, the modern Egyptian writer Ma’mun Gharib specifies that Rabi’a
was born in a hut (kukh).91 This assertion takes as fact ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s staging of the
scene that opens his modernized version of Rabi’a’s
vita: “Come with me now, gentlemen, to a hut that is lowly but full of holiness,
where there lives
a worn-out old woman who has reached
80 years of age.”92 When writing this passage, Badawi
was thinking of a reed hut similar
to the huts of the Marsh Arabs, who live not far from Basra in the marshlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.93 As we saw in Chapter
1, in Rabi’a’s time these people were known as nabat and were looked down upon because
of their poverty
and non-Muslim background. For Badawi, this detail
also supports the assertion that Rabi’a was originally not a Muslim,
which he incorrectly attributes to Jahiz instead
of to Sulami.94
Around the time that Rabi’a attains
puberty (chun Rabi’a buzurg shud), a famine takes the
lives of her parents and her sisters
are separated from her. She falls into the hands
of an evil oppressor (zalimi), who sells her for a few (silver)
dirhams (chand dirham). Her new master works her very hard. One day she runs away from a stranger
(na-mahrami) in the street, but falls and
breaks her arm.95 Helpless and desolate,
she commits herself
to God, who tells her, “Do not be
sad. Tomorrow a grandeur will be yours
such that you will be honored by my most intimate
friends among the heavenly hosts (muqarraban-i asman).”96
There are four key terms in
the Persian text of this part of ‘Attar’s story: “stranger” (gharib), “orphan”
(bi madar va pidar), “captive” (asir),
and “broken” (shikasteh). The purpose
of this plot element is to set the stage
for Rabi’a’s spiritual
transformation. In this portion of the
narrative she is depicted as an orphan like the Prophet Muhammad
and a captive like the Prophet
Joseph: no one but God can help her. These details also make her comparable to the Virgin Mary, who like Joseph is a model in the Qur’an for tawakkul, complete
trust in God. Rabi’a
appears in this portion of the story
as literally fallen
and helpless, and has become
a stranger in her
own land. As the Qur’an asks rhetroically of the Prophet
Muhammad: “Did [Allah]
not find
90 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 61-2; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 155-6
91 Gharib, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya fi mihrab al-hubb
al-ilahi, 25
92 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 10
93 According to the historical work al-Basra
al-fayha’ ((Basra the Fragrant), Sarkis
the Chaldean claimed
that the name Basra originally meant “Place of Reed Huts” (mahall al-akwakh). Ibid, Tasmiyyat
al-Basra
(Names
of Basra), 2, http://www.a3ashk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=529
94 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 13
95 In Sells, Earl Islamic Mysticism, 156, Paul Losensky
translates na-mahrami
as meaning that Rabi’a fled
from the indignity
of being worked
too hard by her master.
96 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 62; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 156
you as an orphan and shelter you? Did He not find you lost and guide you? Did He not find you
in need and make you self-sufficient?” (Qur’an
93:6-11).
The story of Rabi’a’s
captivity has become
one of the most important parts of her vita for
subsequent generations of hagiographers. Along with the claim that Rabi’a
was a mawlat, or client of an Arab tribe, it provides the basis for the trope of Rabi’a the Slave. Margaret Smith states in Rabi’a the Mystic
that the “evil-minded man” who seized
Rabi’a “sold her as a slave for six
dirhams.”97 Given the importance of this trope
to the Rabi’a myth, it is signficant that neither the word “slave,” nor the phrase
“six dirhams,” appears
in ‘Attar’s Persian
text. Instead, ‘Attar describes Rabi’a as a captive (asir), perhaps
to stress the injustice of a Muslim
being forced into servitude by another Muslim.98 Based on the original wording
of the text, her condition is better understood not in terms of legal
slavery but of criminality. Another
way to interpret this plot element might be to see Rabi’a
as subjected to indentured servitude, such as when poor girls are
indentured to work as carpet
weavers or family
servants in some modern Muslim
countries. This would allow her servitude
to reflect the theological relationship in Islam between
God and His subjects, which is depicted in the Qur’an
more as a master-indentured servant
relationship than as a master-slave relationship.99 Seen in this way, this plot element
provides an excellent illustration of Hendrik Vroom’s
point of how in religious
stories, a fictional
truth claim can reinforce the deeper truth of a theological truth
claim.
3.
While Rabi’a is a captive, she fasts continuously, works during the day, and spends
her nights in prayer, remaining
on her feet until daybreak.
One night her master
awakes and finds her praying. He sees
a lantern suspended over her head without a chain and filling the room with light. Recognizing God’s miracle in this, he frees
Rabi’a from her service (khidmat) to him and allows her to leave, saying, “If you
wish to stay here, we will serve you.” Rabi’a
then decides to leave.
The trope of the miracle of the lamp, which has figured prominently in nearly every version of Rabi’a’s vita since ‘Attar first introduced it, appears to have been taken from Sulami’s
Book of Sufi Women. In Sulami’s work, a similar
story is told of Hafsa bint Sirin, the sister of
the famous early ascetic and dream interpreter, Muhammad ibn Sirin
(d. 728-9 CE). Sulami
relates: “Hafsa bint Sirin used to light
her lamp at night, and then would
rise and pray in her prayer area. At times, the lamp would go out, but it would continue to illuminate her house until daylight.”100
97 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 23, (Rainbow Bridge),
6
98 In Islamic
Law, Muslims are not allowed
to enslave other Muslims, nor are Muslims
allowed to sell
themselves or their children
into slavery because
of poverty. In cases where
this has occurred, it was in violation of the Law or was justified
as a legal fiction, such as when states enslaved rebels or political
dissidents. In such cases, rebels
were treated as heretics or apostates.
99 See, for example, Qur’an
9:111: “Verily God has purchased
from the believers their persons and
possessions in return for Paradise. They fight in the cause of God and slay
and are slain. It is a binding
promise on God stated in truth in the Torah, the Gospel,
and the Qur’an.
And who is more faithful
to his promise than [God]? So rejoice in the sale of yourself which
you have concluded, for it is the supreme achievement.”
100 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, 122-3
In both versions, the
religious meaning of the trope is the same: the light of the lamp symbolizes spiritual
illumination or divine knowledge.101 In his Book of Sufi Women, Sulami traces the account of Hafsa’s lamp to Sa’id
ibn ‘Uthman al-Hannat (d. 906-7 CE), who was a
disciple of the Egyptian Sufi Dhu al-Nun
al-Misri (d. 859 CE).102 This reference to Egypt raises the possibility that the story may be connected
to the legend of the “Lamp of Umm Hashim” (Qandil Umm Hashim), a lamp that used to hang in the tomb of Sayyida
Zaynab in Cairo. It was believed that the oil of this lamp miraculously replenished itself and that it would cure eye
diseases.103 In Shiite Islam, Zaynab
the granddaughter of the Prophet
Muhammad is a major
female saint. Her most likely
resting place is a tomb in the town of Sayyida Zaynab some 12 kilometers south of Damascus.
However, some early
historians, such Muhammad
ibn Jarir al- Tabari (d. 923 CE) claimed that she was buried in Cairo.104 According
to modern historians, the tomb attributed to Sayyida Zaynab
in Cairo actually
contains the remains
of Zaynab the cousin of Sayyida Nafisa (d. 824 CE), the great-granddaughter of the Prophet’s
grandson Hasan. Whatever the historical truth of the matter
may be, both accounts date to a time close to that of Dhu al-Nun
al Misri, which suggests the possibility that the trope of the miracle of the lamp started out as an Egyptian legend.105
4.
A
group of people claim that Rabi’a fell into being a musician
after she left the house of her master, but she repented
later.
The trope of Rabi’a the Repentant
Sinner will be discussed in detail
in Chapter 6. Here I will only discuss one popular variant
of this trope, the claim that Rabi’a played the reed flute (nay). The earliest version
of this claim that I have been able to find comes from Margaret Smith’s book Rabi’a the Mystic, which was first
published in 1928:
“According to one account,
Rabi’a at first followed the calling of a flute player, which would be consistent with a state of
slavery.”106 It is not clear what Smith had in mind when she said that flute playing was consistent
with a state of slavery. Perhaps she was thinking of medieval accounts
of female slaves who
were trained as musicians for the Abbasid
court in Baghdad. Another interpretation is provided
by the contemporary Egyptian writer
Taha ‘Abd al-Baqi
Surur, who sees this trope
as alluding to the
use of flutes by Sufis in sessions
of spiritual audition
(sama’).107
101 Margaret Smith interprets the light of the lamp as
signifying the divine presence (Heb. shekhina;
Ar. sakina) and compares it to the nimbus or halo that surrounds the heads of Christian saints
in religious icons. Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 24 and (Rainbow Bridge), 7
102 See the note on Hannat by Roger Déladrière in Ibn ‘Arabi,
La vie merveilleuse de Dhu-l-Nun
l’Egyptien, 379-80
103 The Lamp of Umm Hashim has been removed
from the tomb of Sayyida
Zaynab by the Egyptian
authorities. In 1944 the Egyptian novelist Yahya Haqqi
(1905-1990) published a novella under the title, Qandil Umm Hashim. For a
recent translation of this work, see Yahya Hakki, The Lamp of Umm Hashim and Other Stories, Denys Johnson-Davies trans. (Cairo and New York: The American
University in Cairo Press, 2006), 45-88.
104 Michelle Zimney,
“History in the Making: the Sayyida Zaynab
Shrine in Damascus,” ARAM 19
(2007), 695-703
105 Caroline Williams, Islamic Monuments
in Cairo, A Practical Guide (Cairo: The American University in
Cairo Press,
1993), 123-4 and 152-3; on Sayyida Zaynab see also, Nadia Abu-Zahra, The Pure and Powerful: Studies
in Contemporary Muslim
Society (Reading, U.K.: Garnet Publishing and Ithaca Press, 1997).
106 Smith, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 24 and (Rainbow
Bridge), 7
107 Surur, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya wa al-hayat al-ruhiyya fi al-Islam, 47
However, Surur also claims incorrectly that ‘Attar was the original
source of the flute
story. Although ‘Attar
refers to Rabi’a
as a musician (mutribi), there is no mention of her playing a
flute in the Persian text of Tadhkirat al-awiliya’. The source of Surur’s mistake
was ‘Abd al- Rahman Badawi, who states
in Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi
that ‘Attar was the only hagiographer to claim that Rabi’a played the flute.108 It is curious that as evidence
for his assertion Badawi
quotes ‘Attar’s Persian
passage verbatim, which
does not mention
a flute at all.109 Why would
Badawi do this? This mistake
is especially perplexing because the word for “reed
flute” in Persian is nay, just as it is in Arabic; likewise, the Arabic word for “musician”
is mutrib, just as it
is in Persian. So what are we to make of Badawi’s
false assertion and his use of the trope of Rabi’a
the Flute Player?
Did Badawi borrow
it from Smith, who made it up? Is this merely an example of creative license?
As we shall see in Chapter 6, the most probable answer
for Badawi was that it fit the image of the Aesthetic Woman that he was trying to paint for Rabi’a.
The
closest medieval antecedent
to the flute-player trope that I have been able to find is
in Rawdat al-ta’rif (The Garden of Knowledge) by the Andalusian litterateur and vizier
Lisan al- Din ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374 CE). However, even Ibn al-Khatib does not claim that Rabi’a
played the flute; rather,
he depicts her as saying
that she once played the tambourine (kuntu adribu
al- daffa bi al-tabl).110 The claim that Rabi’a played the tambourine can also be found in a slightly later work, al-Rawd al-fa’iq (The
Garden of Awareness), by the Egyptian
Sufi Shu’ayb al- Hurayfish (d. 1398 CE). Most of what Hurayfish says about Rabi’a
is based on ‘Attar’s chapter in Tadhkirat al-awliya’. As we have seen, neither
a flute nor a tambourine appears in ‘Attar’s Persian text. However, Hurayfish does provide a clue that may explain
how ‘Attar came up with the
idea that Rabi’a was a musician. This can be found in an account that he attributes to Salih al- Murri
(d. 792-3 CE), who is often mentioned
as one of Rabi’a’s ascetic
companions. In this story, Murri talks about a slave-girl (jariya) who sang and played the hand-drum (tughanni bi-l- tar).111 Although Murri does not say that the slave-girl is Rabi’a, Hurayfish
assumes that she is.
If the account cited by Hurayfish originally came from an early work of hagiography such as Ibn al-A’rabi’s tenth-century Tabaqat al-nussak or Burjulani’s ninth-century Kitab al-ruhban, it might account
for the conflation of Murri’s unidentified slave-girl and musician
with the mythical figure of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as developed by ‘Attar and his successors.
5.
Rabi’a makes the Hajj pilgrimage but
‘Attar does not specify how often this happens. The six accounts that discuss Rabi’a’s pilgrimage in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ all revolve around the question of balance between
the moral truth claims of the Law (al- shari’a) and the religious
truth claims of faith (al-haqiqa).112 The experience of faith
is depicted as a form of intimacy
with God that sometimes makes the letter of the Law
superfluous. In one account, the Ka’ba is depicted as leaving its location in Mecca
and coming to meet Rabi’a halfway on her journey.
In two of the stories, Rabi’a seems to disparage the
Ka’ba. In one of them she says: “My
God, I am sore at heart. Where will I go? I am a clod of dirt and the Ka’ba is a stone. I need you.” In
108 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 19
109 Ibid, 19, n. 1; this quotation
was taken by Badawi from the Persian
text of Farid al-Din al-‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, R. A. Nicholson, ed. (London and Leiden: Luzac
& Co. and E. J. Brill, vol. 1 1905).
110 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-ta’rif, 148
111 Hurayfish, al-Rawd al-fa’iq, 184
112 Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 157-9; ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 63-5
the other story she says: “I need the Lord of the House. What am I to do with the
Ka’ba? The Ka’ba is not worthy of me (man-ra istita’at
Ka’ba nist).113 What delight
is there in the Ka’ba’s beauty? What
I need to welcome me is the One who said, ‘Whoever approaches me by a span, I
will approach him by a cubit.’114
What would I see in the Ka’ba (Ka’ba-ra cheh binam)?” These stories affirm
that the human heart
is the true “House of God.” In the final story of this series Rabi’a is depicted
as being in an intermediate or ambiguous place,
no longer “at home” in the worldly
city of Basra, but unable to reach her true spiritual
home with God in Mecca. She says, “At
first, I did not bow to the House because
I wanted you. Now I am not even
worthy of your House.” This story
affirms how the moral truths of the Shari’a are inseparable from the spiritual insights of religion: even the lesser
degree of awareness of those who are bound to the
letter of the law is better than being cut off from God completely.
A full discussion of the pilgrimage stories in ‘Attar’s
chapter on Rabi’a would take a
chapter by itself. The Egyptian
philosopher ‘Abd al-Rahman
Badawi sees these stories as symbolizing three stages of awareness. In the first
stage, Rabi’a goes to the Ka’ba like any other pilgrim. It is enough
for her to fulfill the obligations of the Hajj according to the rules of the Shari’a. In the second
stage, Rabi’a tries
to integrate the Hajj pilgrimage into her ascetic practices. Badawi says, “She started to fulfill her pilgrimage on foot or crawling, or by practicing another form of bodily mortification that the Sufis make obligatory for themselves in order to multiply the rewards of the Hajj.”115 This sentence refers
to ‘Attar’s description of Ibrahim ibn Adham’s pilgrimage in the chapter on Rabi’a, in which this famous male ascetic performs
two prostrations of prayer for every step that he takes. This type of asceticism corresponds to the model
of instrumental asceticism outlined in Chapter
2. In instrumental asceticism the ascetic
mortifies the flesh in order to gain a tangible
reward in heaven.
A similar type of asceticsm
is ascribed to Rabi’a by the Syrian historian
Ibn Khallikan. Ibn Khallikan
describes her as wearing
a hair shirt (jubba min sha’ar) under an outer
wrap of wool (khimar suf).116 However,
the problem with instrumental asceticsim is that the satisfaction of fulfilling its requirements can lead
to spiritual egoism. Widad El Sakkakini describes this paradox in her novel
on Rabi’a as follows:
“The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward; therefore those who sacrificed the most were in
fact the most greedy for rewards.”117 ‘Attar seems to agree with this view, for the moral of this
story is that after seeking
the Ka’ba for fourteen years,
Ibrahim ibn Adham
was unable to see his goal
when he reached it. Instead,
the Ka’ba went to see Rabi’a. This is the greater truth of
“seeing truly” through religious knowledge
that Hendrik Vroom refers to in the article cited above.118
Badawi continues: “The ardor of [Rabi’a’s] faith increased and her
self-consciousness was raised by virtue of the austerities that she made obligatory for herself on the path of
113 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, 63; Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 157;
Losensky translates the Persian
phrase man-ra istata’at Ka’ba nist as,
“Its power means nothing to me.”
114 For this Hadith reference, see Bukhari, Tawhid, 50; and Muslim,
Dhikr, 2, 3, 20-22.
115 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 40-41
116 Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-a’yan, vol. 2, 287
117 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 28; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 40
118 Vroom, “Religious Truth,”
126-7
pilgrimage. Thus it was natural that she would magnify the meaning of the Hajj in her mind.
After the first stage, she sought the Ka’ba in order to see the Ka’ba. Now she begins to flirt with
the idea of seeking the Ka’ba in order to see the Lord of the Ka’ba.”119 For Badawi, this leads to the
third and final
stage of Rabi’a’s
spiritual development, in which “the Ka’ba itself
is deprived of all meaning and she comes to see no meaning
at all in the Ka’ba.”
This, says Badawi,
is the most dangerous of all spiritual stations because “it is the same idea that played
a dangerous role in
the sect of al-Hallaj and was one of the causes of his apostasy
and crucifixion.”120
The danger that Badawi
refers to is expressed in the statement ascribed to Rabi’a
by ‘Attar in which
she says, “The Ka’ba is not worthy
of me.” Over the centuries, the apparently
antinomian nature of Rabi’a’s pilgrimage stories in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ has led to accusations of heresy against Rabi’a by Salafi opponents
of Sufism. One of the most recent of these Salafi
opponents is Safar ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Hawali, a Wahhabi scholar
from Saudi Arabia
who was jailed for supporting Osama Bin Laden. Responding to a question
about Rabi’a’s Islam in
one of his Internet lectures, Hawali draws on an obscure
statement by the Hadith transmitter Abu Dawud to accuse her of heresy:
We say about
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya what the Imams of Hadith science such as Abu Dawud, who was
a student of Imam Ahmad [ibn Hanbal], said in his Hadith collection and in the
book al-Jarh wa al-ta’dil (Hadith
Criticism and Assessment): “Rabi’a is the fourth of them in heresy (Rabi’a rabi’atuhum fi al-zandaqa).” That is to say, Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya was
among the most misguided of the worshippers who went astray in their worship
and deviated from the Sunna of their Prophet (may God bless and preserve him).
She imagined that her entire purpose in life was Love, such that she abandoned
the fear and hope of God in their entirety. She
attached herself to the doctrine of Love and
forbade what God the Most Blessed and Exalted mandated (shara’a) for women, such as marriage and the like. She practiced celibacy and monasticism like the Christians, not the
[pre-marital] virginity that God the Most Blessed and Exalted mandated for His worshippers.121
In another Internet lecture Hawali
adds that Rabi’a and her contemporaries “took as their religion what remained of Christian monasticism, which itself was derived from the monasticism of the Hindus, who became extremists by saying that God, may He be Glorified and Exalted,
loved them as they loved
Him.”122 Such
accusations of Christian
or Hindu influences are common in Salafi polemics against
Sufism. Perhaps the best response
to Hawali’s polemic
is to say, as Charles Upton does in his book Doorkeeper
of the Heart, “Rabi’a was a devout
Muslim, with no heterodox tendencies except those
common to all mystics. There are always
those who, failing to deeply enough grasp their own traditions, view their own esoteric lore as a pollution by foreign devils.”123
Ironically, by accusing
Rabi’a of heresy Hawali rejects the opinion of the Hanbali jurist and theologian Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya
(d. 1328 CE), one of the most important figures
of
119 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 41
120 Ibid, 42
121 Safar ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman
al-Hawali, Nubdha ‘an Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya (Selection on Rabi’a al-
‘Adawiyya) in the lecture
al-As’ila (Questions), http://www.alhawali.com
122 al-Hawali, Min asbab al-zandaqa fi al-‘ibad (On
the Causes of Heresy among the Worshippers), in the
lecture,
al-Inhiraf fi al-‘ibadat (Deviations in Worship), Ibid.
123 Upton, Doorkeeper
of the Heart, xii
Salafism, who defended Rabi’a
against accusations of heresy. In Majmu’at
al-rasa’il wa al- masa’il (Collection of Letters
and Opinions), Ibn Taymiyya denies reports that Rabi’a claimed that the Ka’ba was “an idol to be worshipped on Earth” (al-sanam al-ma’bud fi al-ard). In some
medieval Arabic sources,
this phrase, which does not appear in ‘Attar’s Persian
text, is added to
the end of the story in Tadhkirat al-awliya’ when Rabi’a asks, “What am I to do with the
Ka’ba?” However, Ibn Taymiyya goes even further
than refuting this statement in his defense
of Rabi’a. Even if she did say such a thing, he says, he still would not agree that those who make
such statements are unbelievers and must either repent or be killed.
Reaffirming the theological truth claim of ‘Attar’s
story, he states in the conclusion to his fatwa on Rabi’a: “Muslims
do not worship the House; rather,
they worship the Lord of the House by circumambulating it and by praying toward it.”124
6.
Rabi’a has several encounters with
al-Hasan al-Basri. Most of these
stories involve role reversals and portray Rabi’a as teaching
Hasan a lesson that a major religious
figure and ascetic such as him
should already know. Sometimes the
roles that are reversed are those of teacher
and student; at other times his relationship with Rabi’a reverses
the superiority of male
over female. The most famous example
of such a role reversal
is the account that places Hasan and Rabi’a together by the banks of the Euphrates River. Hasan throws his
prayer-carpet (sajjada) on the water
and says, “Oh Rabi’a, come over here! Let
us pray two prostrations together.” Rabi’a
replies, “Oh Teacher (ay ustad)! Are you going to peddle the goods of the non-worldly (akhirtiyan) in the market of the worldly (dar bazar-i
dunya)? If
so, you must do what the worldly types are not able to do.” Then Rabi’a throws her prayer- carpet into the air and says, “Oh Hasan! Come here, so that you will be hidden from the eyes
of created beings (chashm-i khalq)!” She explains: “Oh Teacher! What you have
done a fish can do and what I have
done a fly can do. The real affair is
beyond both of these.”125 The
meaning of this role reversal
is revealed in the account
that follows the story, in which
Hasan testifies to Rabi’a’s superior wisdom: “I was with Rabi’a for a full day
and night. We discussed the matter of
the Sufi way and its inner reality (tariqat
va haqiqat) such that the thought, ‘I am a man,’ never occurred
to me and the thought,
‘I am a woman,’ never occurred to her. When I arose at the end of this session, I saw myself as a person of no
worth (muflisi) and I saw her as one of the righteous (mukhlisi).”126
‘Attar’s Hasan and Rabi’a stories are clearly anachronistic because Rabi’a was very
young when al-Hasan al-Basri died in 728 CE. In addition, nearly every one of these stories
starts with the phrase, “It is related
that” (naql ast keh). This indicates that ‘Attar himself presented them as legendary. However, he also wanted them to be taken as authentic traditions because they contained important truth claims about the Sufi way of knowledge. From the time that these stories first appeared in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, Rabi’a and Hasan have always existed
in each other’s shadow.
The pairing of these two figures even extends to their burial place: as we
124 Taqi al-Din
ibn Taymiyya, Majmu’at al-rasa’il wa al-masa’il, Muhammad
‘Ali Baydawi, ed. (Beirut:
Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2000), vol. 1, 94; it is doubtful whether Widad El
Sakkakini ever read Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa on
Rabi’a for she incorrectly states, “But those who came after [Rabi’a],
philosophers and interpreters alike, became confused by their own fanatical
literalism. Among these was Ibn
Taymia, who indulged in defamation of Rabi’a through his shallow outward
understanding of her sayings.” Idem, First
Among Sufis, 48; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 74
125 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 66; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 160-1
126 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 66-7; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 161
shall see below, the most likely location of Rabi’a’s grave is in the vicinity
of al-Hasan al-Basri’s tomb in the al-Zubayr suburb of Basra.
However, in Sufi traditions, it is Hasan
who lives in Rabi’a’s shadow and not the other way around.
As the story summarized above makes clear, Rabi’a’s role in the Hasan and Rabi’a stories
is to strip away the veil of superficiality and uncover
the deeper truths of the Sufi path. In a way that recalls the discussion of Rabi’a the Lover in Chapter 3, she appears
as a Diotima-like figure to Hasan’s Socrates, providing insights that her
famous male colleague would not otherwise have learned.
In his recent study of al-Hasan
al-Basri in Islamic
literature, Suleiman Mourad observes
that the earliest accounts about Hasan depict
“a very pious figure who uttered valuable
sermons and anecdotes about
piety, which emphasize proper worship and the deceitful nature of the world.”127 This is also how he appears in the chapter
on Rabi’a in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’.
However, his image is very different in ‘Attar’s chapter
on al-Hasan al-Basri
himself. Here
‘Attar depicts him as a noted mystic
and an important link between
Sufism and the wider
traditions of Sunni Islam. In fact, ‘Attar was nearly as influential in creating the Sufi image of al- Hasan
al-Basri as he was for Rabi’a. As Mourad points out, the same use of anachronism that characterizes ‘Attar’s depiction
of the encounters between Hasan and Rabi’a can also be found in
his chapter on Hasan. For example, in one passage
Hasan is described
as meeting the Prophet
Muhammad, although the Prophet died ten years before Hasan was born.128
One of the most important early
works to contain
information about al-Hasan
al-Basri is ‘Abdallah ibn Mubarak’s (d. 797 CE) Kitab al-zuhd wa al-raqa’iq (see
Chapter 2). Mourad notes
that in this work Ibn Mubarak depicts
Hasan as “overwhelmed by sorrow and the fear of eternal punishment and is preoccupied with constant worship.”129 This depiction
is also consistent with the image of Hasan in ‘Attar’s
chapter on Rabi’a.
As befits the worldview of early Islamic asceticism, most of ‘Attar’s
Hasan and Rabi’a
stories involve the concept of the World/Non- World dichotomy. However, the most important
of these accounts
also discuss inner states of knowledge or spiritual attitudes
that go beyond outward ascetic
practices. For example,
in one account Rabi’a
reminds Hasan’s disciples that true spiritual
sincerity depends on the constant remembrance of God. In this story one of Hasan’s disciples
says to Rabi’a: “Hasan says that if he
is deprived from seeing the Truth (haqq) for the moment
of a single breath in Paradise, he will
weep and moan so much that all of the people of Paradise will take pity on him.” Rabi’a replies: “This is a fine statement. However,
if in this world [Hasan]
is also heedless of the remembrance
of the Truth (dhikr-i haqq) for a single breath and the same anguish and weeping and sorrow
come to him, only then will the same thing happen to him in the afterlife. Otherwise, it will not
be so.”130
As discussed in Chapter 2,
ascetic practices in Rabi’a’s time fell into three main categories.
The first category,
instrumental asceticism, was directed toward specific goals and
was closely related to the practice of ascetic ritualism (nusk). Ascetics
of this type tended to conceive of their relationship with God in terms of religious and moral obligations. The second
127 Suleiman Ali
Mourad, Early Islam Between Myth and
History: Al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 110H/728CE) and
the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2006),
63
128 Ibid, 113-114;
‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 26-41
129 Mourad, Early Islam Between Myth and History, 65
130 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 68; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 162
category of asceticism was reactionary
asceticism. This type of asceticism was also instrumental but added a moral dimension that rated poverty
above both wealth and ordinary
life on the scale of values.
The statements ascribed
to al-Hasan al-Basri
in the earliest sources agree in depicting him as a practitioner of both instrumental and reactionary asceticism. For the most part this is
also true of ‘Attar’s depiction of Hasan in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’. The statement by Rabi’a quoted in the previous paragraph similarly reflects these
two categories of asceticism. By assuming an equivalence of spiritual states and their effects in this world and next, Rabi’a demonstrates that she too is an instrumental ascetic. However, when she is portrayed in other stories
as teaching Hasan the difference between
ascetic practices and their inner reality, or when she says to Hasan,
“What you have done a fish can do and what I have done a fly can do. The real affair is beyond
both of these,” her understanding of asceticism has moved to another level: it now corresponds to the
category of essential asceticism. In many of the Rabi’a
and Hasan stories
in Tadhkirat al- awliya’ Rabi’a’s rhetorical purpose is to convey
the moral and religious truths
of doctrines that Hasan can only approach
from the outside.
As such, she stands not only for essential asceticism but also for the transcendence of asceticism itself.
For ‘Attar this makes her a Sufi because her teachings demonstrate that excellence in ritual and ascetic practices
depends on deeper states of spiritual and mystical knowledge.
The
modern writer Widad El Sakkakini
also makes the same point but in a more secular
way in her book on Rabi’a. In the following
passage, which is influenced both by psychology and Existentialism, she slso depicts Hasan
as a reactionary ascetic. However, for El Sakkakini, all asceticism is reactionary: “Asceticism is seldom
known to be inborn: the natural disposition of man is desire and greed. Therefore, behind every ascetic rages a tumult,
however deeply concealed this may be. The lack or loss of fortune,
fame, or a loved one; any of these may lead to a wish to forget and seek the comfort of serenity.”131 For El Sakkakini, “ascetic tyrants” like Hasan misunderstand the true meaning of Islam: “[T]hat
Islam is a religion of effort in the present as well as the ultimate worlds;
a counsel of work towards
the development of man and his well- being.”132 In her view,
because early Muslim
ascetics were influenced by Christian, Indian, Platonic, and even Zoroastrian doctrines, they could not see that “asceticism was a heresy and an innovation paralyzing to the soul: it lured heads into the noose, and then pulled tight the rope.”133
For El Sakkakini, the purpose of Rabi’a appearing
anachronistically with Hasan in
Tadhkirat al-awliya’ was to show that a more developed way of spirituality could replace
primitive self-mortification. In her view, Rabi’a’s
rhetorical function was to remind
Hasan and his followers
that they had a distorted
vision of the good, “which actually worked against all that
they hoped to achieve— and against the fulfillment of those who followed in their footsteps
. . . They had, in other words, put themselves into a position
where they believed
that they were the
source
of action (wada’u anfusahum fi markaz al-haraka), with the whole
world reacting to them;
they never understood that they themselves were the reacting
elements.”134
131
El Sakkakini, First
among Sufis, 21; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 29; the Arabic text states literally, “[The ascetic]
buries [i.e,. represses] this experience in the deepest
part of his personality” (wa qad yadfanu
al-haditha fi ‘amaqi nafsihi).
132 El Sakkakini, First among Sufis, 22; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 31
133 El Sakkakini, First among Sufis, 22; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 32
134 El Sakkakini, First among
Sufis, 22 and 27; al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 32 and 40
7.
The excellence of Rabi’a’s spiritual
understanding is illustrated by ‘Attar through her intimate discourses (munajat) with God. Six of these discourses or supplications
appear in a separately titled section of ‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a, including
her most famous saying: “Oh Lord, if I worship you out of fear of Hell, burn me
in Hell. If I worship in the hope of heaven,
forbid it to me. But if I worship you for your own
sake, do not deprive me of your enduring beauty (jamal baqi).”135
The literary tradition of ascribing intimate discourses with God to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya begins with ‘Attar’s Sufi predecessor Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 1074 CE). Among the references to Rabi’a in Qushayri’s Risala is the following
account: “Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya said in one of her munajat: ‘Oh my God! Will You burn in Hellfire a heart that loves you?’ Then a voice
called out to her (fa-hatafa bi-ha hatifun): ‘We would never do such a thing! So do not
think ill of us!’”136 In Tadhkirat
al-awliya’ ‘Attar reproduces this anecdote in a different
way. In his version
Rabi’a states, “By God, if tomorrow you put me in Hell, I will cry out, ‘You have made
me a friend. Is this how you treat your friends?’ A voice calls out, ‘Rabi’a
do not think ill of us!137 Be assured that we will bring you into the circle of our friends,
so that you may
converse with us.”138
Although ‘Attar provides no isnad or
chain of transmission for this account, one can speculate that he may have gotten it from Qushayri via the latter’s
student Abu ‘Ali al-Farmadi.
The differences in the details
of the two versions are minor enough
to have been due to problems
of oral transmission. We will probably never
know where Qushayri
got the original
version because he does not cite any sources
either. Whatever its origin, this munaja is one of the most
widely quoted statements of Rabi’a
in Sufi literature and must be considered the most important contribution of Qushayri to the Rabi’a
narrative. The munajat in
‘Attar’s chapter on Rabi’a
convey insights into how the Sufi is to behave
before God, a spiritual attitude
that al-Harith al- Muhasibi called “being attentive to the rights
of God” (al-ri’aya li-huquq
Allah).139 These spiritual attitudes are also related
to Rabi’a’s Love mysticism as portrayed by Abu Talib al-Makki
in Qut al-qulub. Thus, they can be seen as indications of Muhasibi’s and Makki’s influence
on ‘Attar’s Sufism. In devotional terms, Rabi’a’s munajat in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’ express the selflessness and single-mindedness of the sincere
worshipper of God. However, although
the object of Rabi’a’s
love is divine,
these dialogues express
emotional states that are familiar
to lovers everywhere. As such, they illustrate Hendrik
Vroom’s contention that the truth
of religious stories is grounded in their evocation of basic human
experiences.140 With respect to religious
truth claims, they also convey
in a popular register the “Love that is truly
worthy of God,”
which is the moral of Rabi’a’s
Poem of the Two Loves in Makki’s
Qut al-qulub (see Chapter
3).
8.
The
final section of ‘Attar’s chapter
on Rabi’a describes her death and testifies to her
exalted status with God through
dreams and visions
in which she appears after death.
135 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 74; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 169
136 Qushayri, al-Risala, 328; this saying
is also reproduced and ascribed to Qushayri’s Risala by Ibn
Khallikan in Wafayat al-a’yan (vol. 2, 285).
137 This last sentence is in Arabic
in ‘Attar’s text, just as it is in Qushayri’s original.
138 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 74; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 169
139 This concept
provided the title
for Muhasibi’s most famous work, al-Ri’aya
li-huquq Allah, discussed
in Chapter 2.
140 Vroom, “Religious Truth,”
122
At the moment when she dies a voice is heard reciting the Qur’anic verse: “Oh soul at peace! Return to your Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing. Enter among My worshippers and enter into My heaven!”
(Qur’an 89:27-29)141 Through scenes such
as these, ‘Attar leaves the reader with the image
of Rabi’a as a humble
worshipper, who is never arrogant with her Lord, who wants nothing and never asks of God, “Make me thus,” or “Do this or that.” After her death she appears
in a dream in which she is
asked about Munkir and Nakir, the two angels of death in Islam. She replies, “When those pure youths (javanmardan) came to me, they asked, ‘Who is your Lord? I said: ‘Go back and tell the Divine Reality (Haqq): Out of so many thousands of people You have not forgotten an old woman (pir zani)? Out of all of
the worlds I have only You. Never would I forget You such that you would
have to send someone to me to
ask, “My God, who are You?’”142
Most
of the dream visions of Rabi’a that can be found in medieval Islamic literature are
attributed to ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal,
who is identified by Ibn al-Jawzi as Rabi’a’s maid-servant in the latter part of her life. The earliest writer to cite a dream-account of Rabi’a after her death is
Ibn al-Jawzi, who places these narratives at the end of his chapter on Rabi’a in Sifat al-safwa.
‘Attar would do the same less than a generation later in Tadhkirat al-awliya’.143 Because
Ibn al- Jawzi does not cite any chains of transmission for these accounts,
we have no way of knowing
where he got them or if ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal even existed.144 ‘Attar does not mention ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal; instead,
he mentions two other individuals to whom Rabi’a
speaks from the grave. These are Muhammad
ibn Aslam Tusi and Ni’ma
(sic.) Tarsusi,145 At present
it is impossible to say whether
the accounts of visions of Rabi’a after her death originated with Ibn al- Jawzi
himself or whether
both he and ‘Attar got them from another, unknown
source. However, because they do not comprise common tropes of Sufi hagiography until after the time of Ibn al- Jawzi
and ‘Attar, it is likely that these legends originated no earlier than the twelfth
century CE.
IV.
Postscript: Where Is Rabi’a Buried?
Some of the most important discrepancies in the accounts
about Rabi'a al-‘Adawiyya’s death concern
the location of her burial place. As mentioned above,
her most likely
resting place is in the vicinity
of al-Hasan al-Basri’s tomb in the al-Zubayr suburb
of Basra. However,
Ibn Khallikan states in Wafayat al-a’yan: “Her grave is visited regularly. It is outside
of Jerusalem to the
east on top of the hill known
as Tor.”146 In this passage,
Ibn Khallikan refers
to the tomb known today as “The Station
of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya” (Maqam Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya) on the
Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. This tomb, which is located
inside of a cave, contains
141 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 74; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 169; the last part of this Qur’anic
passage is not reproduced in the Sells-Losensky translation.
142 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 75; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 170
143 R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women, Ibn al-Jawzi Appendix, 280-281
144 In Wafayat al-a’yan, Ibn Khallikan also quotes this passage and states that Ibn al-Jawzi
includes a chain
of transmission going back to ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal.
However, no such chain of transmission can be
found in modern editions of Sifat
al-safwa. See Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat
al-a’yan, vol. 2, 287.
145 ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 75; Sells, Early Islamic
Mysticism, 170
146 Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-a’yan, vol. 2, 287
architectural features
that date it to the Crusader or Mamluk periods
of Jerusalem’s history.
In other words, the architecture of the tomb is more or less contemporary with Ibn Khallikan himself, who flourished in the thirteenth century.
For this reason,
it is possible to speculate that his assertion that Rabi’a is buried there may have been due to a local legend
that associated Rabi’a with this site. Today the tomb is cared for by a Palestinian Arab family of Moroccan
origin. According to local legends,
the tomb has been associated with a Christian, a Muslim, or a
Jewish woman saint throughout its history. It is likely
that the actual
occupant of the tomb is the
late fourth-century CE Christian saint Pelagia of Antioch, who early sources
agree was buried
on the Mount of Olives. According
to the Syriac Life of Pelagia, this female ascetic
and penitent lived in a cell on the Mount of Olives.147 Such cells were often located in caves. It is not unlikely that the tomb was venerated as Pelagia’s in Crusader times
but after the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem it was “reassigned,” so to speak, to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
Apart from Ibn Khallikan’s Wafayat al-a’yan, the most important
premodern text to
provide an alternate location
for Rabi’a’s tomb is al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi tarajim al-sadat
al- Sufiyya (The Pearly
Spheres in the Biographies of the Sufi Saints), by the Egyptian
Sufi Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ra’uf
al-Munawi (d. 1621 CE). Most notably, this work claims that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya lived in Egypt.148 In terms of the historiography of the Rabi’a
narrative, Munawi’s work is important because
most subsequent Egyptian
versions of the Rabi’a myth are based
on it. For example,
we saw in Chapter 3 how the modern Egyptian
writer Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq used Munawi’s narrative as evidence that Rabi’a was married. In addition, a tomb ascribed
to Rabi’a can be found in Cairo. For many Egyptians, this tomb provides
material proof of Munawi’s contention that she lived in Egypt. Munawi’s
work is also important because
it provides an illustration of how the trope of Rabi’a the Sufi was understood in the centuries after ‘Attar. For example,
he uses Makki’s and ‘Attar’s
trope of Rabi’a
the Lover to critique the spirituality of the great Sufi shaykh
of Baghdad, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166 CE). According
to Munawi, both Rabi’a and ‘Abd al-Qadir
focused their spiritiual devotion too intensely
on the Absolute and thus transgressed the limits imposed
by the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad.149
From the point of view of critical scholarship and the rules
of historical research, Munawi’s chapter on Rabi’a is most notable for the number
of rules that it breaks.
Throughout the text, accounts
from previous works
are mixed together
without attribution and even without concern for logical consistency. For example, although
Munawi claims that Rabi’a lived
in Egypt, he also relates how the ruler of Basra in Iraq offered her a large
sum of money if she would
marry him.150 Even worse, in his notice
on Rabi’a bint Isma’il, which follows the chapter
on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, we find that Rabi’a
bint Isma’il was from Basra and was an ‘Adawiyya in clan origin, even though the “Egyptian” Rabi’a
was the person
named Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. As if this were not enough,
Munawi follows Ibn Khallikan in calling Rabi’a Umm al-Khayr and
147 For the story of
Pelagia of Antioch, see the translation of the Syriac Life of Pelagia in Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 40-62; see also, Coon, Sacred Fictions, 77-84, who notes that
early versions of The Life of Pelagia also
existed in Latin and Arabic.
148 Munawi, al-Kawakib al-durriyya, vol. 1, 285. Munawi calls Rabi’a
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya
then the Egyptian (thuma al-Misriyya).” For a partial English translation of
Munawi’s notice on Rabi’a, see John Renard,
ed., Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim
Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: University of California Press, 1998), 132-5.
149 Munawi, al-Kawakib al-durriyya, vol. 1, 290
150 Ibid, 286
further adds that she was a mawlat who belonged to the clan of Al ‘Aqil instead of the clan of Al ‘Atik,
as claimed by Sulami and others. However,
he makes these claims not about Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya but about
Rabi’a bint Isma’il,
an assertion that cannot be found in any of the earlier sources.151
It is clear from the confusion of his narrative that Munawi was not sure whether
the two Rabi’a’s were the same or different people. For example,
he includes the Poem of the Intimate Gift, which as we saw in Chapter 3, most likely
belonged to Rabi’a
bint Isma’il, in the chapter
on Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.152 However,
he correctly states
that Rabi’a bint Isma’il was married to Ahmad
ibn Abi al-Hawari. Munawi also believed that Rabi’a bint Isma’il was the person buried
in the tomb ascribed to Rabi’a on the Mount
of Olives (Ra’s Zayta) in Jerusalem.153 Compared with ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, Munawi’s work is spiritually and theologically shallow
and it is difficult
for the modern researcher to credit him with making significant moral and theological truth claims and insights
that outweigh his mistakes. Nevertheless, despite
these shortcomings, his work remains important
for the historiography of the Rabi’a myth. Because
his conflations of the narratives of the two Rabi’as conform
closely to what is found in popular
legends and literature, Munawi’s
al-Kawakib al-durriyya can be added to ‘Attar’s Tadhkirat al-awliya’ and Ibn Khallikan’s Wafayat al-a’yan
as a key premodern text that helped
shape the monument
of Rabi’a the Icon as we know her today.154
151 Ibid, 291
152 Ibid, 288
153 Ibid, 293
154 In calling
Rabi’a the Icon a “monument,” I follow Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
and the Disccourse on Language, A. M. Sheridan-Smith trans. (New York: Pantheon Books,
1972), 138-
139. For Foucault, a monument is a discourse that stands iconically by itself or on its own terms,
as opposed to a document,
which is a discourse that stands for something else.
CHAPTER 6
RABI’A THE ICON (II): THE SECULAR
IMAGE
The greatest legends
are those which most resemble
the truth.
—
Widad El
Sakkakini, First Among Sufis: The Life
and Thought of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, 7; al-
‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 7
Religions— and
secular worldviews as well— live through stories (at present often films) that
show how people have insight and live properly, know how to deal with
difficulties, or else bungle things, make the wrong choices, and fail. Paradigmatic stories sketch a view of life
and give direction.
—
Hendrik M. Vroom, “Religious Truth,” 117-118
The previous chapter demonstrated how the medieval
Persian Sufi and hagiographer
Farid al-Din al-‘Attar constructed a vita for Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya and thus became the most
important agent of the Rabi’a myth. The verisimilitude of ‘Attar’s “paper-time” revisions of the Rabi’a narrative was so effective that these revisions
are now regarded as facts.
Using an analytical model created by the Dutch
philosopher and theologian Hendrik M. Vroom, I also discussed how religious stories
such as those
presented by ‘Attar
make truth claims
that operate on several
levels at once. The historical claims that such stories make are not the only important
ones; sometimes, they are the least important. Moral and theological truth claims are often the real
point of such stories. Sometimes, fictional stories express
moral and theological truth claims better than facts, especially when the form in which they are presented conveys
a sense of verisimilitude. This is what Roland
Barthes refers to when he discusses the “reality effect.”
It is also the point that Widad El Sakkakini makes
when she states
in the epigraph above, “The greatest legends are those which most resemble the truth.”
A major argument
of Chapter 5 was that something very close to this idea was at work in
‘Attar’s presentation of Rabi’a, al-Hasan
al-Basri, and other important Sufi figures in the
hagiographic anthology, Tadhkirat al-awliya’. However, at times historical truth— or at least an approximation of it— is important to religious stories
too. When the figures in Sufi stories
are meant to be real exemplars, as in the tabaqat works of Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, their historical factualness is important for the lessons
contained in these stories. This is why Sulami
relied on chains of transmission (Ar.
isnad, pl. asanid) to back up his
accounts, much as contemporary scholars
rely on footnotes. Both footnotes and chains of transmission serve
a similar purpose: they act as witnesses or guarantors for the information they convey.1
Now that the Rabi’a narratives have entered the modern era, the sense of factuality has become even more important than before. Although
there are still traditionalist Sufis, such as the
French writer Jean Annestay, who like ‘Attar,
are most concerned with the “principial” meaning of the Rabi’a narratives, the majority of the audience
for these narratives are imbued with modern
notions of empirical history and consider it important that the literary
portrayals of Rabi’a
are
1Similarly, in the fields of conversation analysis,
ethnomethodology, factual discourse analysis, and the sociology of scientific knowledge, this type of category entitlement is called “footing,” even when it occurs
orally or in non-Western cultural contexts. See Potter, Representing Reality, 142-145.
historically real. Most modern Muslims speak of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a historical figure and consider ‘Attar’s
accounts to be not only figuratively true but factually
true as well. Even if they
doubt the miracle stories that ‘Attar and others have added to the Rabi’a narrative, they believe
that her life-story and teachings are mostly accurate.
However, the modern importance of factuality is not only an issue
for the religiously minded audience of the Rabi’a narratives. Because historicism and the empirical notion of historical truth have become
part of modern culture, since the twentieth century, academic and historical narratives have mostly replaced Sufi narratives as the main vehicles of the Rabi’a myth.
As a
result, the audience
for the Rabi’a narratives has broadened. Rabi’a is now the object of
secular
attention as well as religious
attention and secular
notions of objectivity have become
inextricably bound up with religious
notions of principial truth claims. Secular
authorities must now be considered along with medieval
Sufi authorities such as Makki,
Sulami, and ‘Attar
as agents of the Rabi’a myth. When studying
these secular agents of myth, one must approach them on
their own terms and assess their works according to the methods
they employ. On this new ground, a retreat into the primacy
of moral and theological truth claims over historical truth claims cannot save these
writers from Roland
Barthes’ critique that even supposedly “objective” historians can become purveyors of the “falsely
obvious.”
In the first part of the twentieth
century, Margaret Smith replaced ‘Attar as the chief
agent of the Rabi’a myth, not only in the English
speaking world but throughout the wider world as
well. This was due to the reputation of her highly
influential academic and historical study, Rabi’a the Mystic
(1928). In Chapter
5, we saw how this well-respected English
scholar added what Barthes
calls “nostalgic reminiscences” to the Rabi’a narrative, such as when she describes Rabi’a as playing the flute. Smith’s
fictional image of the flute-playing Rabi’a has since become
a major trope of the Rabi’a narrative.
Smith’s importance to the construction of the Rabi’a myth illustrates another significant
modern development that must not be overlooked: not only are secularists and modern historians contributing to the Rabi’a myth but also non-Muslims are her agents of myth as well. To return to
Vroom’s categories, we cannot speak of Islamic
theological truth claims in regard to Margaret Smith because she was a Christian. The religious and theological observations that she makes in
Rabi’a
the Mystic are
not Islamic but comparative; furthermore, they are based
on a Christian worldview, such as when she compares Sufi ascetics to Franciscans. Although Smith has
arguably been Rabi’a’s most important
agent of myth in the modern period,
we cannot treat her in the same way that we treat ‘Attar.
Strictly speaking, as an outsider
to the Muslim and Sufi worldviews, Smith cannot make moral and theological truth
claims about Rabi’a:
she can only make observations. Scholarly observations do not go as far epistemologically as truth claims.
The
only academically legitimate claims that Smith can make are historical; hence, those who study
her work must also approach
her claims historically, according to historical standards of
evidence. Apart from this, we can examine
her use of tropes and other techniques of literary
discourse in her construction of the Rabi’a myth. This is why it is intellectually appropriate to employ modern and secular approaches to the construction of the Rabi’a
myth in this part of the
present study, such as the post-structuralist approach
of Barthes and the phenomenological approach of Losev.
In
this chapter, we shall see how two decades after Margaret Smith another important agent of the Rabi’a myth emerged in the Arab world. This time her agent was neither
a Sufi like
‘Attar nor an Orientalist scholar attracted to mysticism like Smith. Instead,
this new agent of
myth, ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi (1917-2002), was a radical
Egyptian secularist, an Existentialist
philosopher, and the most respected Arab scholar of Islamic philosophy in his time. Much as
with Smith, the verisimilitude of Badawi’s representation of Rabi’a’s vita depended on his scholarly reputation. Badawi’s reputation as an academic
authority on Islam was so great that his
imaginative and at times overtly
fictional additions to the Rabi’a
narrative went unquestioned and were quickly accepted
as factual by most of his readers.
The verisimilitude of Badawi’s narrative inspired the Lebanese feminist
writer Widad El Sakkakini and the Egyptian
screenwriter Saniya Qura’a to popularize and add to his reconstruction of Rabi’a’s life-story. Through the influence of Qura’a’s screenplay in particular, the image that Badawi constructed of Rabi’a has spread
across the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia. Ironically, this secular image has now been
accepted by Sufis as well,
such that few today are able to distinguish Badawi’s
additions to the Rabi’a narratives from what originally came from ‘Attar.
I.
Rabi’a the Existentialist
Badawi’s reconstruction of the Rabi’a
myth is the centerpiece of his book,
Shahidat al- ‘ishq al-ilahi Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya the Martyr of Divine Love). Badawi first published
this book in 1948 and revised it in 1960. The most recent edition was published
in Kuwait in 1978.2 Today, this work is something
of an unwanted child among Badawi’s
publications. Despite its importance to the development of the Rabi’a myth, it is often missing
from lists of his scholarly
publications. In this work, Badawi
applies to hagiography some of the key
philosophical themes that he would
later develop in his 1960 treatise on Existentialism,
Dirasat
fi al-falsafa al-wujudiyya (Studies in Existentialist Philosophy).3 In Martyr of Divine
Love, Badawi portrays
the ascetics and mystics of early Islam as anxious
or “unquiet” souls (to
borrow a term from the scholar of medieval sainthood
Richard Kieckhefer).4 In particular, he treats
Rabi’a’s spiritual life as a quest to resolve the anxieties and inner conflicts that arise from her life experiences.
Badawi’s use of the Existentialist concept of anxiety
or angst (Ar. qalaq)
as the
motivation for Rabi’a’s spiritual
transformation in Martyr of Divine Love also appears
in another of his works, Shakhsiyyat qaliqa
fi al-Islam (Anxious Personalities in Islam,
1946).5 Most of this
little-known work, which appears to have been a forerunner of Martyr of Divine
Love, consists of notes
and translations from the writings
of Badawi’s teachers,
the Orientalist scholars
Louis Massignon and Henri Corbin. In it, he examines four types of Islamic religiosity: (1) “Iranian
2 ‘Abd al-Rahman
Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Kuwait: Wakalat al-Matbu’at,
1978 reprint of the 1960 revised edition); this work has been cited many times
in the preceding chapters.
3 ‘Abd al-Rahman
Badawi, Dirasat fi al-falaafa al-wujudiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1978 reprint of 1960
first edition)
4 See Richard
Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu
(Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1984); Kieckhefer takes the title of his book from Saint Augustine’s concept
of inquietum, the restlessness of the soul that searches
for God (181).
As we shall see below,
this concept is similar to Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of restlessness, which
provides the basis for Badawi’s theory of existential anxiety.
5 ‘Abd al-Rahman
Badawi, Shakhsiyyat qaliqa fi al-Islam (Cairo: Dar al-Nahda al-‘Arabiyya, 1964 reprint
of the 1946 first edition)
Islam” is symbolized by the Persian
companion of the Prophet, Salman
al-Farisi (d. 656 CE); (2) “Sufi
Islam” is symbolized by the Sufi martyr Abu Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922 CE); and (3) “Illuminationist Islam” is depicted
through the writings
of another martyred
mystic, Shihab al- Din
al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191 CE). The fourth type of religiosity, Islam’s approach to other faiths (Badawi doesn’t provide a name for this), is depicted through
an account of the Prophet Muhammad’s conflict with the Christians of Najran in Arabia (ca. 631 CE).
In
the Preface to Studies in Existentialist Philosophy, Badawi gives the following definition of Existentialism, which reproduces the model that he used for his depiction of Rabi’a
in Martyr of Divine Love:
Existentialism is
a very precisely defined approach (madhhab)
to being (wujud): it is founded on a
very basic and simple principle, which is that a person’s being consists of his actions (wujud al-insan huwwa ma yaf’aluhu). The actions of the person are what define and form his being;
for this reason the person is measured by his actions. Thus, the being of
every person is [defined] according to his actions. This approach is the opposite of Essentialism (al-mahiyya). This [latter concept] is the approach of those who posit a prior
essence for the human being out of which his actions grow, in accordance with
which he is judged and by which he is defined.6
Elsewhere in Studies Badawi states,
“In Existentialism, every point of view (nazariyya)
develops from one’s life experiences.”7 This explains why in Martyr of Divine Love he felt the
need to ground every aspect
of Rabi’a’s spirituality— from her asceticism, to her Love mysticism, to her wisdom as a teacher— in specific life experiences, even if he had to make them up
himself. Badawi’s attempt
to ground Rabi’a’s
worldview in life experiences also helps
explain the verisimilitude of his portrayal of her: the more an author portrays
a character in a way that
is similar to ourselves, the more we are likely to believe
it.
According to Badawi,
the concept of Existentialism was first
expressed by the Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who stated:
“Verily, I have found truth;
truth, but in regard to myself. For I have found the idea (al-fikra) to be that for the sake of which I wish to live
and die.”8 Badawi
explains that the idea to which Kierkegaard refers is life itself, according to the full realization of its possibilities. Because life can only be realized through
action, the full potential of the human
being must be attained through
struggle (nidal):
“[struggle] between the self
(al-dhat) and the Absolute, between God and the world,
between reality and appearance,
between the present moment and the totality
of one’s life, between time and eternity,
and between knowledge and faith. This struggle will imprint on [human] existence
its most fundamental characteristics: [freedom
of] choice (al-ikhtiyar), change (al-taghayyur), individuality (al- infirad),
and autonomous selfhood (al-dhatiyya).”9
Badawi bases his representation of Rabi’a’s life-story in Martyr of Divine Love on his
understanding of Kierkegaard. In Studies in Existentialist Philosophy, he explains
that for Kierkegaard,
6 Badawi, Dirasat fi al-falsafa al-wujudiyya, Preface before p. 1;
7 Ibid, 42
8 Ibid, 2; this is a translation of Badawi’s Arabic translation of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard is one of the
most discussed philosophers, and any interpretation of his views is potentially open to criticism. The following discussion represents Badawi’s views of
Kierkegaard and Existentialism, not my own.
9 Ibid
[T]he self is
constantly preoccupied with itself; this [preoccupation is expressed through]
the feeling of freedom, which is accompanied by sin (khati’a). This
constitutes present existence, “face-to-face before God.” The human being is free and unique, without
the possibility of duplication. He
cannot be placed in a general category and cannot be defined by an abstract
concept. Existence is struggle (tanaqud); it is the point of encounter
between the finite (al-mutanahi) and
the infinite (al-lamutantahi) and
between the temporal (al-zamani) and
the eternal (al-sarmadi). It is found in its finite individuality (fi fardiyatihi al-mutanahiyya), immersed
in time. It returns to itself and
revolves around itself, certain in itself of its concreteness (‘ayniyatiha) and its individuality. However, Being, insofar as it can be
described as present in infinitude and eternality, also returns to God or the
Absolute. In this rupture between an
individuality comprised of itself and a present shared in conjunction with God, Being confirms itself as living, but in a condition of danger,
impulsiveness, or sin.10
According to Badawi’s understanding of Existentialism, the meaning of existence is found
in the experiences that motivate
the self. The self comes face to face with reality
through an active or passionate (infi’ali) engagement with life. Badawi observes that some of the greatest and most passionate struggles
are associated with religious faith,
where the human desire for freedom and autonomy is confronted by the limits that are imposed by God and the world. The
person is thus forced to find a balance between
her desires and limitations; this creates a state of tension because not all desires can be fulfilled. Out of these
tensions arise the existential states of
despair (ya’s) and anxiety
(qalaq). These states arise
from the feeling
of isolation that occurs
when the struggle of the self to live autonomously leads to error,
sin, and the frustration of the
self’s hopes and desires.11
Following Kierkegaard, Badawi identifies three personality types according to Existentialist philosophy: Aesthetic Man (rajul jamal), Ethical
Man (rajul akhlaq), and Religious
Man (rajul din).12 These three types correspond to three different ways of life: the Aesthetic Path (al-madraj al-jamali), the Ethical Path (al-madraj
al-akhlaqi), and the Religious Path (al-madraj al-dini).13 The Aesthetic Path is lived in the present; the Ethical Path is lived in time; and the Religious Path is lived in eternity. Badawi describes Aesthetic
Man as something like an Epicurean. He lives through
the body for the sake of sensual
gratification; his motto
is carpe diem (seize the day), and he avoids personal attachments because he fears that they will constrain his freedom. However, unlike
the true Epicurean
he is constantly restless and is unable
to find inner peace.
He rejects marriage
and companionship because
he values his independence but also
because he is unable to tolerate stability
for very long. Aesthetic Man is ambitious and sees life as
a battle. For him, other people are purely instrumental: they are valuable
only to the extent that they
help him attain his goals.14 The ultimate emptiness
of this existence makes Aesthetic
Man subject to the moods of frustration and despair.
By
contrast, Ethical Man seeks a meaningful life through the fulfillment
of duties and responsibilities: he values
this fulfillment not by means
of material wealth
but through reputation
10 Ibid, 2-3
11 Ibid, 3-4
12 Ibid, 42
13 Ibid
14 Ibid, 43
(dhikra) and repetition (tikrar). Because Ethical
Man finds satisfaction in the fulfillment of duties and responsibilities, he lives his life as a social
being and often is devoted
to the improvement of his society,
country, or humanity
in general. He values companionship and marriage because he finds pleasure
in sociability and because of the benefits
that living with a
partner brings to the development of the self. In moral
terms, Ethical Man is not Epicurean but Aristotelian. He lives according
to the just mean and judges the value of everything according
to the principles of fairness and balance: “The Ethical type advocates the establishment of the mean and
discriminates between good and evil according to it; he judges everything according to the principle of the mean and balance.”15 By seeking fulfillment in society, Ethical
Man hopes to attain
justice, security, and personal stability; however, the price of his fulfillment is the loss of
his autonomy and individuality.
Unlike Ethical Man, who constructs the story of his life in time (bi-l-zamaniyya) by building his reputation or career, Religious Man seeks to transcend both time and the world and
desires to live in eternality (bi-l-sarmadiyya). Because
he views existence from a divine perspective, Religious
Man is detached from both time and the world. Badawi describes
the condition of Religious
Man in the following way: “[Religious Man] desires the discourse that is
spoken in Heaven and touches
the hand of the Spirit
of those spirits
that are born in the supernal.
If [Religious Man] is a woman, her speech calls out to God for her to attain divine grace (rida’)
and reach the level of the Soul at Peace (martabat al-nafs al-mutma’inna). All of [her] efforts are toward attaining the eternal
and everlasting life that [her]
mind imagines to be lived
within the divine embrace.
In general, these states are the states and stations
that are well-known among the Sufis.”16
In Martyr of Divine Love,
Badawi depicts Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as embodying each of
these personality types in turn. Following the outline
of her vita as
composed by ‘Attar,
he divides her life into three
distinct phases, each corresponding to a particular type. The periods
of her youth, captivity, and liberation set the stage
for his depiction of Rabi’a as Aesthetic Woman. In order for her to conform
to this type, Badawi constructs an entirely new narrative about her
early life that stresses her physical beauty,
restlessness, and desire
for independence. Because
the aesthetic personality is both artistic
and sensual, he adds to her vita the
trope of the reformed
sinner by combining ‘Attar’s image
of Rabi’a the Musician with Christian tropes
of saints who had
dramatic conversion experiences, such as Paul of Tarsus,
Augustine of Hippo, and Teresa of
Avila. In the background of this picture
is another early Christian trope, the “fallen
woman” saint. This trope was to be developed further in the 1950s by Widad El Sakkakini, who compared
Rabi’a in her youth to the courtesan
saint Thaïs of Alexandria.
For the next stage of her life, Badawi
depicts Rabi’a as Ethical Woman by focusing
on her repentance, asceticism, and conversion to Sufism. For Badawi,
the Ethical personality type was exemplified in early Islam by the theologian al-Hasan
al-Basri and his students, who associated with Rabi’a in the community of ascetics in and around
Basra. To create
a background for Rabi’a’s
change from Aesthetic Woman to Ethical
Woman, he depicts
eighth-century Basra as a city with a split personality. It contained within
itself the contradictory attributes of rural
15 Ibid, 44
16 Ibid, 45
simplicity versus
high urban culture,
a world-denying asceticism versus world-affirming
hedonism, and the moralistic life of renunciation versus the artistic
life of the senses.
For the final phase of Rabi’a’s
life, Badawi uses the ideal type of Religious Woman to illustrate the resolution of her inner conflicts. According to Badawi,
Kierkegaard saw poetry
and Love mysticism as typical expressions of women’s spirituality. Badawi depicts Rabi’a’s
interest in poetry and Love mysticism as evidence of her attempt
to find fulfillment in transcendence of the
world. For Badawi, the female version of Religious Man is more passive than the male version.
In his view, Religious Woman
can find her true self only by surrendering herself
to another.
Expressing a feminine spirituality based on submission, Religious Woman gives herself up to a higher
self that has achieved transcendence. This transcendent self is personified as a divine male
spouse, who is free of all worldly limitations.
Badawi’s description of early Abbasid
Basra provides the setting for these
transformations of Rabi’a’s
personality. In his essay, “The Reality Effect,”
Roland Barthes stresses the importance of realistic description in creating an aura of what he calls “aesthetic verisimilitude.” The verisimilitude of realism is achieved through
a carefully constructed but seemingly natural description of objects and events.17 To illustrate this phenomenon, Barthes uses Gustave Flaubert’s realistic depiction of the city of Rouen in the novel,
Madame Bovary. Barthes remarks that in Flaubert’s description of Rouen,
“all that mattered
were the figures
of rhetoric to which the sight of the city lends itself— as if Rouen were notable only for
its substitutions.”18 The care and detail
taken by Flaubert
in constructing a description of Rouen was crucial to the realism
that made Madame Bovary
a classic of French literature. In the following passage from this novel,
Charles Bovary has been sent to school
in Rouen as a teenager. His mother finds him a room on the fourth floor of a building that overlooks a small river
called Eau de Robec.
Flaubert uses the literary technique of realism to describe what Bovary sees when he leans out of his window:
The river, which
makes this part of Rouen a kind of miserable little Venice, flowed beneath,
yellow, violet or blue, between its bridges and its railings. Workmen, kneeling on the bank, were
washing their arms in the water. On
poles, jutting out from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying off in the
air. Facing him, over the roofs,
there was the pure wide-open sky, red from the setting sun. It must be grand over there! So cool under the beeches! And he opened his nostrils to breathe down
the sweet smells of the country, smells that never reached this far.19
Likewise, in the opening
paragraph of Martyr of Divine Love,
Badawi also uses the literary technique of realism to depict eighth-century Basra in a way that recalls Flaubert’s description of Rouen:
The Arab Venice:
shimmering like a resplendent jewel to the eyes of hungry and fatigued
travelers coming from the depths of the desert in the heart of the Arabian
Peninsula. As they reach their
destination and their camels kneel at al-Mirbad, they enter the Great Mosque at
the Desert Gate (Bab al-Badiya), dazzled by the fine
cylindrical columns and
17 For a social scientific discussion of the “aesthetic verisimilitude” of realism, see Potter, Representing
Reality, 162-165
18 Barthes, “The Reality Effect,”
in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 144
19 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Geoffrey Wall, trans.
(London: Penguin Books,
2003), 9-10
intricate
craftsmanship that Ziyad ibn Abihi bestowed on this magnificent architectural
monument of early Islam. Their eyes,
covered with desert sand, wander about in this luxuriant godliness. They feel a touch of what awaits them on the eastern side of the city, in the northern and southern
regions, where great ships come from Baghdad to the north via the Ma’qil Canal
and vessels from the Persian Gulf to the south plow the waters of the al-Ubulla Canal in a dignified way,
entrusted with the most valuable cargoes from India and China.20
Although Badawi’s
resplendent “Arab Venice”
of Basra is far from the “miserable little Venice” of Flaubert’s Rouen, it is clear that he is trying to create a similar aura of aesthetic verisimilitude. I cannot say whether Badawi
was inspired by Madame Bovary when
writing Martyr of Divine Love.
However, this is not impossible because much of his education
was in France. In any case, he uses realistic description in the same way as Flaubert does to convey a
sense of reality. For Badawi,
Basra in the time of Rabi’a was a meeting-place of extremes: it was
a newly created city, in which the simple life of the Arab desert
confronted the sophistication of Persian urban culture.
In this city as well, an austere
religiosity competed with indulgence and excess. Making a pun out of the title of Abu Talib al-Makki’s Sufi work Qut al-qulub, Badawi states that one part of Basra yearned
for the worldly satisfaction of the senses
(qut al-hawwas), while the other
part yearned for the otherworldly satisfaction of the heart (qut al-qulub).21
For Badawi, Basra’s split
personality was mirrored
in the lives and personalities of its inhabitants, including Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Within her, there raged a struggle between
opposing extremes, with the worldly and otherworldly fighting
to dominate each other. Badawi
admits that the idea of a struggle in Rabi’a’s soul can only be a matter of conjecture because
the historical details of her life are lacking.
Much as I observed about the Rabi’a
narratives in the Introduction
to the present work, he states: “The deeper I looked and the more documents and manuscripts I consulted, the more I saw [Rabi’a’s] personality disappear into a cave of myths. The more I
scrutinized reports about
her the more they faded
into oblivion, such that I became disappointed and lost all hope of finding
any information about her life or any of her statements that would
allow me or any other serious historian to confirm them with ease. Everything that was attributed to her was like water running
through the fingers
of the researcher who tries
to establish a systematic and scientific method of inquiry.”22 Badawi concludes that because so much vital information is lacking, Rabi’a’s
“real” story cannot
be the subject of history;
rather, it can only be the
subject of myth (ustura). Because the worldviews of myth and scientific history
cannot be reconciled, the modern scholar
must rely on philosophy to “open up a light onto the unknown”
and reveal the existential selves
(dhawat wujudiyya) of Rabi’a
and her contemporaries. In such a
way, says Badawi, the method
of the philosopher can guide
the steps of the historian.23
By using Existentialist philosophy to aid historical investigation, Badawi’s methodology becomes comparable to that of the Russian phenomenologist Aleksei Fyodorovich Losev, although they never knew of each other’s works. In The Dialectics of Myth Losev
states: “Myth is not the substantial, but an energistic self-affirmation of a person.
It is the assertion of a person
20 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 7
21 Ibid, 8
22 Ibid, 11
23 Ibid, 8
not in her deepest
and ultimate root, but in her manifestational and
expressive functions.”24 Badawi would agree with the first part of this statement: the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya indeed expresses the affirmation of her identity. However, he would probably disagree
with the second part of Losev’s statement and argue instead
that in the case of the Rabi’a myth, her self-
affirmation through myth reveals her identity
rather than constructs her
identity in the way that Losev believed. The Existentialist Rabi’a that Badawi portrays in Martyr of Divine
Love is a paragon of self-affirmation. For Losev, the problem
with such a portrayal is that a character
based on a philosophical ideal
type is not a real person but is merely
another type of story or myth.
Instead of shining
light on Rabi’a’s
real self, depicting her in terms of Existentialist philosophy merely
adds another “face”
to the various images in which Rabi’a
the Icon has appeared throughout history. In other words,
for Losev, Badawi’s
Existentialist version of Rabi’a’s story accomplishes nothing
more than to add another
“visage” to her icon.
Badawi’s most important contribution to the Rabi’a
narrative as literature was to depict
her in the first part of her life as the female embodiment of Kierkegaard’s Aesthetic
Man. In Martyr of Divine
Love, he depicts
Rabi’a the Aesthetic Woman as traveling “on the road to
Damascus” (he uses this expression several times), according to the trope
first established for Paul
of Tarsus in Acts of the Apostles.25 The key motif of this trope is a life-changing experience. Rabi’a’s first life-changing experience occurs as a child,
when she falls
down in the street while fleeing an evil man and implores
God to protect her.26 This reliance upon God in a state of fear causes her to look inward rather than outward
for her salvation. For Badawi,
Rabi’a’s attempts after this to seek communion with God in solitude correspond both to the reality of her condition as a captive and to the Aesthetic personality type, which seeks to find the self in solitude
rather than in companionship with others.
The second turn in Rabi’a’s life occurs when her master
frees her from captivity. Fleeing from her master’s home out into the street,
she now seeks
fulfillment in the world and abandons
her former pious pursuits.27 At this point in her life, says Badawi, Rabi’a
“followed the path of
her life in any way that she wished.”28 In this part of the story, he brings up ‘Attar’s
statement that Rabi’a “fell into playing
music” and adds Margaret Smith’s
trope of Rabi’a playing the flute.29 This act of creative license
sets the stage
for Badawi’s most dramatic portrayal of Rabi’a. According to Badawi, the newly liberated
Rabi’a tries to find herself
by embracing the world of the senses and earning her living as a performer. It is fitting,
he says, that she should turn to such
pursuits, for it is through
art that women
best express their
individuality.
According to Badawi’s interpretation of Existentialism, the lessons of life are learned
through the body. Therefore, he speculates that not only did Rabi’a experience her freedom
through worldly pursuits
but she also indulged in them wantonly. “We can only imagine,” he writes, “that she devoted
a long period of her life to the path of intentional sin (tariq al-ithm),
drowned herself in the sea of lusts, and gorged herself on the pleasures
of the senses (iqtatat bi-
24 Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, 93
25 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 18; see also, Acts of the Apostles, Book 9.
26 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 16
27 Ibid, 19
28 Ibid
29 Ibid. See also, ‘Attar,
Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 63; Sells,
Early Islamic Mysticism, 157.
qut al-hawwas) until she was satiated.”30 For Badawi,
this must have been the case because Rabi’a later repented of her sins, “and this repentance by itself is clear proof for us of her compulsion to reach the ultimate limit in the path of lust.”31 After all, he opines, there is no need
to repent without sin. In this respect,
Rabi’a’s journey through
life was similar
to that of St. Paul, “whose excessive [Christian] faith was the result of his excessive
hatred for Christianity, or St.
Augustine’s excessive life of subterfuge [as a Manichaean], which led him naturally to excess in the
sensuous life that he lived
before his conversion to the [Christian] faith.”32
Badawi’s treatment
of Rabi’a’s life-story in Martyr of Divine Love provided the inspiration for Widad
El Sakkakini’s depiction of Rabi’a in al-’Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa (The Sufi Lover), a quasi-novelistic biography
that was first
published in 1955.33 As noted previously, El Sakkakini’s portrayal of Rabi’a is both Existentialist and feminist. In her representation of Rabi’a’s life as in Badawi’s, as soon as Rabi’a attains
her freedom, she rejects the self-denial and poverty that her captivity had imposed on her and turns instead
to the life of the senses. “After her escape from slavery
and servitude into the gay life of liberated women (hayat al-ghayad al- mutaharirat), Rabi’a
discovered a new kind of existence, engulfed
in nights of perfume and tenderness; she turned toward
pleasure and away from the austerity and chastity to which she had
become accustomed.”34
However, El Sakkakini’s
approach differs from Badawi’s
in that she portrays
Rabi’a’s hedonism as a reaction to traumatic experiences. Unlike other writers,
she depicts Rabi’a as
abused both physically and sexually
by men. In El Sakkakini’s revision of ‘Attar’s
narrative, the first time Rabi’a is abused is when a slave trader captures her: “She was followed and chased by a
vicious thief, from whom she ran screaming
and calling for help. She fell to the ground;
he grabbed her like a despised
object; and soon after she was sold to a wealthy merchant
for six pieces of silver.”
35 Another time Rabi’a is abused is when her master sends her to the market: “On the way back she was confronted by a vicious
man, a human animal; and running from him,
frightened and shocked, through the winding streets
of Basra, she escaped— though with injury. She had fallen and broken her arm.”36 However,
the worst form of abuse that Rabi’a
suffers is from her master the wealthy merchant, who keeps her in a state of both physical
and sexual servitude. El Sakkakini is the only writer to suggest that Rabi’a was raped while in captivity: “Was she able to rid herself of the memory of her first captor, who had used her as he willed?
No
30 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 20
31 Ibid
32 Ibid, 21
33 The most recent edition
of this work is Widad
al-El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, Rabi’a al-
‘Adawiyya (Damascus: Dar Tlas li-l-dirasat wa-l-tarjama wa-l-nashr, 1989 reprint
of the 1955 Cairo first edition). This work was translated into English by Nabil Safwat as Widad El El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis: The Life and Thought of
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, with an Introduction by Doris Lessing.
34 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 16; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 22
35 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 13; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 17; in El Sakkakini’s Arabic text
Rabi’a is sold by the thief
for a “low price” (thaman bakhs). The trope of six pieces of silver used by the translator Nabil Safwat in First Among Sufis comes from Margaret
Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic, where
Rabi’a is sold for six dirhams. Smith’s
trope is obviously based on the New Testament, where Judas betrays Jesus for
pieces of silver. See idem, Rabi’a (Oneworld), 23 and (Rainbow Bridge),
6.
36 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 13; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 17
one
but the victim can really tell of the effects of being violated and robbed of her chastity.
This alone may have changed her approach to life completely.”37
For
the most part,
El Sakkakini’s portrayal
of Rabi’a follows
Badawi’s depiction quite closely. However, in line with the theme of sexuality, she bases her account of Rabi’a’s religious conversion not on St. Paul, St. Augustine, or St. Theresa
of Avila as Badawi does,
but on St.
Thaïs of Alexandria, a fourth-century courtesan
whose story became popular in Europe through an 1890 novel by Anatole France.38 Recalling
the novel Thaïs, El Sakkakini states
in her book: “As I write this, I am imagining the ancient story of Paphnutius the priest, who wandered out from
Thebes in central
Egypt. He traversed
the desert barefoot
until he reached
Alexandria, where he prostrated himself before the naked Thaïs.
Thaïs, whose gathering was intoxicated with wine and the fragrance
of incense, and whose palace was notorious
for licentiousness and dissipation— did she not change and become a saint as she approached her death?”39
This passage refers to the
scene in the novel Thaïs where
Paphnutius, the Abbot of
Antinoë, first encounters Thaïs reclining with other courtesans in the Grotto of the Nymphs.40
It seems that for El Sakkakini, the figure of Paphnutius stood for Ibrahim ibn Adham, the Sufi
ascetic of ‘Attar’s narrative, who struggled for years to cross the desert to Mecca, only to find that
the Ka’ba had already gone by itself to meet Rabi’a.41 A central theme of the novel Thaïs is that
Paphnutius could never free himself
from his desires,
despite his extreme
austerities. Instead, he compensates for his desires
by becoming the agent of Thaïs’s conversion. However,
because Thaïs had already
been baptized as a Christian, she was predestined for salvation despite
her reputation for sin. Just as in ‘Attar’s
story of Ibrahim
ibn Adham in Tadhkirat
al-awliya’, in Anatole France’s
novel ascetic austerities do not automatically lead to salvation. One can only earn
salvation through God’s grace. At the end of the novel, Thaïs becomes more beautiful as she
approaches death while Paphnutius becomes
uglier because his passion for the world remains
unresolved.42
As
she imagines Rabi’a
after her liberation from captivity, El Sakkakini reflects
on the paradox of “the wandering singing-girls and the maiden lovers
described by Pierre
Louÿs in Thaïs
and The Songs of Bilitis. Despite
their disrespect for piety, and immersed as they were in
debauchery, they were nonetheless inclined
to piety. The Cypriot singer Mnasidika hoped that
despite spending many years in licentiousness and sin, the following words
would be written
on her tomb: ‘Here lies the most pious of women.’”43 In this passage,
El Sakkakini assumes incorrectly that the Belgian-French Orientalist writer Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925) was the author of
the novel Thaïs. In actuality, Louÿs was the author of Les Chansons de Bilitis (The
Songs of
37 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 15; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 20-21; the Arabic text specifically uses the term, “rape” (ightisab).
38 Anatole France,
Thaïs, Robert B. Douglas
trans. (Rcckville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2005).
For the
hagiographic story of St. Thaïs, see Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 76-84.
39 El Sakkakini, First Among
Sufis, 16; al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 21; my translation of the Arabic
text.
40 France, Thaïs,
57-58
41 See the discussion earlier
in this chapter and in ‘Attar, Tadhkirat al-awliya’, 64, and Sells,
Early Islamic
Mysticism, 158.
42 France, Thaïs,
138-141
43 El Sakkakini, First Among
Sufis, 17; al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 23; translation of the Arabic
text.
Bilitis), a collection of erotic poems that was published in 1894.44 Although
this work was a
favorite of early feminists, it is most notable today
as a literary fraud. Louÿs composed most of
the poems in The Songs of Bilitis himself.
45
In the Introduction to The Songs of Bilitis, Louÿs claims that the poems came from the
tomb of a courtesan named
Bilitis on the island of Cyprus.46 In a narrative that foreshadows in some
ways Badawi’s and El Sakkakini’s accounts of Rabi’a’s
early life, he states that Bilitis grew up
as a shepherdess (she was the daughter
of a Greek father and a Phoenician mother) and that her
life passed through
three separate stages:
her childhood in Asia Minor,
her youth on the island of
Lesbos where she was a companion of the poet Sappho (d. 570 BCE), and her career as a
courtesan on Cyprus, where she was the lover of a woman
singer named Mnasidika. Louÿs even provides false documentary evidence
to support his claims about Bilitis and her poems.47 His division of Bilitis’s
life into three
stages foreshadows the three-stage life story of Rabi’a as outlined by Badawi and El Sakkakini. However, the eroticism of Louÿs’ work goes beyond
what Badawi suggests for Rabi’a because
while Bilitis trades in sex with men, her real lovers are women. By recalling Bilitis’
lover Mnasadika and the other
“maiden lovers” mentioned in The Songs
of Bilitis, El Sakkakini also seems to suggest that Rabi’a engaged
in similar behaviors.
Although she does not state this directly, the possibility is worth noting.
Because of Badawi’s speculations about Rabi’a’s sexual experiences and El Sakkakini’s speculations about
her sexuality, it is not surprising to find that their versions
of Rabi’a’s vita
were objectionable to more religiously inclined writers. For example, in La Vie de Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya (2000), Jamal-Eddine Benghal
comments that their speculations are “difficult to admit. Everything about Rabi’a refutes
this.”48 With respect
to Badawi’s representation Benghal states, “This version
is apparently not founded on historical realities but is based on a phantasmagoric imagination.”49 One of the earliest
critiques of Badawi’s
representation of Rabi’a can be found in Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya wa al-hayat al-ruhiyya fi-l-Islam (Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and the Spiritual Life in Islam),
by the Egyptian writer Taha ‘Abd al-Baqi
Surur (1957). Referring
to the discrepancies between
‘Attar’s narrative and Badawi’s Martyr of Divine Love,
Surur accuses Badawi of lying about what ‘Attar
related about Rabi’a
(kadhaba al-‘Attar fi-ma rawahu ‘an
Rabi’a). Because of this academic
dishonesty, he argues,
Badawi’s version of Rabi’a’s vita is worthless: it “neither attains
the level of true scholarship nor corresponds to historical reality
nor the experience of faith.”50
However, not every subsequent writer on Rabi’a was as willing as Surur was to dismiss Badawi completely. One way that some sought to retain his Existentialist focus
on life-
44
For a recent reproduction of the original edition this
work, see Pierre Louÿs, Les Chansons de
Bilitis (Paris: Nabu Press,
2010). Many translations of this work can be found in English. In what follows
I use Pierre Louÿs, The Songs of Bilitis, Alvah C. Bessie trans. (Mineola,
New York: Dover Publications, 2010 reprint of the 1926 edition).
45 For historical background information on The Songs of Bilitis, see the Wikipedia article at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//The_Songs_of_Bilitis
46 Louÿs, Songs of Bilitis, 13-20;
Les Chansons de Bilitis, i-xii
47 See Louÿs,
Songs of Bilitis 19-20, where the reader
is told that the tomb was discovered by the German
archaeologist Herr G. Heim.
Such a person never existed.
See also, Les Chansons
de Bilitis, x-xi.
48 Benghal, La Vie de Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, 48-49
49 Ibid, 49
50 Surur, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya wa-l-hayat al-ruhiyya fi al-Islam, 44 and 46
experiences and yet preserve
Rabi’a’s reputation for virtue was to marry
her off. As we saw in
Chapter 3, Su’ad ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq uses this approach
in her 1982 book, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya bayn al-ghina’ wa al-buka’
(Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya Between
Singing and Weeping). According to ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a got married
soon after attaining
her freedom from captivity. Although
she remained as pious as before,
she attended to her husband’s
physical needs and only turned to
celibacy after she became a widow. The original version
of this story comes from Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa, where it is not about
Rabi’a, but about
the unnamed wife of the ascetic Riyah al-
Qaysi (d. 796 CE).51 Apparently, ‘Abd al-Raziq believed
that Rabi’a was the wife of Riyah
al- Qaysi. Paraphrasing Ibn al-Jawzi’s text, she states:
“Every night [Rabi’a]
used to cook and attend to her husband, saying,
‘Do you have a need?’
When she had fulfilled them and left him, she would purify herself and bend her knees in prayer.”52 Although
‘Abd al-Raziq accepted
Badawi’s premise that Rabi’a’s
early life included
sexual experiences, her view of Islamic morality
did not permit her to believe,
as El Sakkakini did, that a sexually
promiscuous woman could
be predestined for sainthood.
El Sakkakini’s Existentialist and feminist approach
to Rabi’a’s vita brings to mind another critique
of Badawi’s approach,
al-‘Abida al-khashi’a, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, imamat al- ‘ashiqin wa al-mahzunin (The
Submissive Worshipper: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, Leader of the Lovers and the Sorrowful), by ‘Abd al-Mun’im al-Hifni (1991).53 Hifni was a student of Badawi.
In this work, he criticizes the atheism of Badawi and other Existentialist thinkers and seeks
to restore the reputation that medieval hagiographers had established for Rabi’a as a chaste
and pious Sufi.54 Despite
its polemical tone, Hifni’s Submissive Worshipper is actually one of the more
careful historical studies
of Rabi’a in the Arabic
language. He is concerned to maintain
high standards of historical scholarship; in fact, he criticizes Badawi
(correctly, in my opinion)
for failing to live up to the standards that he upholds
in his other works. For the most part, Hifni reproduces Badawi’s arguments accurately and struggles to find a balance between
the demands of faith and
scholarship.
However, Hifni’s
book also suffers
from factual errors
that undermine his claim to portray the “true story” of Badawi’s
narrative. For example,
Hifni claims that Badawi’s
Existentialist approach in Martyr of Divine
Love was based
on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Although Badawi
may have taught
Heidegger in the courses that Hifni
attended at the University of Cairo, this assertion is untrue. As we have seen, Badawi based his study
of Rabi’a on the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.55 Because
of this initial mistake, Hifni also does not recognize
Badawi’s reliance on Kierkegaard’s personality types of Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious Man but instead
attributes his portrayal
of the Aesthetic part of Rabi’a’s
life to the influence of the feminist
Existentialist philosopher Simone
De Beauvoir (1908-1986).56
51 See Ibn al-Jawzi, Sifat al-safwa, vol. 2, 721.
52 ‘Abd al-Raziq, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, 57
53 ‘Abd al-Mun’im al-Hifni, al-‘Abida al-khashi’a: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, imamat
al-‘ashiqin wa-l-
mahzunin (Cairo: Dar al-Irshad, 1991)
54 See, for example, Ibid, 73, where
Hifni describes Existentialism as an “atheistic method” (madhhab
ilhadi) and claims that Badawi taught that “there
was no existence outside of time, which means that he
denied the Afterlife.”
55 Ibid, 69
56 Ibid, 75
Here Hifni commits a major error of anachronism with respect to Badawi’s sources. It would
have been impossible for Badawi to have been influenced by Simone De Beauvoir because
The Second Sex, the only work on which such an influence
could have been based, was first published in 1949, after the publication of Martyr of Divine Love. Also unsupportable is Hifni’s claim that
Badawi’s depiction of Rabi’a’s sexuality
was influenced by De Beauvoir’s writings on
“erotomania.” 57
Although Badawi
could not have been influenced by Simone De Beauvoir, the situation
is different for Widad El Sakkakini. First published in 1955, six years after The Second Sex,
her book The Sufi Lover clearly reflects
De Beauvoir’s feminist
view of Existentialism. When El Sakkakini states that Rabi’a “used her asceticism as a way to establish
her reputation, assert her
intellect, and avenge
her past,” we hear an echo of De Beauvoir’s statement, “The [woman] mystic will torture her flesh to have the right to claim it; reducing it to abjection, she exalts it as
the instrument of her salvation.”58 We hear another
echo of De Beauvoir when El Sakkakini compares the young Rabi’a
to the courtesans Thaïs and Bilitis. When De Beauvoir
writes about the Greek
courtesan (hetaera) in The Second Sex,
she notes that the tragic
irony of the courtesan’s
freedom is that it can only be negative: “Her independence is the reverse
side of a thousand
dependencies.”59 According to De Beauvoir, the price that the courtesan pays for her autonomy is a “systematic nihilism.”60 Thus, the sexual
freedom of the courtesan is ultimately a form of self-
alienation, not self-affirmation. In a similar
way, El Sakkakini speculates on the emptiness and despair that Rabi’a must have felt in the Aesthetic period of her life. How, she wonders,
can a woman truly
seek salvation from the abuses
of men in the arms of other men? For El Sakkakini, the hopelessness of Rabi’a’s
situation caused her to gain self-awareness through
self-criticism. “And if she did succumb
so young, from a need to survive
and a fear of struggle; if she did become tempted by the pull of beauty and the promise
of security and happiness, and was indeed swept away by the stream which had carried
off many others like her, then no alternative would later have been left to her but self-analysis, reflection, and assessment.”61
We have already seen in Badawi’s
interpretation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy how the quest
for autonomy depends
on the experience of sin. We have also seen how in Badawi’s view of
Existentialism the self is inseparable from the body and thus can only be affirmed
through the experiences of the body. Ultimately, the inability of the self to attain
complete freedom because of the body’s limitations leads to despair
and the acute awareness of sin. For both Badawi
and El Sakkakini, Rabi’a’s
period of excess created “dark nights of the soul” (al-layali
al-zalma’), which
57 Ibid, 76; Simone De Beauvoir discusses
erotomania in the chapter on narcissism
in The Second Sex.
She follows the French psychologist Clérambault in considering
erotomania to be “a kind of professional derangement” in which a woman learns
to value herself because she fantisizes that important men are in love with
her. A close reading of these passages,
however, reveals that erotomania could not have been relevant to Rabi’a’s
story, even for Badawi, because the pathology of this neurosis contradicts the
Existentialist notion of life-experience as truth. As De Beauvoir states in this chapter, the narcissistic
erotomaniac “looks at herself too much to see anything.” See De Beauvoir, The
Second Sex, 678-680.
58 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 43-44;
in First Among Sufis
(30), Nabil Safwat
translates this
passage in the following
way : “She used her asceticism
as a
way to freedom— to avenge her past.” See also, Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 714.
59 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 616
60 Ibid, 618
61 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 16; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 21-22
led to episodes of despair and suffering.62 These periods of despair eventually led to a “spiritual
revolt” (inqilab ruhi), which
compelled Rabi’a to turn away in remorse
from the Aesthetic life toward the Ethical
life and resume
her former practices of piety and asceticism.63 As El Sakkakini sees it, this was a healthy development because Rabi’a returned
to religion freely: “Alteration of the self is a natural phenomenon,” she writes. “None was ever born who remained
the same person until he died; because
life is like the earth
itself, it has mountains and valleys,
and we travel upon its surface, high and low, none knowing
what his or her destiny
might be.”64
For Badawi, Rabi’a’s transformation from Aesthetic Woman to Ethical
Woman occurred when she realized that her attempt
to find liberation through the body had failed. However,
as an atheist, he disagrees with El Sakkakini
that returning to God in repentance is a positive
thing. For Badawi, instead
of finding her true self in God, the repentant Rabi’a created a new form of
servitude by fleeing from the world. Far from being a form of spiritual liberation, her new state of
pious repentance was even more destructive than her former
state of physical
servitude.65 He
speculates that one of the causes of Rabi’a’s repentance was a failed
love affair. After the breakup of this affair,
her restlessness and anxiety caused her to wander about the city of Basra visiting mosques and oratories, where she listened
to sermons and attended Sufi sessions of invocation. The most important
of these were conducted by the students
of al-Hasan al-Basri. At one such gathering Rabi’a meets Riyah al-Qaysi, whom Badawi identifies (without attribution) as her spiritual master.66
For Badawi, the statements
about repentance (tawba) and sincerity
(ikhlas) that are attributed to Rabi’a in Sufi literature belong to the Ethical stage of her life. He considers them pessimistic (silbi) because
they advocate the submission of the human
will. Rather than act for herself, Rabi’a begs for God’s mercy
and at times even despairs
of being worthy
of it. Because he views self-surrender negatively, Badawi disagrees
with El Sakkakini, who viewed salvation
through God’s mercy optimistically. For her, the notion of grace gives the believer
hope that all sins
can be forgiven. However, El Sakkakini does agree with Badawi that excessive fear of
punishment in the afterlife can become a form of psychological illness.67
For “grace,” Badawi uses the
Arabic term rida’, which is most
often translated as “satisfaction” or “pleasure.”68 For him, the concept of grace has more in common with Christian
mysticism (al-tasawwuf al-masihi) than with Islam,
and its use by Rabi’a demonstrates her reliance on Christian models
of spirituality.69 According
to Badawi, one of the hallmarks of the
Ethical personality type is an obsessive concern
with time. Thus, he stresses
how Rabi’a constantly repeats
her supplications for forgiveness, fearing
that her time will run out before
she attains her goal.70
62 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 23
63 Ibid, 22
64 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 16; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 22
65 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 23
66 Ibid, 22; on Riyah
or Rabah al-Qaysi, see Chapter 3.
67 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 27-8; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 40-41
68 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 24
69 Ibid; Badawi even suggests
that Rabi’a may have had a Christian
background.
70 Ibid, 25
To prepare the reader
for Rabi’a’s final
transition from Ethical
Woman to Religious Woman, Badawi creates an ideal model
of “the True Sufi: the Sufi in his existential meaning” (al- sufi al-haqq, al-sufi
bi-l-ma’na al-wujudi).71 In doing this, he sets up a distinction between
the Ethical and Religious
personality types that corresponds to the different
states of mind that are revealed in Rabi’a’s statements on repentance. For Badawi, True (i.e., Existentialist) Sufism is dynamic rather
than static, active
rather than passive,
and optimistic rather
than pessimistic. To illustrate the difference between
optimistic and pessimistic forms of Sufism,
he uses two dicta attributed to Rabi’a that are usually
understood to mean the same thing. In the first dictum (which goes back in origin to the late tenth-century Sufi Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi), Rabi’a
says: “I seek God’s
forgiveness for my lack of sincerity in saying, ‘I seek God’s
forgiveness” (Astaghfirullah min qillati sidqi fi qawli astaghfirullah).72 In the second
dictum (which goes back
in origin to the seventeenth-century Egyptian
Sufi ‘Abd al-Ra’uf
al-Munawi), Rabi’a states:
“Our supplication for forgiveness needs its own supplication for forgiveness because
of the nonexistence of sincerity in it” (Istighfaruna yahtaju
ila istighfarin li-‘adami
al-sidqi fihi). 73
Badawi considers the first dictum pessimistic because it reflects
Rabi’a’s existential anxiety and awareness of sin through
the bodily senses.
By contrast, he sees the second dictum
as optimistic because it affirms a general truth about the human condition.74 He explains that the
point of the second dictum
is that sincere repentance cannot be achieved
quickly. In fact, “A
person cannot achieve it even if it takes all of his life.”75 For Badawi, the difference between pessimistic and optimistic types of spirituality depends on the notion of temporality (al-
zamaniyya). Repetitive actions
that others might
see as obsessive-compulsive are signs
for him that the ascetic is not a pessimist: she is not caught in an endless
cycle of remorse
and self- recrimination. Instead,
she seeks Eternal
life in an active way. The ascetic
acts compulsively because she is afraid that she will not attain her goal in the limited
time that she has.
For Badawi, compulsive attention
to worship marks the transition from the Ethical
to the Religious personality type. For Widad El Sakkakini, however, the transition from the Ethical type to the Religious type depends on the Sufi’s
ability to assimilate what she calls
“the tolerant teachings of Islam” (ta’alim al-Islam
al-samha).76 This optimistic perspective depends on accepting the world as it is and realizing
that everything exists
as God intended it to be. For El
Sakkakini, Rabi’a’s manifestation of this attitude
at the end of her period of repentance opens
the door to what she calls “active” or “practical” Sufism (al-tasawwuf
al-‘amali).77
At this point it is necessary
to turn once again to Badawi’s definition of Religious Man in
Studies
in Existential Philosophy: “[Religious Man] desires
the discourse that is spoken
in Heaven and touches
the hand of the Spirit of those spirits that are born in the supernal. If
71 Ibid
72 See Kalabadhi, al-Ta’arruf, 72-73 and Arberry,
The Doctrine of the Sufis, 83
73 Badawi incorrectly attributes this quotation
to Ibn al-Jawzi, when in fact Ibn al-Jawzi quotes
the
previous
version. Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 25 and R. Cornell,
Early Sufi Women (Ibn
al-Jawzi Appendix), 278-9.
74 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 25
75 Ibid.
76 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 41; First Among Sufis, 28
77 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 85; First Among Sufis, 55; in his translation of El Sakkakini’s
work Nabil Safwat calls this “authentic Sufism.”
[Religious Man] is a woman, her speech calls out to God for her to attain divine grace and reach
the level of the Soul at Peace. All of [Religious Man’s] efforts are directed toward attaining the eternal and everlasting life that his mind imagines
to be lived within the divine embrace.”78 As this
definition implies, the transition from the Ethical
type to the Religious type is not abrupt but occurs over an extended
period, as Religious Man grows out of his concern for time and the
world and seeks his true self in the Eternal.
In a similar way, Badawi’s
Rabi’a becomes Religious Woman by practicing repentance, which marks her detachment from time and the world.
However, as a woman she cannot
attain full autonomy
and independence, even in her search for spirituality. Thus, she seeks
divine grace through
intimacy with another
as a way of attaining the tranquility that she desires. Badawi
puts the matter
this way: “In repentance, Rabi’a
started a new beginning and a new page in her spiritual life was opened.
This was a mixture (mazij) of anxiety
(qalaq), remorse (istighfar) and desire (shawq) for the new Beloved that she had chosen for herself.”79
In other words, even as Religious Woman, Rabi’a was still not free of her former existence, including her emotional states and experiences. To illustrate this point, Badawi introduces another new plot element to her vita, which would become central to her depiction
on film. He concludes that Rabi’a’s path through the Aesthetic to the Ethical
and finally to the
Religious personality type was prompted
by a failed love affair.
The proof of this, he says, can be
found in her mystical poetry,
whose allegorical statements about divine love reflect the memory
of an actual relationship. For Badawi, the love that Rabi’a expresses for God in her poetry developed as a form of compensation for this love affair: in her poems she replaces
an imperfect human lover with a perfect divine
lover. In Badawi’s
view, virtually every statement by Rabi’a
on the subject of Love represents an attempt to substitute a divine lover for a physical lover.
Among the many examples
that he gives of this, is the early saying of Rabi’a that was recorded
by the Sufi Muhasibi: ‘Night
has come, the darkness has mingled, and every lover is left alone
with his beloved. Now I am alone with you, my Beloved!”80
Along with her Love mysticism, Badawi
also suggests that Rabi’a embarked
on a new form of spritiual
practice in this stage of her life. This was khulla—
the practice of friendship or intimacy as a spiritual method— which she (allegedly) learned
from her teacher
Riyah al-Qaysi.81
According to Badawi, the doctrine
of khulla provides a bridge between
asceticism and Love mysticism by creating a way for the ascetic
to transition from a spirituality based on remorse
to a spirituality based on love. In this method, the Sufi practices
her love for God by loving and behaving altruistically toward her Sufi colleagues. Although Riyah al-Qaysi
has a generally good
reputation among Sufi writers, some non-Sufi heresiographers, such as the Hanbali al-Khushaysh an-Nisa’i (d. 867 CE ), accused
him of believing that intimacy
with God allowed
him to take liberties with the moral teachings of Islam. According
to Khushaysh, such practices included licentiousness with women and
young boys.82
78 Badawi, Dirasat fi-l-falsafa al-wujudiyya, 45
79 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 32
80 Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa-l-ruju’ ila Allah, 104
81 Badawi, Shahidat al-‘ishq
al-ilahi, 64-66
82 Carl W. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press,
1985),
100 and 118-122
Badawi was inclined to agree with this view. For him, love is an experience or feeling (shu’ur)
that transcends both good and evil. By seeking
a higher form of love, the Sufi practitioner of khulla goes beyond
conventional morality. Some Sufis allegedly approximated the
enjoyment (ladhdha) of intimacy
with God by becoming physically intimate with other
Sufis (al- takhallul). “In this state,” says Badawi, “they are beyond
the need for ordinary moral values; in other
words, they are above their level.”
83 For Badawi,
the outward manifestation of khulla is
disrespect for the Shari’a; its inward manifestation is disrespect for all worldly
objects of veneration, including the Ka’ba in Mecca. This is how he interprets the stories in ‘Attar’s
Tadhkirat al-awliya’ where Rabi’a seems to disparage or disrespect the Ka’ba. It is also in his discussion of khulla that he comes closest
to suggesting, as El Sakkakini
does, that Rabi’a may
have engaged in inappropriate forms of intimacy, even after becoming
a Sufi.
Badawi’s fascination (one could even say obsession) with khulla,
like his attempt
to revise the narrative of Rabi’a’s early life to fit Kierkegaard’s model of Aesthetic Man, was based on
his conviction that the development of the inner self depends
on outer experiences. In Martyr of
Divine Love, he associates the concept of khulla with Religious Man by using
two of Rabi’a’s alleged poems as illustrations: these are the famous Poem of the Two Loves (see Chapter
3) and another poem attributed to Rabi’a that originally came from the Qur’an commentary of the Sufi Ahmad Ibn ‘Ata’ (d. 922 CE). In its original version, this poem is not Rabi’a’s but is attributed to Ibn ‘Ata himself. 84 Besides
mistakenly attributing the poem to Rabi’a, Badawi uses a version of that
is worded differently from the original. Presumably, this revised
version better suited
his belief that Rabi’a’s
intimate discourses (munajat) with God were based on her experiences of intimacy with a human lover:
You have become
one with the way of my soul;
This is why the Friend (al-khalil) is called, “The Intimate.”
You are in my
thoughts, my hopes, and my speech And in my repose, whenever
I desire a place to rest.85
To Badawi, this poem expresses a sense of mutual possession or ownership (milk), which replicates the feelings that two lovers
have for each other. As the poem suggests, the relationship
between the sincere worshipper and God is a form of co-dependency. Although Rabi’a feels that
she possesses her Beloved in her heart,
in reality both her identity
and her feelings
are the Beloved’s possessions. Because she feels that the Beloved is “one with the way of her soul,”
every action that she performs— even those that appear to transgress the Law— are the
Beloved’s own actions and thus are permissible by way of divine indulgence.86 For Badawi, the danger of Rabi’a’s Love mysticism lies in the excessive nature
of the Religious personality type. He
interprets this poem as foreshadowing the heresy of the Sufi martyr Abu Mansur al-Hallaj
(d. 922 CE), whose practice of khulla led him to equate
his human self with the divine Self, which
83 Ibid, 65-66
84 See Paul Nwiya, Trois Oeuvres
inédites, 46.
85 Badawi, Shahidat
al-‘ishq al-ilahi, 63; in Ibn ‘Ata’s version the second
verse states: “Whenever I utter
a word, you are in my speech/ and when I am silent, you are my ardent
desire (al-ghalil).” Nwiya, Trois
Oeuvres inédites, 46
86 Ibid
ultimately led to his execution. According
to Badawi, had Rabi’a not kept the full nature
of her Love mysticism
a secret, she too might have been executed for her beliefs.87
Widad El Sakkakini had no such fears of Rabi’a’s mystical
excesses. For her, Rabi’a’s
mysticism was a form of “practical” or action-oriented Sufism (al-tasawwuf
al-‘amali). “Practical Sufism”
was El Sakkakini’s version of Badawi’s “True
Sufism.” In contrast
with Badawi’s model, however,
the Sufism of El Sakkakini’s Rabi’a is more pragmatic and down-to-
earth: she rejects “theoretical Sufism (al-tasawwuf
al-nazari) based on ecstatic experiences, fantasies, and mysteries, lost in raptures
and the unknown.”88 However, like Badawi, El Sakkakini believed that Rabi’a
had multiple lovers
in the early period of her life. By substituting an inward mystical love for these outward loves,
she could reach
new levels of understanding that led
to deeper ways of introspection. As El Sakkakini states in The Sufi Lover: “[Rabi’a] did not seek her true self outside of herself at all. Rather,
she perceived her true self within herself
(fa- innaha lam tanzur kharija
nafsiha fa-hasb wa innama nazarat
fi nafsiha dhataha).”89 For this
reason, El Sakkakini’s Rabi’a did not need to practice
khulla like Badawi’s Rabi’a.
Instead, through an inner
process of self-reflection she realized the truth of the early
philosophers, who said, “Know thyself,” and the truth of the Qur’an, which states, “In the Earth are signs for the faithful, as well as in yourselves; will you not then see?” (Qur’an 51:20-21)90
II.
Rabi’a the Film Icon
In 1960, the Egyptian
screenwriter Saniya Qurra’a
(d. 1990), combined
the tropes of Rabi’a
the Ascetic and Rabi’a the Lover in a book titled, ‘Arus al-zuhd:
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (The Bride
of Asceticism: Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya). This work, which was published by the
Egyptian National Press Office, was written in response to the popular
acclaim of Qurra’a’s
radio drama on the life of Rabi’a, which
was broadcast on Radio Cairo
in 1955. A revised version
of the script for this radio
play, expanded into a plot outline and titled “The Long Story”
(al-Qissa al-tawila), comprises more than half of the text of Qurra’a’s book.91 A few years later, this expanded script became the basis for the screenplay of the 1963 movie, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, directed by Mustapha Niazi
with screenplay by Saniya Qurra’a
and Mustapha Abdel
Fatah. This film, which also features
songs by the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum
(1898-1975), has become so
famous that it now provides
most of the “facts” that the Muslim public thinks it knows
about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, not only in the Arab world but also as far away as Indonesia.
In this and the previous
chapter, Roland Barthes’ concept of the “reality effect” has been discussed as
an important aspect of the Rabi’a myth. In
the essay, “The Reality Effect,” Barthes notes
that the sense
of realism that is produced
by this effect
is enhanced by creating the illusion
87 Ibid, 67
88 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 85; First Among Sufis, 55
89 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 84; First Among Sufis, 54; the translator Nabil Safwat gets a
bit carried away
in his rendering of this passage: “She moved in search of her own lost self,
which had far preceded her. With extended wings in a higher timeless
world, her Self appeared, signalling her to follow.”
90 El Sakkakini, al-‘Ashiqa al-mutasawwifa, 84; First Among Sufis, 54
91 Saniya Qurra’a,
‘Arus al-zuhd: Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (Cairo: Maktab al-Sahafa al-Dawli [National Press
Office], 1960), 91-228
of “having been there.”92 This is why realistic literary
descriptions such as Flaubert’s description of Rouen and Badawi’s
description of eighth-century Basra are so evocative. The sense of “having been there” in the reader’s
mind reinforces the reality effect
and increases the verisimilitude of the story.93 In the same essay,
Barthes also discusses the importance of photographs in conveying the impression of verisimilitude.94 The realism
of a photograph conveys the sense of “having
been there” even more effectively than a literary
description does. This confirms
the truth of the saying,
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
In another essay, “Leaving the Movie
Theatre” (1975), Barthes discusses how the “lifelikeliness” of a story can be enhanced even further by being made into a film. The verisimilitude of the film’s
depiction of events
is expressed through
a process that Barthes calls “cinematographic hypnosis.”95 The person who watches a movie in a theater
is like a voyeur
peering through a keyhole. Cut off from the world
in the dark theater, the viewer feels
that she uniquely perceives
what is really
going on in the movie. With respect
to the story on the screen,
the experience of being in the theater
creates a contradictory mixture of personal
involvement and detachment. Barthes
explains this situation in the following
way: “I must be in the story (there
must be verisimilitude), but I must also be elsewhere: in a slightly
disengaged image-repetoire,
that is what I must have— like a scrupulous, conscientious, organized, in a word difficult
fetishist, that is what I require
of the film and of the situation
in which I go looking
for it.”96
For Barthes, the film-image acts as a powerful lure: “I fling myself upon it like an animal upon the scrap of ‘lifelike’ rag held out to him; and of course, it sustains in me the misreading
attached to Ego and to image-repetoire.”97 Because
of the power of the cinematic lure, the moviegoer is “glued”
to the representation of the story on film and experiences within
herself “its coalescence, its analogical security,
its naturalness, its ‘truth.’”98 Although
the movie on the
screen is often an interpretation of a book (i.e., an interpretation of an interpretation), and thus is even
further removed from obective reality
than the original
work itself, the “truth” of the story on
film seems more natural than the truth
of the original book. The point that Barthes makes
is especialy important with respect to historical movies,
period pieces, and docudramas. The sense
of perceived “truth” that is evoked by the representation of a story on film is more often than not
more powerful than a “truth”
evoked by a book. Because
of its power to involve
the viewer in its
representations, what Barthes
calls the “misreading” of objective reality
that the film imparts
creates an aura of verisimilitude that is even harder to resist than the verisimilitude of a work of
literature. For this reason, says Barthes, film as a genre is inherently ideological. For him every movie is a form of propaganda.99
Because of the reaction
against postmodernism that still exists in the fields of Religious
Studies and History, it is important
to note that this view of versimilitude in literary and cinematic
92 Barthes, “The Reality Effect,”
in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 146-7
93 See also the section
on “Witness as a Category
Entitlement,” in Potter,
Representing Reality, 165-166.
94 Barthes, “The Reality Effect,”
in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 146
95 Barthes, “Leaving
the Movie Theatre,” in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 347
96 Ibid; Jonathan
Potter refers to this as the perception of “out-there-ness.” See idem, Representing Reality,
“Constructing Out-there-ness,” 150-175.
97 Barthes, “Leaving
the Movie Theatre,” in idem, The Rustle
of Language, 347
98 Ibid
99 Ibid, 340-9
representations is not confined
to post-structuralists like Barthes. In 1957, more than ten years
before Barthes first introduced the concept of the reality
effect, Mircea Eliade
discussed much the same
thing in his book, The Sacred
and the Profane. The only difference was that the context of his remarks referred to myth rather
than to literature:
The cinema, that
“dream factory,” takes over and employs countless mythical motifs— the fight between hero and monster,
initiatory combats and ordeals, paridigmatic figures and images (the maiden,
the hero, the paradisal landscape, hell, and so on). Even reading includes a mythological function, not only because
it replaces the recitation of myths in archaic socieites and the oral
literature that still lives in the rural communities of Europe, but
particularly because, through reading, the modern man succeeds in obtaining an
“escape from time” comparable to the “emergence from time” effected by myths. Whether the modern man “kills” time with a
detective story or enters such a foreign temporal universe as is represented by
any novel, reading projects him out of his personal duration and incorporates
him into other rhythms, makes him live another “history.100
The Egyptian movie Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is an excellent example of what Barthes and Eliade are talking about.
When used in an imaginative way as a historiographical document, it illustrates how the reality effect
of a representation on film can turn the dramatic
“misreading” of a purportedly historical figure into an accepted
fact. Using the film as a historiographical document also provides a good illustration of Aleksei Losev’s
phenomenology of myth. In fact, the
feature film is one of the best examples of Losev’s view of how a myth works: “[Myth]
is always a manifestation, immediate and naïve reality, a seen and tangibly felt sculptural quality
of life.”101 Losev would
agree with Barthes
and Eliade that because of its power
to evoke an immediate sense of reality,
a movie is better at creating a myth than a book is. To say, as Barthes
does, that the genre of film is ideological, is merely another
way of saying that film is
mythological. What Barthes
calls “ideology” Losev terms “absolute
mythology.” Rabi’a the Icon,
especially since her depiction in the movie
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, has become
an example of what
Losev terms an absolute myth. This is because
the myth of Rabi’a as an iconic figure has become self-referential and the truth she represents is tautological: “No one can ever set any
obstacles or boundaries either to this being or to this myth.”102
For
Losev, absolute myths
like the myth of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya are constructed out of relative
myths; thus, to trace the genealogy of an absolute
myth is to trace the genealogy of the
relative myths out of which
the absolute myth is constructed. In the present
study, the relative myths used to construct
the myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya are the tropes and master narratives that we
have discussed so far: Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover, Rabi’a the Sufi,
and Rabi’a the Icon. This chapter has introduced three more relative
myths: Rabi’a the Existentialist, Rabi’a the Feminist,
and Rabi’a the Reformed Sinner.
Through the process
of mythmaking, says Losev, the absolute
myth is “crowned
by a magical name.”103 Calling a myth
by a
“magical name” means that the logic of history has yielded to the symbolic
logic of the mythical image: all categories of description must now be considered in light of this name. In
100 Mircea Eliade,
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Willard
R. Trask, trans, (San
Diego, London, and New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1987), 205
101 Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, 100
102 Ibid, 190
103 Ibid
this way, the magical name,
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya,” has spread throughout the Islamic world. Today, no
mention of this name can fail to evoke one or more of the “relative myths” (i.e.,
the tropes and master narratives) that are associated with it.
However, as we saw in Chapter
5, for an absolute myth or a magical name to have such
power, a narrative or outline must
lie behind it. Today’s myth of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya could not
exist without the dialectical process
of narrative construction and reconstruction by ‘Attar in Tadhkirat al-awliya’, by Smith in Rabi’a the Mystic, by Badawi in Martyr of Divine
Love, by El Sakkakini in The Sufi Lover, and by Qurra’a
in her screenplay for the movie Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. By introducing the figure of Rabi’a to radio and film, Qurra’a
added a third dimension to Rabi’a the Icon that greatly
increased the power of her myth. However, we must
not make the mistake of viewing the Rabi’a of film as the culmination of a developmental process. Although
there is a chronological order
to this process,
the narratives it has produced
are discontinuous. As Michel Foucault reminds
us, most unities
of discourse involve
the outside imposition of an artificial principle of coherence.104 A close reading
of Qurra’a’s book The Bride
of Asceticism and a careful
viewing of the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya will quickly cure the
researcher of any notions of true developmental unity or coherence. In effect, despite
the fact that it
was influenced by Badawi’s work, Qurra’a’s screenplay for the film has become a separate
and unique basis for a new representation of Rabi’a’s story.
In the first place, Qurra’a has less concern
for historical accuracy
than any other writer on Rabi’a
since ‘Attar. Although she lists a number of consulted sources
(masadir al-kitab) at the end
of The Bride of Asceticism, she often does not make use of them. In addition, she gets many of
her bibliographical references wrong. For example,
she cites a work by Ibn Qayyim
al- Jawziyya (d. 1350 CE) called
Safwat al-safwa (sic.), when she clearly
intends Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa.105 Ibn Qayyim wrote no work titled Safwat al-safwa. Even worse, Qurra’a
cites some works that do not seem to have existed
in any form whatsoever. For example, under (Louis)
Massignon she cites his well-known book, Essay on the Origin of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism. However, she also attributes a work to Massignon titled,
“The History of Miracles in the Islamic
Lands” (Ta’rikh al-khawariq fi-l-bilad al-Islamiyya). The complete bibliography of Louis Massignon’s works on the web site of the Association des Amis de Louis
Massignon does not mention any work by this title.
However, the worst
(and most humorous) example of Qurra’a bibliographical carelessness is in her citation
of Margaret Smith’s
Rabi’a the Mystic. Instead of providing the correct title, she calls this work “Rabi’a the Mysterious” (Rabi’a
al-ghamida) and cites its author
as “Margaret Mitchell.”106 Imagine
the surprise to find that the
author of Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic
is actually the same person
as the author of Gone with the
Wind!
In
the second place, although Qurra’a
depends heavily on Badawi’s Martyr of Divine
Love for the historical section
of Bride of Asceticism (this section is titled, “Rabi’a
. . . In Reality,” Rabi’a . . . fi al-haqiqa), she does not adhere as closely to ‘Attar’s master
narrative of Rabi’a’s vita as
Badawi does. Instead, her screenplay changes
much of ‘Attar’s story and adds
new events and characters to better dramatize
Badawi’s characterization of the Aesthetic Rabi’a.
104 Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 21-22
105 Qurra’a, ‘Arus al-zuhd, 231; Sifat al-safwa is
commonly misrendered as Safwat al-safwa in the modern
Muslim
world.
106 Qurra’a, ‘Arus al-zuhd, 231
In addition, she adds new characters to the story,
such as the Egyptian Sufi Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri (d. 859 CE), to reinforce the notion that Rabi’a had something to do with Egypt. Perhaps
because of the strong
Egyptian nationalism that prevailed in the Nasser
era when her screenplay was written, Qurra’a attempts to appropriate Rabi’a of Basra for Egypt
by placing her anachronistically in the company
of the most famous Egyptian
Sufi of the early period.107 However, the Egyptian hagiographer ‘Abd al-Ra’uf al-Munawi, the original source for the trope
of Rabi’a the Egyptian (see Chapter 5), is not mentioned in her bibliography.
The film version of Rabi’a’s life-story that most closely
corresponds to ‘Attar’s
original version is another
Egyptian movie that is now all but forgotten because
of the fame of Qurra’a’s film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. This film is Shahidat al-hubb al-ilahi
(translated in English
as “Witness to the Divine Love” and in French as Amour Divin), a black-and-white movie that was released in 1962, just one year before the more famous
film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Directed
by Abbas Kamel and starring the Lebanese actress
Aida Helal (1925-1987) as Rabi’a, the debt of this
film to Badawi’s book is apparent in its Arabic title, which is almost identical to Badawi’s
Shahidat
al-‘ishq al-ilahi. Today, the print of this film appears
to be lost and all that remains of it is a recorded
version of the soundtrack, which
was rebroadcast on Radio Cairo in 2008. Apart
from this recording, the only remaining artifacts
of the film are posters,
which exist in collections
of Arab film-poster art in the U.S.
and the Middle East.
Although this earlier movie follows Badawi’s
and ‘Attar’s narratives more closely than does
the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, it also takes
liberties with Rabi’a’s
vita for dramatic
purposes.108 The overall
message of Shahidat al-hubb
al-ilahi is that spiritual love is superior
to worldly love. Rabi’a’s
father is portrayed
as a fisherman to set the scene for his poverty and to
allow him to reflect on the wealth
flowing into Basra
through the port of al-Ubulla. Rabi’a’s three sisters are Fatima, Buthayna,
and Sukayna. These names do not appear in any extant
hagiographical or historical source. The main new character in the film is the “Emir Rabi’ ibn
Ziyad,” who takes over as Emir of Basra when Ibn Zadan,
the Emir of the medieval
accounts, dies. During the period of Rabi’a’s captivity, Ibn Ziyad hears of her beauty and musical talents and purchases her. This makes Rabi’a’s
owner and the Emir of Basra the same person,
thus resolving a contradiction in later medieval
accounts of how she could
be a captive slave and the
object of the Emir of Basra’s desire at the same time.
Rabi’a meets the ascetic Riyah al-Qaysi
(called “Rabah” in the film) when he comes to
visit the Emir’s palace.
She asks him, “What is the way to God?” Following Sufi doctrine, he tells
her that the way to God is based on renunciation (zuhd), desire
(‘ishq), intimacy
(uns), repentance (tawba and
‘uzr), thankfulness (shukr),
Love (mahabba), certainty (yaqin), satisfaction (rida), and inspiration (ilham). Then Rabi’a asks how to obtain a vision of God.
Rabah replies, “Can you see a rose (ward) in the letters waw, ra’, or dal? Go and seek God in the reality of His Name. Seek the moon in the heavens,
not in its reflection in water. Purify
yourself with the remembrance and worship of God to reach the Divine Light.”
107 Dhu’l-Nun
al-Misri died nearly ffity years after Rabi’a and accounts about him, whether
autobiographical or written
by others, never mention that he met Rabi’a in person. If he met any famous Rabi’a, it more likely would have
been Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus.
108 For the soundtrack of the film Shahidat
al-hubb al-ilahi see
the following web site:
egyzaman.com/post.php?(the rest of the address is in Arabic)=r-shahidat-alhubb-alilahi-rabi’a-al’adawiyya-
rushdi-abaza-wa-a’ida-hilal-istima’-awnlayin-tahmil
After meeting Rabah al-Qaysi, Rabi’a spends her free time singing and composing poems about Love. When the Emir wants to be with her, she tells him to go to his wife instead. Rabi’a then begins to go out of the palace at night to pray, study, and perform invocations with her teacher Rabah al-Qaysi. When she leaves the palace she takes a companion
named ‘Abda with her. This refers to ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal,
a character who, as we have seen, first appears
in Ibn al-Jawzi account
of Rabi’a in Sifat al-safwa. In the film, another
palace servant named Khalid informs the Emir of Rabi’a’s
nightly sojourns. When the Emir confesses his love for Rabi’a, he hears a voice telling
him to free her. Becoming
jealous, he accuses
her of practicing magic and punishes
Rabi’a in his anger. When he hears the voice again, he now believes
it to come from Satan. Rabi’a
perseveres under repeated
torture and composes
new verses about the
sadness of a sinful life. When the Emir hears
the voice again,
he realizes that it is from God and
releases Rabi’a from her captivity.
Rabi’a the Ascetic is depicted in the film Shahidat al-hubb
al-ilahi as living in a tower
(sawma’) in the desert. Several of the miracles
that are related
of her in later medieval
sources are depicted in the film,
including one in which she turns a thief toward
righteousness. These episodes continue
the theme of dramatic conversion that originated with ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi. First, Rabi’a is converted to the path of righteousness by her teacher
al-Qaysi; next, through her example of righteousness, she converts the servant Khalid,
then the Emir of Basra, and finally her companion ‘Abda. The Emir comes to visit Rabi’a
at her cell in the desert, again professing his love for her and offering whatever
she might want if she marries him. Rabi’a tells the
Emir that she belongs only to God and says, “How can I ask for the world from one who does
not own it?” (See the discussion of this saying in Chapter
1.) When she dies, a supernatural
voice says, “The grave possesses
her body but her soul is with God.” The film ends with the recitation of the Qur’anic
verse that was recited at Rabi’a’s death in ‘Attar’s
narrative: “Oh soul at
peace, return unto your Lord, well pleased
and well pleasing”
(Qur’an 89:27-29).
The film Shahidat al-hubb al-ilahi conveys a more spiritual
message than the more
famous film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. However,
both films were produced in a time of resurgence of interest in religion
in the Egyptian cinema.109 Although these films appeared
in the secular Nasser era, they were part of a general response
to fears about
the loss of religious consciousness among the Egyptian public. Most other religious
films in this period dealt with famous
battles and historical events in the history of Islam. Several, however,
starting with the film, al-Sayyid
al-Badawi in 1952 and ending
with Shayma’ in 1972,
dealt with the lives of Islamic religious personalities. The scripts of these films were not concerned with historical accuracy
but focused instead on how their main characters incorporated the Islamic
creed and moral
values in their lives. In some films,
including the two movies about Rabi’a, Sufis appear as exemplars of Islamic piety and spirituality. The screenwriters and directors of the films focused on key events in the lives of the main characters for dramatic effect.
The films also included music
and dancing
109 The information
in this paragraph comes from the blog, Cinema
Tripoli by Salim Ramadan (cinematripoli.blogspot.com). See blogpost_13html, “al-Malamih al-‘amma
li-l-sharit al-dini fi al-sinima al-‘arabiyya (General Aspects of Religious
Movies in the Arab Cinema). Most of
the information in the blog comes from the book by Mahmud Qasim, Surat al-adyan fi al-sinima al-Misriyya (The
Image of Religions in the Egyptian Cinema) (Cairo: Wizarat al-Thaqafa al-Markaz
al-Qawmi li-l-Sinima [Ministry of Culture, People’s
Center for Cinema],
1997). The text of this book
is accessible through the web site of the Biblioteca Alexandria in
Alexandria, Egypt. However, a problem
with the web site limited my access to only the first 21 pages.
to capture the public’s
imagination. The most popular motifs
conveyed in the films included suffering for one’s beliefs,
the struggle of Islam versus unbelief, dramatic
conversion experiences, women as temptresses, male religious figures
as women’s moral guides, and repentance. Film production in Egypt at this time was both multi-religious and multinational.
The producers, directors, and actors of these religious films included Muslims,
Christians, and Jews, and their nationalities included Egyptians, Sudanese,
Lebanese, and Syrians.
It is still rare today for women to play a major role in Egyptian
film production other than
as actors. Saniya Qurra’a was not only one of the first women to write a screenplay for the
Egyptian cinema but she also claims to have been the first person of any gender
to adapt Rabi’a’s story for radio and cinema. She wrote her first script on Rabi’ in 1952 and submitted it to Studio Misr in 1953. The radio play based on this script
aired in August
1955. As noted
previously, historical accuracy was not a major consideration for Qurra’a, despite
her claims to the contrary. Besides well established characters such as Sufyan
al-Thawri and ‘Abda bint Shawwal
(sic.), other characters in the radio play include
al-Hasan al-Basri, the ascetic Thawban
ibn Ibrahim (the actual name of the Egyptian Sufi Dhu’l-Nun al-Misri), and a spiritual “voice,” played by the
actress Laila Sabunji.110 Both al-Hasan al-Basri
and Dhu’l-Nun are anachronistic characters: Hasan lived too early to associate
with Rabi’a and Dhu’l-Nun lived too late. Qurra’a states that
her interest in popularizing the life of Rabi’a was to provide
a taste of the Sufi experience.
However, her knowledge of Sufism was minimal. Ironically, most of what she says about Sufism is based on the anti-Sufi works of the Hanbali scholar
Ibn Taymiyya. Like Badawi, she also saw Sufism as contrary to the strict pietism and asceticism of early Islam.111
The most important aspect of Badawi’s
literary characterization of Rabi’a to appear in the
1963 film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is Qurra’a’s portrayal of her as a restless
soul. The film begins
with Rabi’a as an orphan
(a sort of Arab version
of “Little Orphan
Annie”), who lives
with an old beggar woman in the countryside of southern Iraq. Rabi’a becomes
interested in seeking
a more exciting life in Basra
when she hears
about ‘Aliyya, a courtesan who returns to her village
from Basra with fine clothes and jewelry. In “The Long Story” novella
that appears in Qurra’a’s book The Bride of Asceticism, Rabi’a states that her life in the village is characterized by three things: poverty, misery, and bad luck. However, using
a pun that is probably
intentional, she predicts that the fourth part of her life (hayatuha al-rabi’a) will be characterized by good luck.112 On her
way to Basra, Rabi’a overhears thieves plotting to rob a rich man named ‘Isam
al-Din. She warns ‘Isam and saves his life. He admires Rabi’a’s
courage and innocence, and her dreams
of a better life, so he gives her money to help her. On the way to Basra, thieves
try to capture Rabi’a but the
Sufi Thawban (Dhu’l-Nun) saves her, and predicts
that one day she will attain a high station
in the way of repentance.
The next part of the film reveals its debt to Badawi’s portrayal of
Rabi’a as Aesthetic Woman and depicts her life as a courtesan
and performer. Rabi’a goes to Basra to look for ‘Isam
al-Din, with whom she is infatuated. Reflecting Badawi’s evocation of Basra’s split personality,
the film portrays Rabi’a as wandering through
the streets of the city, amazed by the bazaars
filled with goods of every description. Belly-dance music plays in the background. In the bazaars,
she sees religious preachers
competing with slave dealers for attention. While in the bazaar she
110 Qurra’a, ‘Arus al-zuhd, 6
111 Ibid 9-16; the reference
to Ibn Taymiyya is on p. 10.
112 Ibid, 96
encounters the wife of a procurer
of dancers and singing-girls, who invites her home. There she is
trained in dancing
and singing. The wife of the merchant
becomes jealous when she sees how
Rabi’a captures the hearts of men with her beauty and grace. ‘Isam al-Din
finds Rabi’a at a party where she is performing and pays all of the money he has to possess her. Later, he is summoned to lead a caravan
and leaves Rabi’a with his friend, the merchant Khalil
of Al ‘Atik. ‘Isam gives Rabi’a to Khalil as collateral for a business
loan. Rabi’a is heartbroken and begins to dress
modestly because she yearns for ‘Isam.
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was played
in the film by the Egyptian actress
Nabila Ebaid (b. 1945), who remains one of Egypt’s
most popular celebrities. In 2005, Egyptian
tabloids linked her romantically with ‘Amr Musa, the former
head of the Arab League
and a recent candidate for President of Egypt. Nabila
began her film career as a dancer
and the first
half of the film Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya highlights her dancing abilities. Unlike the posters
for the earlier
film Shahidat al- hubb al-ilahi, which depict Rabi’a
as veiled, the posters for the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya show Nabila as Rabi’a unveiled
and in a romantic pose with the actor who played ‘Isam al-Din. The choice of the beautiful
and voluptuous actress
Nabila Ebaid for the role of Rabi’a not only highlights the importance of Badawi’s trope of Rabi’a
as Aesthetic Woman in the film. There are
also indications that Qurra’a consulted
Widad El Sakkakini’s book The Sufi Lover for her screenplay. Although El Sakkakini is not mentioned in the bibliography of Qurra’a’s book Bride of
Asceticism, her work clearly was influential because
the film portrays
the merchant Khalil
of Al ‘Atik as trying to rape Rabi’a. As noted above,
this imagined episode
in Rabi’a’s life is
unique to El Sakkakini’s book.
Khalil of Al ‘Atik is the villain of the movie. He lusts after Rabi’a
and gives her money
and jewels, but to no avail. When he tries to rape her, she fights him off. While she is a prisoner in his house, Rabi’a leans out of the window and listens to the religious
singers (munshidin) in the street, singing songs about the love of God. However, her heart still belongs to ‘Isam al-Din
and she continues to wait for his return.
When ‘Isam returns
he comes to Khalil to pay back his loan. Although Khalil allows ‘Isam to see Rabi’a, his jealousy causes him to refuse the ransom and he
resolves to murder his friend.
Rabi’a is heartbroken. Another singing-girl convinces Rabi’a to forget her past by indulging in a wanton
life of singing,
dancing, and drinking. Rabi’a does this and
finally gives her body to Khalil. After this, the courtesan ‘Aliyya
sees Rabi’a and warns her that
her charms will be worthless when she becomes
older. To help her, she tries to ransom
Rabi’a from Khalil. Khalil refuses
the offer and takes Rabi’a
with him on a hunt. When they
stop to rest, the Sufi Thawban (Dhu’l-Nun) meets Rabi’a once again and preaches to her. She tells Thawban,
“Love is my religion but the wine-glass is my way” (al-hubb dini wa al-ka’s
madhhabi). Thawban preaches
to her about the life of asceticism. When she returns
to Basra and again
hears the religious singers in the street, she begins to weep out of remorse
for her sinful way of life. Rabi’a resolves
to reform her life and takes Rabah
ibn ‘Amr (al-Qaysi) as her teacher.
The
film depicts Rabi’a as studying
under several figures from medieval
hagiographies:
al-Hasan al-Basri, Sufyan al-Thawri, ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd, and Hayyuna. As we have seen,
the historical Rabi’a
could not have studied under
Hasan and Sufyan
was most likely
Rabi’a’s student, not her teacher. Of these figures,
only Hayyuna could possibly have been Rabi’a’s teacher. Just as in the film Shahidat al-hubb al-ilahi, a woman named
‘Abda is portrayed as Rabi’a’s companion. When the other women of Khalil’s house inquire about Rabi’a’s nightly
sojourns, ‘Abda
replies, “She is conversing with her beloved.” The women think
that Rabi’a has found another lover and inform Khalil
that she is cheating on him. Khalil
finds Rabi’a praying and reciting the poem related by Muhasibi, in which she says: “Night has come, the darkness
has mingled, and every lover is left alone with his beloved. Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.”
Hearing this, Khalil strikes her and tries to force her to dance and sing, but she continues
to pray. He then tries to force her to drink alcohol, but she refuses
again. Finally, Khalil lashes her with a whip. The other women of the house
take their revenge
on Rabi’a by humiliating her and forcing her to do menial
tasks like Cinderella. A woman named
Dalal (an Arabic
word meaning “spoiled” or “indulgent”) is particularly jealous
of her. When Rabi’a tries
to pray, Dalal releases
poisonous snakes and scorpions, but Rabi’a is undeterred. She continues to pray and asks God for a miracle.
While Khalil of Al ‘Atik is
sleeping with Dalal, a voice comes to
him and tells him
to release Rabi’a from her captivity. Upon awakening, he still hears
the voice and recalls Rabi’a’s endurance of his abuse. At this point the plot of the film returns to ‘Attar’s narrative. A servant comes and informs Khalil
that a light is hanging
in the air and illuminating Rabi’a’s room as she
prays. When Khalil goes to see this miracle for himself, the soundtrack of the movie
plays Umm Kulthum singing
the Poem of the Two Loves. Khalil leaves the room, crying.
Later he asks Rabi’a to forgive him and confesses
his love for her. He says, “If you were to fall in love with a human
being I would kill him. But because
it is God, you are free to go or stay in my home and
worship as you wish.” Rabi’a decides
to leave.
At this point, the film turns to Widad El Sakkakini’s version of Rabi’a’s vita. After
leaving Khalil’s
house, Rabi’a does not turn to a religious life but makes
a living as a musician playing the lute. Differing
from both ‘Attar and Margaret
Smith, Qurra’a accepts
‘Attar’s contention that Rabi’a
was a musician but interprets the term mutribi in
Persian (mutriba in Arabic) to mean that she played the lute. People come from all around to hear Rabi’a’s
music. ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd comes to see her as well and asks to marry her. However, he is a religious extremist and berates
Rabi’a for her lute playing.
He breaks all of her musical
instruments and throws
her out into the street.
Once again, the Sufi Thawban
(Dhu’l-Nun) appears in order
to save her. He takes
her back to the village
to live with the old woman who raised her in her youth. However,
the villagers accuse Thawban and Rabi’a of having sexual relations. They chase Rabi’a into the street and try to stone Thawban
as a libertine. But because Thawban is a saint,
the people trying
to stone him become paralyzed and repent of their
suspicions.
At this point in the film, Rabi’a’s
miracles begin to appear and people flock to see her as
they used to do for her singing, dancing,
and lute playing.
Khalil of Al ‘Atik, who has been driven mad by his love for Rabi’a, dies of a broken heart.
The film now portrays Rabi’a’s
life of piety and focuses on the tropes
of Rabi’a the Ascetic and Rabi’a the Teacher. The beautiful
courtesan of yesterday has now become the famous Sufi of myth. She attracts
the attention of the
Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who seeks her wisdom and asks her to pray for his victory in a
war against the Romans (i.e., the Byzantines). By this time, Rabi’a is an old woman and when
Harun returns victorious from the war she is at the point of death. She is happy at the prospect
of finally meeting her divine Beloved.
The Sufi Thawban
and her loyal friend ‘Abda
are by her side as she dies and a flame,
representing her love,
burns beside her. When she dies, the ghost of a
young woman emerges from her body as Umm Kulthum
sings in the background. Now
surrounded by Houris instead
of singing-girls, she rises up to Heaven. After this, her spirit
returns and informs her friends
that she has fulfilled God’s promise. The film ends with Thawban and ‘Abda smiling.
Although neither film about
Rabi’a merits consideration for an academy award, the production quality of the color film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya appears to have been superior
to that of the black-and-white film Shahidat
al-hubb al-ilahi. Overall,
it has a much richer
and compelling story line,
despite the fact that Saniya
Qurra’a took liberties with chronology and the narratives about Rabi’a’s life. However,
as Roland Barthes
and Mircea Eliade
both observe, in the realm of
cinematic myth, accuracy
is not a major consideration. When a film is made about a book or a
group of narratives, the film becomes the eye of the text. As Barthes
observes, neither reality
nor an original text can “contaminate” the verisimilitude of a film. This is because the public, who seldom read the original
work, see the work through
the film. For the average
film viewer in Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, or Indonesia where the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya has
been most popular, who would not prefer to imagine Rabi’a as the beautiful Nabila
Ebeid? Who cares that
Saniya Qurra’a’s screenplay is not historically accurate? All that matters is the verisimilitude imparted by the magic
of the film. As William
Shakespeare states in Hamlet,
“The play’s the thing.”
III.
Postscript: Rabi’a, The Phantom of the Miniseries
In 1996, a television miniseries aired in Egypt under the title, Rabi’a ta’ud (Rabi’a Returns). The screenplay for the miniseries was written by Yousry El Guindi (b. 1942), a well-
known Egyptian playwright and a former
official in the Ministry of Culture who had previously written a radio play called Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in 1980.113 Although
the title of El Guindi’s miniseries is Rabi’a Returns, its story line is not so much about Rabi’a
the person, whether historical or legendary, as it is about Rabi’a
the Icon. The main character is not Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya but a girl named Badr, who grows up in the region of Basra around the time of
Rabi’a’s death. The actress who played Badr was Iman El Toukhy
(b. 1957), an actress and singer whose career spanned
the years 1982-2003. According to rumors
that appeared after the
Egyptian revolution of 2011, she secretly married
former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and bore
him a daughter.114 The actress
who played Rabi’a was Samiha
Ayoub (b. 1930),
a famous Egyptian actress whose career covers more than five decades.115
The
life of the main character,
Badr in the miniseries draws heavily from medieval
accounts of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and the modern
representations of ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi
and Saniya Qurra’a. For example, Badr is orphaned
during a famine,
which is a trope that goes back to
‘Attar’s vita of Rabi’a.
Like Rabi’a in Qurra’a’s screenplay, an old beggar
cares for Badr as a child;
however, this time the beggar
is male instead
of female. As a young girl, Badr sees Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in person and is fascinated by her. She watches
Rabi’a secretly through
the window of her house and follows her to the dwelling in which she performs her devotions. In the
113 For information on Yousry El Guindi, see the Arabic
Wikipedia site, ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/yusri al- jundi.
114 See the web site,
ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/iman al-tukhi (in Arabic).
115 In Egypt,
Samiha Ayoub is called Sayyidat al-Masrah, “Lady of the Theater.” See
ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samiha
‘Ayub (in Arabic)
miniseries, Rabi’a is cared
for by another elderly woman
named Shawla, who recalls Ibn al-
Jawzi’s character, ‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal. The miniseries also depicts Rabi’a
as teaching both male
and female disciples. After Rabi’a dies and Badr grows up, her life begins to follow the pattern of Rabi’a’s life,
as depicted in Qurra’a’s screenplay for the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. At moments of crisis, Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya appears like a phantom
to Badr from beyond the grave,
informing her of future events
and giving her moral and spiritual advice.
This explains the title of the miniseries, Rabi’a Returns.
It is not necessary to detail
the entire plot outline of this
miniseries because despite some differences, it follows the narratives of Badawi and the script of the film Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya quite closely,
except that the main character is not Rabi’a
but Badr. In the miniseries, Badr falls into a life of sensual dissipation, as Rabi’a does in both the film and in Badawi’s narrative. In addition, Badr’s personality is characterized by restlessness and anxiety (qalaq), which were key tropes in Badawi’s book. Rabi’a Returns is
important as a postscript to this chapter
because it clearly exemplifies the relationship of narrative to myth described in the theories
of Roland Barthes and Aleksei Losev. In Chapter
5, I noted that for Barthes, myth is the expression of “what
goes without saying,”
in a historical narrative. For him, myth is a type of meta-discourse,
in which meaning derives from a literary
image.116 The very premise of the miniseries Rabi’a Returns is the idea that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is a mythical
meta-discourse of the type described by Barthes. This is why she is depicted
cinematically as a phantom or apparition that returns
periodically to remind
the viewer that the narrative of Badr’s story is based on Rabi’a’s
example. At more than one point
in the series, Rabi’a even calls Badr “Rabi’a.”
As the visual expression of a meta-discourse,
Rabi’a
Returns also illustrates Losev’s phenomenological theory
of myth, in which myth “is not the substantial, but an energistic self- affirmation of a person.
It is the assertion of a person
not in her deepest and ultimate root, but in her manifestational and expressive
functions.”117 In the miniseries, the phantom Rabi’a that
appears to Badr is nothing
if not the energistic
and expressive manifestation of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya as a personalized image. For the screenwriter El Guindi, Rabi’a
the Apparition represents the outward aspect of the mythologized Rabi’a of memory.
To use Losev’s terminology once again,
one could even say that the mythical
figure of Rabi’a
as envisaged by El
Guindi is a “pictorial emanation,” or the idealized expression of a mythical figure
as the personified
incarnation of her teachings.
To return to the title of this chapter
and Chapter 5, the Rabi’a
who returns repeatedly in the miniseries is an icon. She not only manifests herself
on screen as visage, form, and
image but she also manifests
herself as the outline for the life-story of the character
of Badr. Each of these terms respresents a key concept in Losev’s theory
of myth. Through Badr’s
eyes and Badr’s story, the viewer participates with the main character in “seeing” the image of Rabi’a the Icon as a selection of tropes, taken
from a variety of premodern and modern narratives. As Widad El Sakkakini states in her book The Sufi Lover, on screen the viewer looks at the icon of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya, “as if through
eternity, or at the door of the infinite. In her right hand, she is holding
116 See Barthes, Mythologies, 11 and 131. However, to be completely accurate, for
Barthes the relationship between meaning and image is the other way around: the
meaning does not derive from the image; rather, meaning
is transformed into the
image. In the statement above, I interpret
Barthes through Losev.
117 Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, 93
a thick book of pages without blemish, the first of which she is about to turn. She goes over it
contemplatively and tenderly.”118
And
the story continues
. . .
118 El Sakkakini, First Among Sufis, 9; al-‘Ashiqa
al-mutasawwifa, 10
CONCLUSION
REVISITING THE
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PROBLEM: WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT RABI’A’S
LIFE AND LEGACY?
Almost twenty years ago, Denise A. Spellberg published
an important work of Islamic Studies titled, Politics,
Gender, and the Islamic Past:
The Legacy of ‘A’isha Bint Abi Bakr (1994). This work is not so much a biography as a study
of ‘A’isha’s legacy
through the issues that have been raised by her treatment in Islamic history.
Chapter topics include
the shaping of ‘A’isha’s historical persona, her role in early communal
debates between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the role of gender in debates about her political
leadership, and the use of her historical persona in the shaping
of the Islamic feminine ideal. Spellberg’s book was one of my
inspirations for writing
about Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. Part of my inspiration came from our shared
experiences in approaching our chosen
subjects. First, it took Spellberg ten years to write her book; the present work took almost
ten years to produce as well. Second,
both of us shared the experience of trying to write about “a difficult
woman.”1 ‘A’isha was a difficult
woman to write about because she was a politically polarizing figure; Rabi’a
is difficult to write about because
her identity is expressed through
multiple and sometimes very different personas. How, for instance, can one reconcile
the no-nonsense and rigorous moralist
and spiritual master depicted
by Sulami with the existentialist rebel depicted by Badawi and El Sakkakini
or the romantic lover
depicted by the movie Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and Western New Age enthusiasts?
For Spellberg, the main historiographical problem
was to choose between ‘A’isha’s
life or legacy as the focus of study: “A life and a legacy are not always the same. Time and perspective collude to shape
the latter, promoting a definitive semblance of the former.
Yet of any life, the legacy is only a semblance— a vision of reality generated
by those who thought and wrote
about their subject,
for their own reasons, after
the life to be told has ended.”2 However, one cannot pose this problem
in exactly the same way for the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
Because ‘A’isha was the Prophet Muhammad’s wife and an important political
figure after the Prophet’s death, there is much more information on her life than on the life of Rabi’a.
As Spellberg’s book makes
clear, the historical ‘A’isha appears in chronicles, she is a major
protagonist in the Prophet Muhammad’s biography, she is a figure of political
contention between Sunni and Shiite Muslims,
and she is even referred
to in the Qur’an, albeit by way of allusion.
None of these resources
is available for the study of the historical Rabi’a.
Although both ‘A’isha and Rabi’a as they are known today are the products
of literary representation, ‘A’isha is primarily thought
of as a historical figure;
with Rabi’a however,
the question of her historicity is still open. Because
‘A’isha is a historical personage, Spellberg could speak about “the power of interpretation in historical meaning.”3 Her book is clearly part of historical literature and a glance
1 Spellberg, Poliics, Gender,
and the Islamic
Past, ix
2 Ibid, 1
3 Ibid; technically speaking, Spellberg’s use of the term “interpretation” is a misnomer.
Instead, she should
have spoken about “the power of representation in
historical meaning.” Her book is not about textual
at
the bibliography reveals
that the theoretical works she consulted were mostly works
of historiography or feminist
studies. Only a few sources
were literary studies.
For Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya the situation is the opposite.
In Rabi’a’s case,
her legacy is not
the semblance of her life, as with ‘A’isha. Instead,
it is more accurate to say that Rabi’a’s life (i.e., her vita as presented through literature) is a semblance
of her legacy. Although Rabi’a is a major
figure of Islamic and modern secular literature, she is not so clearly
a figure of history. No extant
source from her lifetime mentions
her and the provenance of the eyewitness accounts that exist in later works
is still in doubt. Thus, these accounts
do not fully measure up to Jan Vansina’s standards for oral tradition as history. One of my most persistent desires since starting this study has been to find a manuscript of the lost ninth-century work Kitab al-ruhban by Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Burjulani. Because this text was composed
no more than fifty
years after Rabi’a’s death, it would tell us much about the historicity of Rabi’a and how far back
we could trace the tropological construction of her narrative. If Burjulani did not mention
Rabi’a at all, it would at the very least cast doubt on her reputation; if he did mention her, his accounts would provide a touchstone from which to assess later
accounts and depictions.
The
persistence of these historiographical problems
is why I chose to title this work
Rabi’a from Narrative
to Myth. To the extent that it is a work of history, it is primarily
a work of literary history. Unlike Spellberg with ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr,
I did not have the advantage of being
able to consult
historical accounts of the life of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya. Instead, as I
explained in the Introduction, I had to approach the literary sources
that were available
to me pragmatically and with an open mind, and tried to select
the theoretical tools
that were best suited
for the job at hand. Sometimes the best tools for the job came from the field of literary theory.
This explains my reliance
on Roland Barthes,
for example. When I turned
to historiography, the most
relevant theorists often were those who drew on literary
theory for their ideas. Such theorists included
Hayden White and F. R. Ankersmit. At other times and for other needs, I was able
to rely on historiographers influenced by anthropology or the Annales tradition of social history, such as Jan Vansina and Thomas Heffernan. At times, I had to draw concepts
from fields as distant
from Islamic Studies
as Communications studies,
Ethnomethodology, and Conversation Analysis. Finally,
if I had not discovered the Russian phenomenologist Aleksei Fyodorovich
Losev’s work, The Dialectics of Myth, I would never have thought
of depicting Rabi’a as both a
myth and an icon. Surprisingly, what have been least helpful
theoretically are works
from my own field of Religious Studies.
As I also explained in the Introduction, Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is not a normal subject of religious or Islamic studies,
just as she is not a normal subject of history.
Strictly speaking, one cannot talk about Rabi’a’s
theology or philosophy; one can only talk about the theology or philosophy of those
who wrote about her.
Therefore, to make this study an acceptable work of history,
I had to approach
historiographically the literature in which Rabi’a
appears. Because I could not fill in the details of Rabi’a the historical person, I traced the development of the representation of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya from narrative to master narrative and myth, focusing
on the narrative tropes that
hermeneutics (the
realm of interpretation), but about the conflicting representations of ‘A’isha in Islamic literature. For F. R. Ankersmit, whom I follow in the use of these terms, interpretation is equivalent to the
explanation of a historical object;
with representation, the reality of the object is transferred from the outside
to the text itself. Hence, the
representations of ‘A’isha discussed by Spellberg “re-present” her from various
perspectives. See Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference, 54-63.
comprise her identity. First, I identified four key narrative
tropes (these were master narratives in themselves) that defined
her identity in premodern Sufi literature. These tropes
were Rabi’a the Teacher,
Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Lover,
and Rabi’a the Sufi. Eventually, it became necessary to add the trope of Rabi’a the Icon to this list in order to account
for the transposition of the Rabi’a narratives in the modern period into new genres
of representation. These genres
included scholarly studies,
novels and novellas, songs, radio plays,
movies, and a television mini- series. Because of the transposition of the Rabi’a narratives into these new genres, the figure of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya is now the subject
of both religious and secular
representations.
Although the details of Rabi’a’s representation differ widely, certain
constants remain.
First, the four main tropes of the premodern
Sufi narratives are still relevant, although the trope of
Rabi’a the Lover now takes pride of place. In addition, another
constant of representation has remained since the premodern period.
This is the depiction, which first appears
in the works of Ibn al-Jawzi
and ‘Attar at the end of the twelfth century,
of Rabi’a as a figural
image, like the subject of a portrait
or a painting. One can see this aspect of the “reality
effect” at work in the description of Rabi’a by the modern writer Widad El Sakkakini. “I see Rabi’a’s
faint image on the shimmering waves:
not in worn-out dress and sandals, with a stick;
but moving towards
the shores of heaven
in a halo of brightness, with a reed pipe, playing
the tune for her verses.”4 Because of the prevalence of such visual images, especially in the modern period, I called the fifth
major trope of the Rabi’a
narratives, “Rabi’a the Icon.” The icon is an appropriate metaphor for Rabi’a as a “mythicized historical figure” (to use Mircea Eliade’s term) because the name,
“Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya,” that is attached
to this figure
is pregnant with multiple narrative associations, just as a painted icon evokes a variety of stories that are associated with a single image.5
I have tried to avoid
philosophical discussions in this
work as much as possible for two
reasons. First, discussing all of the questions that this study raises would take this work far beyond anything manageable. For practical reasons,
these discussions are best left for future conference papers or articles. Second, I felt that with the proliferation of writings today that treat the Rabi’a narratives as historical realities or empirical facts,
it was important to set the record straight and separate empirical data from representation as far as possible. This is why I devoted so much of this study to what I called in Chapter 1 the “archaeology of cultural memory.”
I hope that after reading this work, no serious student
of Sufism would be able to say, “Rabi’a said this”
or Rabi’a did that,” or speak about her as the “founder
of Islamic Love mysticism,” or talk about “the contribution of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya to Sufism,” without
qualification. Although I am very open to the use of literary
approaches when appropriate in Islamic and historical studies,
I also believe in relying on empirical approaches to history whenever
it is possible to do so. To take a famous
quote of the philosopher Wittgenstein out of context,
too often in the field of Sufi Studies,
“language goes on holiday” and creates a pseudo-history because
its practitioners are inattentive
to the nature of the sources that they are dealing with.6 People who speak or write about Rabi’a in
this way are not talking
about “principial truth” in the way that the French Traditionalist writer Jean Annestay does (see Chapter 5). Instead, they are speaking
of historical reality
in the way a historian does, and as such, they should hold themselves accountable to the standards
of the
4 El Sakkakini, First among Sufis, 62; al-‘Ashiqa
al-Mutasawwifa, 98.
5 See Introduction and Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 39-40.
6 Ankersmit, Historical
Representation, 30
discipline of history. To the extent
that this study helps promote
such an objective, this alone would make it a useful contribution to the field
of Islamic Studies.
I.
What Can We Say About The Historical Rabi’a Al-‘Adawiyya?
In strictly empirical terms, “Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya” is a proper name attached
to a number of narrative substances.7 As such, she refers only vaguely to a real substance or empirical reality beyond the level of narrative. To use the terminology of the philosopher of history Frank R.
Ankersmit, Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya is a proper
name “of views
or representations of the past,” or “of a common denominator to be discerned
in a number of roughly
comparable representations.”8
That is to say, when we examine
the figure of Rabi’a historically, we do not examine historical reality per se, but the historical reality
of narrative representations.
According to Ankersmit, the student of history must be careful
to distinguish three
levels of historical reality:
(1) the past itself; (2) the empirical description of the past; and (3) the representation of the past.9 With respect to the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, the “real” or historical Rabi’a (i.e., the Rabi’a that lies beyond
the level of narrative) would
stand for “the past
itself.” The first-hand accounts and descriptions of Rabi’a that can be found in some of the
earliest sources would
be roughly equivalent to “the empirical description of the past.” As for
“representations of the past,” these would include
all literary and historical representations of Rabi’a that make a claim of truth,
whether they are “principial,” empirical-historical, figural,
or symbolic. The advantage
of Ankersmit’s three-part model of historical reality is that it allows us
to clarify the concept of historical representation without denying the importance of empirical
data and without necessarily privileging the historical meaning
of narratives over their
“principial” or religious meaning.10
According to Ankersmit’s model, an empirical historical study of the “real” Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya would have to limit its focus
of investigation to levels 1 and 2— the level of the past
itself and the level of empirical descriptions of the past. In the present work,
these levels of historical reality comprise the bases of Chapter 1, “Rabi’a the Teacher,” and Chapter 2, “Rabi’a
the Ascetic.” One could also consider the discussion of Rabi’a’s celibacy
in Chapter 3 as part of
such an empirical study as well. Although
Chapter 4, “Rabi’a
the Sufi,” is one of the so-called “historical” chapters
of this work, no extant
source prior to the tenth
century CE describes Rabi’a as a Sufi. Thus, from a strictly
empirical perspective, we cannot call her a “Sufi” per se. To address this problem historically, Chapter 4 sets up a “What if?” scenario based on the empirical
descriptions of other
ascetics who were called “Sufis”
in the earliest sources. In other words,
if some newfound ninth-century work were discovered that describes Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a
Sufi, she most likely would
fit the descriptions of the “Sufis”
(I call them “Proto-Sufis”)
discussed in Chapter 4.
Because she is mentioned in three early sources (Muhasibi, Jahiz, and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur) dating to no more than 75 years after her death, we can conclude
on the basis of inductive
7 This definition follows F. R. Ankersmit in Ibid, 57.
8 Ibid
9 Ibid
10 This is a somewhat
wider view of representational reality
than that advocated
by Ankersmit. For
Ankersmit, the level of representation is restricted to historical representation only.
reasoning that a woman called Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya or Rabi’a al-Qaysiyya lived in the region of Basra
in the eighth century CE. From her name, we know that she belonged
to the clan of ‘Adi ibn
Qays of the tribe of Qays Aylan
of the North Arabian Mudar
Arabs. As discussed in Chapter 1, we can also conclude from the accounts
reported by Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur that she
was a highly respected and prominent member
of her clan. This makes
it unlikely that she was a
non-Arab of convert origins (mawlat), who was adopted
into the clan of ‘Adi ibn Qays as a servant or client. Significantly, the accounts that make Rabi’a
a mawlat first appear in the works
of writers of Persian cultural
origin, such as Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami. Because of her high
status in her clan, it is even less likely
that Rabi’a was a slave,
as Farid al-Din al-‘Attar claimed. The hurra, the free Arab woman of respected status,
was an important figure in the Umayyad
and early Abbasid periods.
These free women (hara’ir) played major roles
in early Islamic
society, including transmitting Hadith
and teaching both men and women.11 All of the earliest accounts
of Rabi’a concur in putting her in this role.
The works of Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur are important sources
of information on Rabi’a
because these writers
were not from the ascetic
or Sufi traditions. Their interest
in her was only as a literary or rhetorical example.
Jahiz in particular appears to have derived some of his information from local memory or oral traditions. Although he himself could not give an
empirical description of Rabi’a, he was in a position
to know people who could have done so.
The provenance of Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s sources is less clear. It is possible
that he took some of his information from early prosopographical works such as Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban
and he may even have taken an account
or two from Jahiz. However, his status as a disinterested observer of Rabi’a’s legacy
and his relative closeness to her in time and place meant that he too
was most likely a recipient
of traditions that originated from people who knew people
who knew her.
From Jahiz we learn that Rabi’a was a mainstream or “Sunni” Muslim.
He calls her a
renunciant (mutazahhida) and an ascetic ritualist
(mutanassika), and states that she had some type of
leadership role (riyasa) in ascetic groups.
From an aphorism
in Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s Balaghat al-nisa’, we understand that Rabi’a’s asceticism was a vocation
that was based
on strict adherence to divine commandments. She also followed
a strict moral code but according to Jahiz,
she did not have a reputation for extremism. Overall,
she was best known in the generations after her death for her wisdom
and eloquence. This is indicated by Jahiz’s nomination of Rabi’a as “one
of the people of bayan (min ahl al-bayan). This category included
preachers, poets, sages, political leaders, teachers, and a small number of people that he referred
to as “Sufis.” A person of
bayan was someone who could articulate important concepts and make them accessible to those
with less eloquence
or learning. I argued in Chapter 1 that Jahiz’s
concept of bayan was
a key element in the trope of Rabi’a the Teacher.
I also argued that this trope shares much in common
with the Stoic concept of the sage, who is both a master of the “Truth,”
which is discovered through
demonstration and argument, and a master
of the “True,” which consists
of the immediate knowledge
of “that which is.” These qualities come very close to the qualities of a
person of bayan. Although Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur does not use this term, in general he agrees with
11 On the social roles of hara’ir, besides
the works cited in Chapter
1, see “The Rise and Fall of Women of Knowledge,” in Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections:
From Ibn Sa’d to Who’s Who (Boulder, Colorado and London: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 1994), 65-71.
Jahiz’s assessment of Rabi’a by calling her one of the “women of authoritative opinion” (dhawwat al-ra’y).
Given this endorsement of the historical Rabi’a’s reputation, it is natural
to expect that she
would have had followers or students. Here the question
of empirical description becomes more problematical. While the sources
mention several of Rabi’s associates, these mostly come from
later works, starting
with Sufi tabaqat texts in the eleventh
century CE. These sources date to
nearly 300 years after Rabi’a’s
death. Although some of Rabi’a’s
alleged associates are cited
as sources of traditions about her in these works,
we cannot be sure of their accuracy
until they are corroborated by earlier works
dating to the tenth— or even better—
the ninth century
CE. This is because
the names of the most prominent of these individuals were used at times to validate unattributed accounts about Rabi’a. Unfortunately, the early works that could corroborate these sources all appear
to be lost.
A key name that associates Rabi’a with important
male religious figures
of the eighth century CE is Ja’far ibn Sulayman al-Dab’i
(d. 794-5 CE). It is under his name, for example, that Sulami traces the claim that Rabi’a
knew the famous
juridical scholar and Qur’an commentator Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 778 CE). Another
name that is used to validate later reports is Shu’ba ibn
al-Hajjaj (d. 781-2 CE), who, like Dab’i, claimed
to have visited Rabi’a in the company
of Sufyan al-Thawri. Along with Thawri
himself, these individuals provide some of the most important
allegedly first-hand accounts
of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and her teachings. Although the narrative tradition is virtually unanimous
in claiming that Sufyan al-Thawri
was Rabi’a’s student
or associate, it is difficult to assess the veracity of this assertion
in empirical terms. Dab’i, Thawri, and Shu’ba all support
each other but who supports
them? As it stands today,
we lack outside corroboration for this circle
of alleged associates. Once again, it would be very helpful
to find one or more of the lost early sources
that could provide
such corroboration.
Based on information on Sufyan al-Thawri’s life that is available from other historical sources, I concluded in Chapter 1 that he could have associated with Rabi’a only between the years 775-778 CE, when he resided
in Basra at the end of his life. However,
did Thawri actually know Rabi’a? It is just as possible to speculate that eleventh-century Sufi hagiographers such as
Sulami and Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani (d. 1038-9 CE) used the name of Sufyan al-Thawri to add luster to Rabi’a’s reputation, as it is to conclude
that the first-hand accounts transmitted in his
name are true. Although the former scenario
is probably less likely than the latter,
it remains theoretically possible
that the accounts
of Thawri’s encounters with Rabi’a are no more than a medieval Islamic version of the game of “Six Degrees of Separation.”
Whatever their status as empirical descriptions may be, the accounts of Rabi’a and
Sufyan al-Thawri provided by Sulami and other Sufi writers conform
in general to the image
of Rabi’a portrayed by the more empirically reliable
accounts of Jahiz and Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur.
They also do not contradict the ninth-century citation
of Rabi’a by the Sufi Muhasibi or the
accounts and descriptions taken by Sulami, Isfahani,
and others from Burjulani’s Kitab al-ruhban and other early prosopographical works. According to Sulami, Sufyan al-Thawri referred
to Rabi’a as his mu’addiba— his teacher, trainer,
or molder of character. As explained in Chapter 1, the
early Islamic pedagogy
of character formation (ta’dib) shared
much in common with Jahiz’s concept of bayan.
A teacher of character like Rabi’a would have used the technique
of bayan to help establish
good qualities of mind and soul in her students. The concept of bayan was also related to the concept
of culture (adab) in this period.
The Arab notion
of culture that prevailed
in the Umayyad and early Abbasid
periods differed significantly from the more culturally Persian and courtly notion of culture by which adab was
known in the middle Abbasid
period. In
Rabi’a’s day, character formation was primarily associated with the virtues
of muruwwa, “manly” or mature comportment, and hilm,
rational judgment derived
from reason and experience. The image
of Rabi’a that emerges from the earliest
sources embodies all three of these character traits: adab, hilm, and bayan. This
is why I concluded Chapter
1 by stating that based on the earliest
sources, one could say that the content
of Rabi’a’s teachings (ta’dib) provided
an early example of what Sufis would
later refer to as the spiritual way (al-tariqa).
The earliest sources also concur in describing Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya as an ascetic. In Chapter 2, I framed my discussion of the
trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic in terms
of the “World/Nonworld Dichotomy,” a construct developed
by the Belgian anthropologist Jacques Maquet. According
to this construct, the Nonworld
is an alternate worldview that is seen as a form of liberation from economic and social concerns
and from worldly
values. This model of
the ascetic worldview is useful
for the study of the ascetics of early Islam because it portrays
them as part of an ascetic counterculture. Maquet’s view of ascetic communities as a type of
counterculture corresponds closely
to Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s
notion of the “Piety-Minded” as a counterculture in early Islamic
society, as described
in the first volume of his work, The Venture
of Islam.12
I devoted a major
part of Chapter 2 to a discussion of the doctrines and practices that the
historical Rabi’a might have followed
as an early Muslim ascetic.
This included an examination
of the key terms of early Islamic
asceticism. Three categories of ascetic practice
were particularly important to the trope
of Rabi’a the Ascetic. These are zuhd (renunciation, or asceticism in general),
wara’ (moral or ethical
precaution), and nusk (ascetic ritualism, which
includes extreme ritualistic behaviors and the practice of asceticism as a vocation). Although the term faqir (“poor one”) has long been a synonym for the term Sufi,
the intentional cultivation of poverty (faqr)
does not seem to have been as important for early Islam as it was for early
Christianity. I argued in Chapter
2 that in early Islamic
asceticism moderation was the normal rule, just as it was for Islam in general. For early Muslim
ascetics, patience and perseverance
were more important than poverty per se.
A key element of the trope of Rabi’a
the Ascetic is a set of practices that I call essential
asceticism. This term, which came originally from the scholar
of Jewish asceticism Eliezer Diamond, distinguishes the ascetic practices
attributed to Rabi’a and some of her alleged
colleagues from the more common
form of asceticism in this period, which
I termed instrumental
asceticism. Instrumental asceticism was exemplified in Rabi’a’s time by the nasik or
ascetic ritualist. Ascetic ritualists practiced their asceticism in the pursuit
of instrumental goals,
such as attainment to heaven or other tokens
of divine favor. At times,
these practices aroused
the attention of outside
observers and in some cases,
ascetic ritualists even acted in ways that were
analogous to the behaviors of performance artists. A third type of asceticism in Rabi’a’s time was
reactionary asceticism. As its name implies,
this type of asceticism was a ritualized act of protest against
the unequal distribution of wealth in the Abbasid
Empire. In contrast
to the practitioners of instrumental and reactionary asceticism, the practitioners of essential asceticism viewed their asceticism as a natural
consequence of their
devotion to God. In other
words, their
12 See Chapter
1 of Book Two, “The Islamic Opposition,” in Hodgson, The Venture
of Islam, volume 1,
241-279.
asceticism was a way of life that required
neither dramatic behaviors
nor instrumental goals
for its performance. With respect to the trope of Rabi’a the Ascetic,
the early sources,
whether Sufi or otherwise, more often depict Rabi’a as an essential
ascetic than as an instrumental ascetic.
Building on research first conducted for my book Early Sufi Women (1999), I argued in Chapter 2 that the historical Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya was not the founder,
but the most famous
representative of a tradition of women’s asceticism in Basra that went back more than a century before her. The origins
of this tradition can be traced to the Prophet Muhammad’s widow ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr (d. 678 CE), who lived
in Basra for a while
and was known
for asceticism at the
end of her life. The actual founder
of this tradition was Mu’adha
al-‘Adawiyya (d. 702 CE), a historically well-documented member of Rabi’a’s clan who was a companion
of ‘A’isha. For the
most part, Mu’adha was an instrumental ascetic,
although she seems to have introduced the practice of worshipful servitude
(ta’abbud) that the Sufi hagiographer Sulami attributed to Sufi
women in general. Mu’adha’s disciples
were mostly instrumental ascetics as well. For example, Ghufayra al-‘Abida (d. ca. 720 CE) was a ritualistic weeper
(bakiya): she wept because
she feared that her balance sheet
of virtues would
come up short
on the Day of Judgment. However, the women ascetics
whose names are associated with Rabi’a were different in that they practiced
essential asceticism. For example, Maryam
of Basra (d. before 801 CE) advocated
a doctrine of Love
similar to that ascribed to Rabi’a. This was also the case for Hayyuna
of al-Ubulla (d. ca.
750 CE). The early
medieval culture critic
Hasan ibn Muhammad
al-Nisaburi (d. 1016 CE)
identifies Hayyuna as Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya’s teacher in his book ‘Uqala’ al-majanin (The Rationally Insane). A major argument
of Chapter 3 was that the Love mysticism attributed to Rabi’a and other ascetics of Basra— male and female
alike— developed out of the practice of essential asceticism. Because the practice of essential asceticism is more an approach to God
than a rejection of the world, it leads to the goal of union with God that is a fundamental concept of Love mysticism.
Although in his Book of Sufi Women, Sulami
mentions ten women
ascetics who were contemporaries of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in Basra, only one of them, Maryam
of Basra, is identified as Rabi’a’s companion. However, this is not a well-attested attribution. There is only one
chain of transmission (isnad) for this account,
and its initial
source is Ahmad
ibn Abi al- Hawari (d. 845 CE), an early Sufi who lived first in Basra and later in Syria (see Chapters
2 and 4). Ibn Abi al-Hawari was the husband
of Rabi’a bint Isma’il of Damascus (d. before 845 CE),
who is often confused with Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya in Sufi and popular literature. Sulami claims that Maryam
of Basra was a contemporary of Rabi’a and survived her. Although this is possible, we cannot be sure of this claim. For example, Sulami mistakenly believed
that Mu’adha al- ‘Adawiyya was a contemporary and close associate
of Rabi’a too, even though she lived a full century before her.13
‘Abda bint Abi Shawwal
was another possible
companion of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya.
Although her name appears
as an important source on Rabi’a in Ibn al-Jawzi’s Sifat al-safwa, she is not mentioned
in Sulami’s Book of Sufi Women. ‘Abda is said to have been Rabi’a’s servant in the final years of her life. She is important
to the Rabi’a narratives as the source of accounts of
dream visions of Rabi’a. Just as with Maryam of Basra, the main source on ‘Abda is the male
13
Sulami, Early Sufi
Women, 88-89; the Arabic phrase that Sulami uses is, Kanat min aqran Rabi’a wa kanat ta’anasa bi-ha, which literally means,
“[Mu’adha] was a contemporary of Rabi’a and was intimate (i.e., very close) with her.”
Sufi Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari. Although
I state in Chapter 2 that Ibn Abi al-Hawari
and his teacher, Abu Sulayman al-Darani (d. 830 CE), may have constituted an important link between
the early Sufis of Basra
and Syria, this does not help to establish the authenticity of the accounts about the alleged companions of Rabi’a. Although
we can establish with a fairly high degree of certainty that there were a number
of notable women ascetics in and around Basra during the
historical Rabi’a’s lifetime, we cannot be sure how many, if any of them, were her companions or associates.
In Chapter 3, I discuss the question of celibacy in the Rabi’a
narratives. Although some later writers have claimed
that Rabi’a was married, she is identified as a celibate
in Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur’s ninth-century work, Balaghat
al-nisa’. Once again,
because Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
was an outsider to the tradition represented by Rabi’a
and the other ascetics of her time, we can take
this assertion as an empirical description of general
knowledge. Unlike in the Islamic
world today, in Rabi’a’s
day celibacy was a common ascetic discipline. To better understand this phenomenon, I divided
the practice of celibacy into two varieties: principled and
vocational.
Principled celibacy
is a form of celibacy
that is based on scriptural foundations and is seen as integral to ascetic practice
in general. This type of celibacy is practiced in Orthodox and Roman
Catholic Christianity. By contrast, vocational celibacy is based
on individual choice.
The vocational celibate views marriage and children as impediments to her principal vocation, which is service
to God. This type of celibacy was more characteristic of early Islam and rabbinic Judaism. In the context of early Islam, it was one of the hallmarks of essential asceticism. In the practice of essential asceticism, there is no place for marriage because
the soul is completely
preoccupied with God.
As for an empirical consideration of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya’s Sufism, one must start by
asking the question, “What was a ‘Sufi’
in Rabi’a’s time?” This is because the picture of early
Sufism known today is largely
the result of later Sufi writers anachronistically projecting their
definitions of Sufism back onto earlier periods.
Therefore, in order to address
the issue of the
historical Rabi’a’s Sufism
and avoid further
anachronism, in Chapter
4, I examined early
empirical descriptions of people who were known as “Sufis”
in her time. To do this, I consulted
the writings of Jahiz, Muhasibi,
and Abu Nu’aym
al-Isfahani’s Hilyat al-awliya’ (The
Adornment of the Saints).
Although this latter work dates to the eleventh century
CE, it contains many
accounts from the earliest writers
on the ascetic and Sufi traditions in Islam, such as Burjulani and Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi (d.
952-3).
Based on the information derived from these sources, I concluded that the term “Sufi” in Rabi’a’s time denoted a spiritual method that included
six specific attitudes
and practices. I referred to this spiritual
method as “Proto-Sufism,” because Sufism as a clearly
defined institution in Islam had not yet developed. The main tenets of Proto-Sufism are the following: (1) A worldview governed
by the World/Nonworld dichotomy; (2) the pursuit
of both outward and inward purity;
(3) outwardly visible
acts of ascetic
ritualism; (4) an approach to social relations that was characterized by ascetic precaution (wara’) and ethical training
(ta’dib); (5) a critical view of ordinary life; (6) the internalization of spirituality through
the practice of essential
asceticism and/or Love mysticism. The most important
difference between the Proto-Sufism of Rabi’a’s time and the Sufism of later periods
was that whereas
later versions of Sufism focused on theological concepts, Proto-Sufism was conceptualized almost entirely in terms of practice.
This
indicates that the pragmatic and practical approach
to spirituality that Sulami identified as a
characteristic of women’s spirituality may have been due more to the Proto-Sufism of the women ascetics who appear in his Book of Sufi Women than to their gender.
It is also important to address from an empirical perspective the question of whether Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya was really
a Love mystic. Since the time of the early systematizers of Sufism in the late tenth century
CE, virtually everyone
has agreed that Rabi’a was an important figure— perhaps the key figure— in introducing the doctrine of divine love in Islam. As I mention in Chapter 3, indirect support
for this assertion can be found in the observation that a
fully developed tradition
of Love mysticism
does not appear
in accounts of ascetics before the
time of Rabi’a. However, I also demonstrated that just as a tradition
of women’s asceticism in Basra preceded Rabi’a by 100 years, so did a spiritual tradition that focused on the love of God. This early Love tradition in Basra seems to have been associated with the North
Arabian clan of Banu
‘Abd Qays, just as asceticism was associated with Rabi’a’s clan of Banu ‘Adi ibn Qays.
However, this early tradition
appears to have used love as a metaphor rather
than practiced an actual form of Love mysticism.
With respect to empirical evidence, it is possible to conclude that the historical Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya practiced a form of essential asceticism that included expressions of divine love and
intimacy. This can be seen in the earliest extant quotation of Rabi’a, which appears in al-Harith
al-Muhasibi’s mid-ninth-century treatise
on essential asceticism, al-Qasd wa al-ruju’ ila Allah
(God as the Goal and the Return):
“The night has come, the darkness has mingled, and every
lover is left alone with his beloved.
Now I am alone with you, my Beloved.”14 Since Muhasibi
wrote this work less than fifty years
after Rabi’a’s death,
it provides important circumstantial evidence that the “real” Rabi’a
was known for some type of Love doctrine. In addition, a Love
doctrine associated with other women ascetics appears
to have been centered on the Iraqi port
town of al-Ubulla in Rabi’a’s
time. Three women
ascetics of al-Ubulla
who were contemporaries of Rabi’a are depicted
in the sources as representatives of this doctrine. These were Sha’wana, Hayyuna, and a poet named Rayhana.
As noted above,
the Persian writer
Nisaburi, a contemporary of Sulami, claimed
that Hayyuna was Rabi’a’s teacher. In Chapter 3, I discussed the possibility that the poems of Rayhana might have been the source
for the apparently erroneous tradition that Rabi’a herself was a poet.
Although the quotation of Rabi’a by Muhasibi is the only direct evidence
we have that Rabi’a was a Love mystic,
I am not willing to reject this possibility altogether. This is because other relatively early sources
contain quotations by Rabi’a on the subject
of Love that corroborate
Muhasibi’s citation. For example, one of Rabi’a’s
most famous statements on Love is cited in a
late tenth-century treatise
on Love by Abu al-Hasan
‘Ali al-Daylami (d. 1001-2). In this anecdote, a person asks Rabi’a, “How is your love for the Prophet?” Rabi’a replies, “Verily,
I love him. However,
my love for the Creator
has preoccupied me from love for created
things.”15 Daylami took this story from an earlier
work, Tabaqat al-nussak (The
Generations of Ascetic Ritualists), by Abu Sa’id
ibn al-A’rabi (d. 952-3). We know that Daylami copied
from this work because he quotes Ibn al-A’rabi’s commentary on Rabi’a’s answer verbatim: “What she meant was
this: I love the Messenger of God with faith, belief,
and conviction because
he is the
14 Muhasibi, al-Qasd wa al-ruju’ ila Allah, 104
15 Daylami, A Treatise
on Mystical Love,
112; this quote
also appears in Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 78-9
Daylami appears
to have taken the quotation
from Abu Sa’id ibn al-A’rabi’s Tabaqat al-nussak. On this latter work,
see Chapter 1 and R. Cornell, Introduction to Sulami, Early Sufi Women, 53.
Messenger of God and because God loves him and has commanded us to love him. But my love for
God demands preoccupation with constant remembrance of God, intimate
converse with him, and
constant delight in the sweetness
of his speech and in his looking
into men’s hearts,
while still remembering his blessings.”16 Unfortunately, the original of Ibn al-A’rabi’s Tabaqat al- nussak is lost. However, this short commentary confirms that Sufis
were discussing statements on Love attributed to Rabi’a as early as the first half of the tenth century CE, before Abu Talib al- Makki
created the Sufi literary trope of Rabi’a the Lover.
According to F. R. Ankersmit’s model
of the levels of historical reality, the preceding discussion summarizes all that we can say empirically about the historical Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya.
This is actually a significant amount of information, considering the limited
sources at our disposal. The existence of this evidence
is why I concluded, despite
my initial misgivings, that a real person
named Rabi’a lay behind the Sufi myth. However, what we can conclude about the
historical Rabi’a from empirical or even quasi-empirical evidence is only a small fraction of the
information about her in non-empirical sources. For this reason, I am unable
to end this work by concluding, as Denise Spellberg
did for ‘A’isha bint Abi Bakr, that Rabi’a’s legacy is a semblance of her life. On the contrary, the most abiding
reality of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya is that
her life as we know it today is not just a semblance, but a pastiche
or imitation of her narrative legacy. As Chapters 5 and 6 of this study demonstrate, the story of her life is a myth composed out of earlier narratives,
tropes, and traditions.
II.
What Can We Say About Rabi’a’s Legacy?
At the beginning of Chapter 4, I criticized the historian of early Christianity Elizabeth A. Clark for using Roland Barthes’ concept
of the reality effect to argue that the male use of the
trope of the Woman of Wisdom in early Christian hagiography says little
or nothing about
the “real” women behind these stories.
According to Clark,
this motif provided
a means by which men could “think through
various troubling intellectual and theological problems
that confronted male theologians.”17 She argues that as a merely figural
woman, the Woman
of Wisdom is a
“Pseudo-Other”— “an alternate
male identity whose constant accessibility to men lends men
fullness and totality that enables
them to dispense (supposedly) with otherness altogether.”18 Although one could easily
apply Clark’s argument
to the tropes of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya discussed in this work, I argued against
her denial of the historical reality of such tropes by pointing out that
she overemphasizes the dichotomy between
historical writing and fiction. Following
the lead of Hayden
White, I argued
instead that students
of hagiography should
not allow the ideal of objectivity to lead them into blind
alleys of artificial and overly simplistic “either-or” dichotomies. The logic of hagiographical works is not “either-or” but “both-and.” The use of tropes
or even fictional styles of narrative in such works
does not mean that their historical claims are necessarily false. For this reason,
the modern historian
must inquire after both the empirical
and the figural “truths” of hagiographical narratives.
As we have seen in the preceding
section, with respect to the tropes or master narratives
of Rabi’a the Teacher, Rabi’a the Ascetic,
Rabi’a the Sufi, and even Rabi’a the Lover, some
16 Daylami, A Treatise
on Mystical Love, 112
17 Clark, “The Lady Vanishes,” 24
18 Ibid, 26
empirical content
does in fact lie behind these representations. However, to agree with Clark at
least in part, with respect
to the trope of Rabi’a
the Icon, what Hayden White
calls “the content
of the form” is more important
than the empirical
content of these representations. With this latter trope, it is impossible to separate the historical Rabi’a
from her figural
or mythical representations. Starting
with Abu Talib
al-Makki’s construction of the trope
of Rabi’a the Lover
at the end of the tenth century
CE, the history of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya moves out of the domain of
empirical studies or even tradition
and into the domain of literature. By the time Farid al-Din al-
‘Attar composed Rabi’a’s
vita at the beginning
of the thirteenth century CE, Rabi’a’s story had
become to all intents and purposes a story of literary and even fictional
representations. From
this point onward, analytical tools developed for the study of non-historical narratives become
just as useful for the study of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as analytical tools developed for the study of
historical narratives. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that well before the beginning of the modern era, one could refer to Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as a myth.
To return briefly to Elizabeth Clark’s
article, it seems to me now that my chief
difference with her argument
was a difference of perspective. As noted above, Clark’s thesis is not wrong: I have observed many times on my own that male writers from Makki to Badawi worked
through their personal issues by using
Rabi’a’s voice. In fact, one could argue
that Badawi’s portrayal
of Rabi’a according to Kierkegaard’s model
of Aesthetic Man is an excellent example
of the male use of a woman as a “pseudo-Other.” However, since finishing
Chapters 4 and 5 I have started
to read a number of works on literary
representation that come from outside
the discipline of history.
These works have given me a new sense of the limitations of the historical perspective when
dealing with a subject of both medieval
and modern hagiography like Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya. For a figure like her, the term “historical,” does not fit comfortably, no matter what we try to do with it. Therefore, in thinking about
Rabi’s legacy, I ask myself:
Might it not be more appropriate to think
about this legacy
in “poetic” rather
than in “historical” terms?
In the final chapter of the book Kabbalah and Criticism
(1975), the literature scholar
Harold Bloom notes that for the philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, “the trope is an error, albeit necessary and valuable.”19 This statement
encapsulates my problem
with Elizabeth Clark’s article. Because she takes
a Nietzschean approach
to hagiography, she views tropes
as functional but not as historically accurate. Although the function of a trope is important, there is always the
sense that something is missing;
this is because Clark understands the trope as standing in for
something more authentic or real than itself. Thus, if the Woman of Wisdom is a trope, she
cannot be a real or authentic woman. However, based on the empirical assessment of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya given above, we can conclude
that this figure is both a trope and a historically
authentic woman. Therefore, the most appropriate question in Rabi’a’s
case is not: Which picture is real? Instead, it is: Which version of Rabi’a’s identity
do we want to focus on? As F. R. Ankersmit points out, the romantic philosophical foundations of the historicist perspective compel us to search for the true or authentic in all narrative representations.20
However, with characters that are both empirical and tropological such as Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, the question
of empirical truth obscures
their figural meaning.
If we turned our attention
more to the poetics of such
representations than their historicity, we might be less inclined
to see tropes as a deficiency
19
Harold Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism (New
York and London:
Continuum Books, 2005 reprint of 1975 first edition), 62
20 See Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth,
and Reference in Historical Representation, 12-26.
and
hence would be less limited in the insights that we could draw from them. To put it another
way, tropes enrich historical representations.
Because the present study was originally conceived as a historical work, it is impossible
to completely avoid the prejudice that the “true
story” of Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya is different from the tropes in which she appears. This is why in the previous
section it was necessary to summarize what we could conclude empirically about the historical Rabi’a. This is also why I
felt the need to correct
those who see her tropological representations as empirical. However, it is very
difficult to treat an iconic figure like Rabi’a empirically without sacrificing something
of her meaning in the process.
Despite the extensive
historical research that I have done, I remain
haunted by Jean Annestay’s argument
about the importance of the “principial” meaning of the Rabi’a narratives. When I first read his book,
Une Femme Soufie en Islam, I thought that his
appeal to “principial” meaning was merely a means to avoid empirical rigor. However, I now
realize that he makes a good point. There are many valid ways to read the story of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. Hagiography is perhaps
the best premodern
example of Roland Barthes’ famous observation about “the death of the Author.”21 Therefore, in the remainder
of this Conclusion, I would like to briefly
discuss Rabi’a’s legacy in terms of where we might go rather than where we
have been. Instead
of repeating what was said in the previous chapters
of this work,
it seems more useful
at this point
to suggest new directions for future research.
In his book Modernity At Large (1996), the
anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (another person who is fond of the concept
of master narratives) advocates the creation
of a new field of study
that he calls “the anthropology of literature” or “the anthropology of representation.”22
The creation of such a field is necessary, he says, because
the terms meaning, discourse, and text have become ubiquitous in modern intellectual culture. According to Appadurai, the popularity
of these literary concepts has reached the point where “the subject
matter of cultural
studies could roughly be taken as the relationship between the word and the world.”23 In other words, even
social sciences such as anthropology have been affected
by the “linguistic turn” from which these terms derive. The anthropology of literature or representation is also important, Appadurai says,
because “fiction, like myth is part of the cultural
repertoire of contemporary societies. Readers of novels
and poems can be moved to intense
action (as with The Satanic Verses
of Salman Rushdie), and their authors
often contribute to the creation
of social and moral maps for their readers Prose fiction is the exemplary
province of the post-Renaissance imagination, and in
this
regard it is central to a more general ethnography of the imagination.”24
I do not believe
that it would be out of place to claim
that the present
work of Rabi’a
from Narrative to Myth is a step toward Appadurai’s “ethnography of the imagination.”
However, one of its most important contributions to this field would be as a reminder that the
relationship between the word and the world that Appadurai speaks of is not only a matter
of concern for modern cultural studies.
As both the present study and Harold Bloom’s Kabbalah
and Criticism demonstrate, in sacred
scriptures, hagiography, and mystical narratives a semiotic
relationship between the word and the world has existed
for centuries. What else, after
all, could
21 See the discussion of this concept
in Graham Allen,
Intertexuality (New
York and London:
Routledge, second edition, 2011), 68-74.
22 Appadurai, Modernity
at Large, 58
23 Ibid, 51
24 Ibid, 58
it
mean when the New Testament
states, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with
God” (John, 1:1), or when the Qur’an states, “And [God] taught
Adam all of the names” (Qur’an,
2:31)?
One could say the same thing
about the concept of intertextuality: the concept of intertextuality is also an example
of misplaced postmodern exceptionalism. As Julie Sanders
states in her book Adaptation and Appropriation, “The impulse towards
intertextuality, and the narrative and architectural bricolage that
can result from that impulse,
is regarded by many as a
central tenet of postmodernism.”25
If intertextuality is only supposed
to be a postmodern
phenomenon, then all hagiographic works
are postmodern too or the concept of postmodernism
itself needs reassessment.26 Although I have generally avoided the term “intertextuality” in this
study, the present work is nothing if it is not a study of intertextuality. Sanders
herself alludes to the universal nature
of intertextuality when she states,
“A culture’s mythology
is its body of traditional
narratives. Mythical literature depends
upon, incites even, perpetual
acts of reinterpretation, in new contexts,
a process that embodies the very idea of appropriation.”27 Roland Barthes
says much the same thing
in Mythologies when he observes, “the fundamental
character of the mythical concept
is to be appropriated.”28 This is to say that tropes, like knowledge in general, are not born in
a vacuum.
Although it was necessary to write the present work as a study of historical
representation, one could also imagine
a future study of the Rabi’a narratives as a literary
study of intertextuality. One of the values of the present
work is that it prepares
the ground for such a future
study. However, such a study would be primarily a literary study instead of a study of
historical representations, so I am happy to leave that project to someone else. On the other hand, I
do not believe that it would take us too far off the subject
to say a few words about how one
might sketch out such a project. One way to begin this project would
be to narrow the difference between literary and historical approaches to the Rabi’a narratives by viewing these
forms of narrative as a sort of palimpsest. The palimpsest is a byproduct
of medieval manuscript production that is created
by erasing an earlier text and writing
a new text over it. Sometimes one can
discern traces of the earlier
work beneath the later work. For reasons
that are easy to
understand, the palimpsest has become a popular metaphor
in studies of intertextuality. However, the palimpsest is not the only metaphor to use for a study of this type. One could also use the example of looking for the impression of lost writing
on a page below the page where the text was
originally written. One can find traces of such a lost text by rubbing
a pencil lightly
over the surface of the bottom page so that the impression faintly
appears. In metaphorical terms, this is what
I tried to do in Chapters 1-4 of this work. In these chapters, I tried to reveal the lost image of
the historical Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya by sketching
in the cultural, intellectual, and religious
background of Basra and the early Islamic
world of her time.
25 Julie Sanders,
Adaptation and Appropriation (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 17
26 Mary Orr makes the same point when she calls for “histories of cultural production” to test the wider
theoretical usefulness of intertextuality: “In the history
of cultural recycling
of which intertextuality is but a twentieth-century manifestation, what
has not previously been given serious critical attention offers a good
potential site for new investigation to test intertextuality’s remits and
qualities.” Mary Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts (Malden,
Massachusetts and Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2003), 4
27 Sanders, Adaptation
and Appropriation, 63
28 Barthes, Mythologies, 119
One of the most influential literary
theorists to use the metaphor
of the palimpsest is the French structuralist Gérard Genette.
This term appears
as the title of his book Palimpsests:
Literature in the Second Degree. As an advocate
of a more moderate “open
structuralism” instead of radical
post-structuralism, Genette is a useful
guide for mapping
out a future study of the
poetics of the Rabi’a narratives because he avoids
the modernist exceptionalism of post-
structuralist theorists of intertextuality, such as Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes.29 The phrase,
“literature in the second degree,”
in the title of his book refers to a concept that he calls architextuality: “the entire set of general
or transcendent categories— types of discourse, modes of enunciation, literary
genres— from which emerges each singular text.”30 The concept of architextuality takes literature to the “second
degree” because it allows a “second” reading
by demonstrating that each new text is derived
in some way from a prior text. This concept
also explains Genette’s use of the palimpsest as a metaphor. According
to this model, the author
of the new text often “writes
over” and obscures
the prior text in a way that resembles a palimpsest.
Instead of intertextuality, Genette prefers
the term transtextuality. He defines this concept as “all
that sets the text in relationship, whether
obvious or concealed, with other texts.”31 However,
it is important to keep in mind that Genette is referring to different practices
of reading and writing texts rather than ways of interpreting them. He sees his work as outlining
a “socialized” theory
of pragmatics, not of hermeneutics. Although
his intention is to open up a richer experience of reading, he does not claim that one can find a hermeneutical key to interpretation that will unlock all the secrets of the text, like the Emerald Tablet
or the Philosopher’s Stone.32
Genette presents his theory of intertextuality in a trilogy of works. In Introduction à
l’architexte (1979), he outlines the concept of textual relations in general; in Palimpsestes (1982), he discusses the intertextual relationships that shape the body of the text; in Seuils (1987, translated into English as Paratexts), he discusses the relations between
the text and everything
that is peripheral or contextual to it. Mary Orr aptly describes Palimpsests as
a modern version
of a Renaissance pattern
book because it is primarily
a catalogue of literary devices
and tropes.33 In this
work, Genette posits
five types of transtextual relationships. For the first relationship,
intertextuality, he gives a definition that is more limited and restrictive than the definitions of Kristeva and Barthes.
For Genette, intertextuality is “a relationship of copresence between
two texts or among several texts: that is to say . . . the actual presence
of one text within another.”34
In other words, intertextuality for Genette is the inclusion
of one text in another
and mostly
consists of quoting, plagiarism, or allusion.
The second transtextual relationship is paratextuality, which refers to elements that come
from outside of the text itself and which serve to bind or organize
the text. This category includes
29
Julia Kristeva is widely considered to have introduced the
term “intertextuality” in the essay, “Word, Dialogue, Novel,” the fourth
chapter of Semeiotikè, originally
published in 1969.. In this work, she
states that intertextuality “is a mosaic
of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic
language is read as at least double.” See Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts, 21.
30 Gérard Genette,
Palimpsests: Literature in the Second
Degree, Channa Newman
and Claude Doubinsky,
trans.
(Lincoln, Nebraksa and London: University of Nebraska Press,
1997), 1
31 Ibid
32 Ibid, 9
33 Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts, 108
34 Genette, Palimpsests, 1-2
titles, subtitles, prefaces, forwards, notes, epigraphs, blurbs,
and other types of secondary signals. The rough draft of a text would also count as a paratext.35 The third type of textual
relationship, metatextuality, refers
to commentary or any form of writing
that unites a text to another text beyond its immediate genre. For Genette,
metatextuality denotes the terrain occupied
by critics and scholars.36 The next type of transtextual relationship is architextuality, but here Genette gives the term a more narrow
definition than in his introduction to this concept.
This time architextuality refers
to the “silent” relationship between
a text and previous examples
of its genre, such as a novel with other novels,
a historical work with other historical works, or a hagiography with previous hagiographies.37 The most important
type of transtextual relationship
discussed in Palimpsests is
hypertextuality. Genette
defines this concept
in the following way:
“[Hypertextuality is] a relationship uniting
a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall of course call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted
in a manner that is not that of
commentary.”38 This is intentionally a very loose
definition. The derivation in question may be
of any kind: it may be either descriptive or intellectual and it may even include
a text that does not refer to a prior text, but which cannot exist without the prior text.39
All
of the transtextual relationships discussed by Genette in Palimpsests
are present in
one way or another
in the Rabi’a narratives. Intertextuality is
present whenever a later work quotes an earlier work,
such as when Daylami quotes
Ibn al-A’rabi’s explanation of one of Rabi’a’s statements. Metatextuality describes the explanation of Ibn al-A’rabi
himself, since this category of transtextual relationships is based on commentary. Architextuality is present in the
relationship between later medieval depictions of Rabi’a in Islamic literature and the earlier, unmentioned Christian
tropes of female sainthood on which some of these depictions depend.
The
concept of architextuality also applies to the trope
of “Rabi’a the Muslim Diotima,” which is implicit in Abu Talib
al-Makki’s depiction of Rabi’a the Lover. Although
Makki never mentions Diotima nor cites Plato’s
Symposium, he could not have created
this trope without
their prior existence. Even paratextuality— the most “modern”
of Genette’s transtextual relationships— is
present in the Rabi’a narratives: this can be seen in the introductory section of ‘Attar’s
chapter on Rabi’a, where he tells people how to read his work. However, its status as an introduction is not signaled openly,
as would be the case in modern
literature. Finally, hypertextuality is
present in the entire tradition of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya stories from narrative to myth. In Genette’s terms, the
history of the Rabi’a narratives would be an excellent example
of hypertextuality.
Given the above considerations, it is not difficult to imagine how the content
of Chapters 5 and 6 of the present
work might be reconfigured as a study in the poetics of Muslim
hagiography, using Genette’s
model of open structuralism and his categories of the transtextuality of narrative. One might approach this material by using ‘Attar’s
vita of Rabi’a as the hypotext or prior text for a new study,
because it historically provided the model
for all subsequent representations of Rabi’a’s life. However, ‘Attar’s
chapter on Rabi’a is itself a hypertext (i.e., a text built upon one or more prior texts), because
it involves what Genette calls the intermodal
35 Ibid, 3
36 Ibid, 4
37 Ibid
38 Ibid, 5
39 Ibid
transformation of previous narratives.40 This refers to the fact that ‘Attar transformed the earlier
tradition of Rabi’a narratives into a new genre. In his creation
of a vita for Rabi’a, he changed a narrative tradition that was made up mostly of aphorisms and anecdotes into a story
with a plot outline. That is to say, in Genette’s
terms ‘Attar changed
the mode of representation for Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya from intramodal variations of narrative (i.e., aphorisms, anecdotes, quotations, etc.) to dramatization.41
Examining the amplification of the Rabi’a narratives through
dramatization allows them to
be compared with similar types
of dramatized narratives in other cultures
and times. Such comparisons might include Greek tragedies derived
from the mythic tradition or medieval
European miracle plays based on the lives of saints.
This might allow an easier
transition to the study
of film and television adaptations of the Rabi’a
narratives in the twentieth century,
such as the movie Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya and
the miniseries Rabi’a Returns. In Chapters 5 and 6, I made several references to ‘Attar
writing the “outline” of Rabi’a’s vita as
one would write
the outline of a movie script. However, a study
of poetics based
on Genette’s concepts
might also lead to a more
nuanced treatment of this subject
than writing from a historical perspective would allow.
One
could also look into Badawi’s and El Sakkakini’s revisions
of ‘Attar’s vita of Rabi’a in terms
of what Genette calls continuations of a hypotext.42 This practice moves the story in new directions because the concept
of the continuation implies that the prior text has left important elements of the narrative
unsaid. Badawi’s alterations of ‘Attar’s narrative involve eleptic continuations (i.e., filling gaps in the middle of the narrative), such as when he fills out the story
of Rabi’a’s captivity.43 However, both Badawi and El Sakkakini
also make important intermodal transformations of the narrative
by turning ‘Attar’s
story of Rabi’a into a romance. This happens
when they portray Rabi’a as living a life of sensuality according to Kierkegaard’s model of
Aesthetic Man. Genette
would call this transformation an act of transmotivization, because
it provides the missing
motive for the seemingly out-of-place sentence in ‘Attar that suggests
that Rabi’a may have been a musician.44
Much might also be said theoretically about what happens
to hagiography when a
narrative that was first written
as a vehicle for a “principial” religious
message is turned into a popular
romance. This largely
untouched subject of Islamic literature would invite its share of comparisons, such as with Anatole France’s
novel Thaïs discussed in Chapter 6, or other works of the religious romance
genre, including contemporary movie and miniseries adaptations of the lives
of iconic religious figures such as St. Francis
of Assisi (U.S.
and Europe), Confucius (China), and St. Teresa
of Avila (Spain). Comparative cases such as these would provide excellent examples of Genette’s
observation that in fictionalized versions
of historical narratives, sometimes the prior text “is no longer
anything but a pretext, the point of departure for an
extrapolation disguised as an interpolation.”45
40 Ibid, 277
41 Ibid, 278
42 Ibid, 161
43 Ibid, 177
44 See for example, Allen,
Intertextuality 107,
where he discusses this concept with respect to the animated
film, Prince of Egypt.
45 Genette, Palimpsests, 203
We could go on and on with such speculations, but it is time to stop. Each chapter in the
present work could lead to other chapters
or even new books in the future.
For example, the discussion of Jahiz’s concept
of bayan in Chapter
1 opens up the possibility of a detailed
study of this concept
in the works of Jahiz or a study of cultural tropes in the Umayyad era. Chapter 2 suggests new ways to study asceticism in early Islam. Chapter 3 puts the concept of Love
mysticism in Sufism in conversation with more secular
treatments of Love theory in medieval
Arabic literature; this in turn opens up new avenues
for wider discussions of the place of Love theory in Islamic culture.
Chapter 4 suggests
new ways to look at the origins
of Sufism without anachronistically reading
later institutional models
or theological formulations back onto the past.
Finally, as we have just seen, Chapters
5 and 6 use the unique status of Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya as master
narrative and icon to suggest
new ways to look at hagiographical representations as part of both history and literature.
Perhaps the most meaningful lesson to be learned from this study of Rabi’a from
narrative to myth is that— to paraphrase Gérard Genette— every text as a historical phenomenon requires a relational reading, or to use the adjective coined by Phillipe
Lejeune, a “palimpcestuous” reading.46 Whenever
a subject of historical narrative
is at the same time a
subject of literary narratives and myths, it is an act of blindness or bad faith to approach
such a figure in only one analytical register.
This is especially true for a Sufi icon like Rabi’a
al- ‘Adawiyya. Just as every good book deserves
to be read more than once, every meaningful
narrative deserves to be restated
or rewritten and every revered
icon deserves to be restored.
Even advocates of the “principial” meaning
of Sufi hagiography should recognize that the concepts of paratextuality (i.e., the idea that there is an “inside”
and an “outside” of a text) and transtextuality (i.e., the idea that texts are in dialogue
with other texts)
are also important
to Sufism. With respect
to paratextuality, the epistemology of Sufism in general is based on a
distinction between the “outside” (al-zahir) and the “inside”
(al-batin) of virtually everything, including texts. Because of this, transtextuality has
become a major principle of Sufi hermeneutics, as the writings
of Muhyiddin ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE) demonstrate.47 Genette encapsulates the lesson to be learned
from this in a way that only a male French scholar
could: “One who really loves texts must wish from time to time to love (at least) two together.”48 Even before
Genette, Harold Bloom used the metaphor of the palimpsest in the last chapter of Kabbalah and Criticism, which he titled,
“The Necessity of Misreading.” In this chapter
he writes: “The reader is to every poet what the poet is to his precursor— every reader is therefore
an ephebe [i.e., a disciple], every poem a forerunner, and every reading
an act of ‘influencing,’
that
is, of being influenced by the poem and of influencing any other reader to whom your reading
is communicated.”49 The same could be said about the narrative tradition of Rabi’a al- ‘Adawiyya. In this tradition, and especially today
through the influence of the Internet, every version of Rabi’a’s
story is a hypertext, and virtually every text has the potential
of becoming a hypotext for another version.
46 Ibid, 399
47 For a good example
of transtextuality in the hermeneutics of Ibn al-‘Arabi, see Sa’diyya Shaikh,
Sufi
Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender,
and Sexuality (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
48 Ibid
49 Bloom, Kabbalah
and Criticism, 50
Although I would not go as far as Bloom in calling every reading a misreading, I agree
with his opinion that “tradition is a daemonic
term.”50 In this statement, he is not referring to the
Christian notion of demons of Hell, but to the pre-Christian Greek
concept of the daemon (or the pre-Islamic Arabic jinni)
as a spirit of inspiration. In this sense,
the tradition of Rabi’a narratives is indeed “daemonic” because
it continues to provide the spirit of inspiration for new narratives today. Bloom also seems correct in calling every reading of a work of poetics
“belated.” With respect to the present
study as well as any other work on Rabi’a
al-‘Adawiyya, however much we
try to pin down and impose order on the narrative tradition, we find that it has already escaped
us, and has gone on to create new narratives of which we have no clue. The situation remains
today as it has been for the last 1200 years:
Whenever the story
of Rabi’a is told again,
“the spirit leaps to the trope.”51
50 Ibid,
51 This phrase comes from the notebooks
of Ralph Waldo Emerson. See ibid, 62.
SAMENVATTING
Deze studie analyseert de diverse manieren
waarop de moslim
heilige Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (ca. 717-801 AD) in zowel Soefi
als niet-Soefi bronnen
en literatuur wordt
weergegeven. Hoewel er volgens de relevante bronnen
ooit gedurende de 8st eeuw een vrouwelijke Soefi genaamd Rabi’a in Basra heeft gewoond,
hebben we in feite weinig
historisch betrouwbaar materiaal over deze
vrouwelijke asceet. Het grootste
deel van de verhalen over Rabi’a bestaat
uit metaforische tropen die gebaseerd zijn op fictieve
overleveringen, geconstrueerd in de eeuwen
na haar dood. Dit
proefschrift richt zich op de historische en literaire representaties van Rabi’a en op hoe de
mythes over haar bestaan tot stand zijn gekomen, ondanks
het gebrek aan historische bronnen. De historische en theoretische discussies over deze manier van representeren, worden in de inleiding van de proefschrift behandeld. In totaal
onderscheid ik vier hoofdmotieven of master narratives die Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya als Soefi heilige
typeren: Rabi’a de Lerares, Rabi’a
de Asceet, Rabi’a de Minnares, en Rabi’a de Soefi. De hoofdstukken 1-4 behandelen deze motieven of tropen in detail. Hierbij
traceren ze de ontwikkeling van deze hoofdmotieven, stellen de belangrijkste rethorische thema’s erin aan de orde, en proberen
vast te stellen welke
doctrinaire betekenis aan de verhalen
over Rabi’a kan worden toegeschreven. In hoofdstuk 5 en
6 wordt Rabi’a als ikoon of symbool
geanalyseerd. Hierbij laat ik verder
zien hoe het mogelijk
was dat Rabi’a als belangrijke symbolische figuur is gaan fungeren
in zowel mystieke
als moderne seculiere representaties. Binnen deze context
richt hoofdstuk 5 zich op de
beschrijvingen van de Persische Soefie
Farid al-Din al-‘Attar (d. 1220 A.D.),
die de eerste biografie, vita, van Rabi’a heeft geschreven die als model
is gaan fungeren
voor al de daaropvolgende biografische narratieven over haar. Hoofdstuk
6 behandelt de seculiere versies van het Rabi’a verhaal
die gebruik maken van thema’s
en beelden uit moderne filosofische stromingen zoals existentialisme en feminisme. Deze beelden hebben verder ook beïnvloed hoe Rabi’a in films and op de TV wordt afgebeeld en weergegeven. In het slothoofdstuk evalueer ook de diverse
historische en literaire
theorieën en methoden
die ik in dit onderzoek heb gebruikt om de problemen die de verhalen
over Rabi’a oproepen, te verhelderen en naar
vermogen op te lossen. Deze dissertatie is gebaseerd op zowel middeleeuwse als hedendaagse
originele bronnen in het Arabisch,
Persisch, en in diverse Europese
talen. Behandeld worden zowel de belangrijkste scholen
uit middeleeuws Irak, Syrie, Iran, en Egypte die de figuur van Rabi'a weergaven, als de moderne publicaties en cinematische voorstellingen over haar. Deze teksten en afbeeldingen als bronnen gebruikend, komt deze studie tot een kritische benadering van de historiografische en literaire studie van heiligheid.
277
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