by Jane Clark
Oh God, if I worship you for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if l worship You for Your own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting beauty.1
Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya is the most famous female saint in Islam. For a long time, she was in fact the only female mystic featured in the standard accounts of Sufism. We now know that there were many other powerful and spiritually-inclined women with public profiles, particularly in the early period of Islam, but Rābiʿa nevertheless continues to be the most vivid and widely-known example of female spirituality in the tradition.
She lived in Basra, now in Southern Iraq, in the very early days of Islam, born within 80 years of death of the Prophet Muhammad. There are few records of any sort from this period, as it was only in the mid-eighth century that the religion and culture of Islam began to be put down in written form.
Up until this point, knowledge was transmitted through an oral tradition, and even the life-story of the Prophet was not committed to paper until nearly 150 years after his death. There are therefore almost no written contemporary sources for Rābiʿa, and she is one of a number of early Sufi figures, including Dhū l-Nūn the Egyptian (d. about 810CE) and Abū Yazīd al- Bisṭamī (d.874CE), whom we know largely through the writings of the later tradition. In the case of Rābiʿa, she was made famous through the work of the 13th century poet Farīd al-dīn ʿAṭṭār (d.1221), author of the great allegorical epic The Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq al-Ṭayr). ʿAṭṭār’s only prose work was Memorials of the Saints (Tadkhirāt al-Awliyāʾ), a gathering together of anecdotes and sayings from past masters of the Sufi tradition which was extremely influential in the following centuries. Through this popular book, Rābiʿa came to be seen as the founder of love mysticism within Islam; ʿAṭṭār portrays her as an ascetic, celibate, fiercely singleminded in her devotion to the spiritual life and her refusal to admit anything except the love of God into her heart. Asked for her hand in marriage, for instance, he recounts that she replied:
The tie of marriage applies to those who have being. Here being has disappeared, for I have become naughted to self and exist only through Him. I belong only to Him. I live in the shadow of his control. You must ask my hand of Him, not me.2
Rābiʿa was first brought to the attention of the western world by Margaret Smith, whose biography of her, published in 1928, was the most important source of information on her for almost a century.3 She wrote:
One cannot go so far as to throw doubt upon her actual historical existence, but the traditions about her life and teachings include a very large proportion of legend which today can hardly be distinguished from authentic information.4
These days, we have a wealth of material from the early period of Islam that was not available to Smith, and this has been drawn together in a very important new book by the American scholar Rkia Cornell entitled Rābiʿa; from narrative to myth; 5 this will without doubt now become the standard source of reference. But despite Cornell’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and meticulous research, the problem of separating fact from legend remains, as even the very earliest written references date from the mid-ninth century, fifty years after her death, and contain little historical information. Cornell therefore regards Rābiʿa as an example of what she calls ‘a constructed saint’, whose importance lies less in her historical personage than in the representations and interpretations which have developed over a long period of time, creating a powerful archetype of sainthood. Her life has become ‘a master narrative’, which Cornell defines as “ a transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture”.6 She identifies four distinct tropes within the story: Rābiʿa the Teacher, Rābiʿa the ascetic; Rābiʿa the lover and Rābiʿa the Sufi.
Early descriptions
Nevertheless, Cornell has uncovered a great many early sources which mention Rābiʿa in one way or another, adding credibility and depth to the myth. These are too many to mention here, so I will limit myself to the most significant. The earliest is in the work of the Sufi writer al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī (781–857CE), which establishes her straight away as a lover of God:
Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya would say at the coming of the 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.” 7
Al-Muḥāsabī is a significant source because he was a younger contemporary who lived the first part of his life in Basra, and would therefore have heard about Rābiʿa from people who had known her personally. His account removes any doubt about her existence as a real, historical person. In addition, he was an important figure in his own right, a founder of the Baghdad school, famous for developing the practice of rigorous self-examination, and extremely influential upon the later Sufi tradition.8
Two other very early sources are the well-known essayist and theologian Abū ʿUthmān al-Jaḥiẓ (d. 868CE) who, like al-Muḥāsibī, was a native of Basra and drew from sources who would have known Rābiʿa, and Ahmad Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d. 893), whose Book of the Eloquence of Women (Kitāb balaghāt al-nisāʾ) is the first work in the Islamic tradition devoted specifically to women. In these and other theological writings, Rābiʿa appears first and foremost as an important thinker and teacher.
Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr calls her ‘Rābiʿa al-Musmaʿiyya’ – Rābiʿa who must be heard, that is, who has something important to say – and designates her as ‘a woman of authoritative opinion’ (dhawāt al-raʾy). Similarly, al-Jaḥīz refers to her as a ‘person of bayān’, which means literally, someone who is able to put together an argument. Cornell explains, however, that for the people of the time, bayān meant more than having intellectual knowledge; it meant that someone was able to bring out the hidden meanings of texts which they had gained through insight, and express themselves in a persuasive way. The implication from these early sources is that Rābiʿa was known primarily as an eloquent and authoritative interpreter of the Qurʿān, and a teacher able to guide others on the path of spiritual virtue. In modern terms, she would perhaps be designated as an ‘independent thinker’. A slightly later source is Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī’s Remembrance of Devoted Sufi Women (Dhikr al-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt al-ṣūfiyyāt), written in the eleventh century but drawing upon a number of earlier Sufi traditions. This text was written as an addendum to his famous account of early male Sufis, but for many centuries it was lost, being rediscovered only in 1991. It has since been translated by Rkia Cornell as Early Sufi Women.9 It contains accounts of about eighty named women with details of their lives, sayings and deeds, and radically revises traditional ideas about the role of women in early Islam. It reveals that Rābiʿa was not alone in devoting herself to God; it seems that there were significant communities of women living an ascetic life in both Iraq, around Basra, and in Iran, and that many of their members were famous for their erudition and piety. Fāṭīima al-Nīshāpurī, for instance, was known for her Qurʾān recitation and her teaching, being praised by both Dhū-l Nūn and Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī and described as giving them instruction.
Al-Sulamī portrays Rābiʿa as both an ascetic who is uncompromising in her rejection of worldly things, and a teacher who does not hesitate to rebuke others for their attachment to worldly things. Notable features his account are her fierce independence, and the freedom she had from many of the social pressures exerted upon women of the time. For instance, she is portrayed as being visited by men as well as women seeking her advice.
In ʿAṭṭār’s 13th-century account, one of her most important pupils was the early Sufi Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d.728), but historically, she would have been too young to have known him. Al-Sulamī’s account describes, much more plausibly, a relationship with the important scholar and developer of Islamic law, Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 778CE).
The Basra area was an extremely important cultural and religious centre in these early days of Islam. Many companions of the prophet settled there, so it was a centre for the compilation of prophetic traditions which came to constitute Islamic law, and it was also the home of the first intellectual tradition of Islam, that of the Muʿtazalites. It is known that al-Thawrī moved there from Kufa – the other important cultural centre in the early period – in 748CE, when Rābiʿa would have been in her prime. Al-Thawrī is said to have declared of Rābiʿa: “Take me to the mentor (muʿaddiba), in whose absence I can find no solace.”
The story, related by a friend who visited her with al-Thawri, goes on:
“When we got to her house, Sufyān raised his hand and said: “Oh God, verily I petition you for solace”. At this, Rābiʿa wept. “What makes you weep?” he asked. “You make me weep,” she replied. “How?” he asked. “ Have you not learnt that true safety from the world is to abandon all that is in it? So how can you ask such a thing when you are still soiled by the world.”10
In her role as teacher, Rābiʿa was not only permitted to be unchaperoned in the presence of men, but as someone who had mastered herself and acquired the spiritual/manly virtues, she was herself given honorary status as ‘a man of God’. Thus ʿAṭṭār begins his account in Muslim Saints and Mystics:
“If anyone says, “Why have you included Rābiʿa in the rank of men?”, my answer is that the Prophet himself said, “God does not regard your outward forms.” The root of the matter is not form but intention, as the Prophet said: “Mankind will be raised up according to their intentions”… When a woman becomes a ‘man’ in the path of God, she is a man and one cannot call her a woman any more.”11
Life and Times
Cornells’s research rather overturns some of the traditional accounts of Rābiʿa’s life. In ʿAṭṭār’s biography, she is a born poor and sold into slavery, and there is a moving story of how her master, perceiving her piety, grants her freedom. In other versions, she is a slave at court, playing the flute to entertain guests. She is also widely represented as a non-Arab, a mawlāt, or client, who held a much lower status in society. But Cornell believes that this latter belief has arisen because of confusion with another woman, Rābiʿa al-Azadiyya,12 and that in fact, our Rābiʿa was a member of a powerful Arabic tribe, and as such, she would have had high status. Given that al- Jāḥiẓ names her ‘Rābiʿa al-Qaysiyya’, she concludes that she was of the Banu Qays, a tribe originally from the North, but by the time of the Prophet, some parts of it had settled in Iraq and Basr. A woman of this tribe would have been called ‘adawiyya, and as was the custom of the time, she would have enjoyed considerable freedom and independence. Al-Jāḥiẓ has the following story, which would, again, seem to contradict the idea that she herself was a slave:
Rābiʿa al-Qaysiyya was asked: “Could we ask the men of your clan to buy you a servant to do your household chores?” She replied: “My 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?”13
As Cornell comments: the suggestion that the men of her tribe would consider such a thing indicates that she was a highly valued and respected person in the community. But many other aspects of the legend hold up surprisingly well. We have seen that the environs of Basra were the home to spiritual communities of women living a life of asceticism and devotion, and there seems nothing against the notion that Rābiʿa might have joined them and settled, as the legend has it, in the desert, in the caves at the edge of the town where many other ascetics had set up residence, or in a house at the edge of the town until her death. Cornell sees no reason, either, to doubt the fact of her celibacy, which, she argues, was a common choice for pious women of her time, or the fact that she is buried in the tomb attributed to her just outside Basra. There is also a much visited tomb in Jerusalem, but this would seem to be yet another confusion with someone else called Rābiʿa.
Most importantly, her later reputation as being a ‘lover of God’ seems to have some basis in the early tradition, most notably in a source we have not yet discussed, The Nourishment of Hearts (Qūt al-Qulūb) written by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 996). This seminal work gives a prominent place to Rābiʿa, associating her with the highest degrees of attainment on the nine-fold path which al-Makkī develops, in particular, with the degrees satisfaction (riḍā’) (meaning satisfaction with God’s will), and love (maḥabba). As such, she is identified with the culmination of the path and is presented as the personification of divine wisdom (ḥikma), with intimate knowledge of the divine unity. Al-Makki has her saying to God:
“My love for you is through a vision which brought me closer to you, made me hurry towards 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.”14
It is in Nourishment of Hearts that we also find the first attribution of the poem for which she is most famous, the Poem of the Two Loves, to Rābiʿa. Cornell has identified a very slightly later, and slightly different, version by Abu Bakr al- Kalandhi, who does not give a specific attribution but says only that “one of the Sufis recited it”. Makkī, by contrast, cites four plausible near-contemporary sources, including Sufyān al-Thawri, who maintain that it came from her. But whether it can be definitely attributed to her or not, these lovely verses are an important part of the ‘master narrative’ of Rābiʿa which has inspired Sufi writers and seekers of God down the ages. Here is Cornell’s translation from the text in Nourishment of the Hearts:
I love with two loves; a passionate love And a love of which you are worthy. As for passionate love, It has preoccupied me with remembrance of you beyond all else. And as for the love of which you are worthy, Your part of the veils allows me to see you. No praise is mine for either one or the other, But all praise is yours for this [love] and the other.15
1 Farīd al-dīn ʿAṭṭār, Muslim Saints and Mystics, translated by A J Arberry (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1966). p. 56 2 Ibid, p. 46 3 Margaret Smith Rabiʿa the Mystic and her Fellow-saints in Islam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1928. 4 Margaret Smith Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya-Kaysiyya, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2. p. 354 5 Rkia Cornell, Rābiʿa; from narrative to myth. (One World Academic, London, 2019). 6 Rābiʿa, p. 7 7 Abu ʿAbdullah al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī, al-Qasd wa-l-rujuʿila Allah, ed. ʿAbd al- Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā (Cairo: Dar al-Turath al-ʿArabi, 1980), p. 104. Quoted in Rābiʿa, p. 39 8 See Atif Khalil, Repentence and the Return to God; Tawba in Early Sufism (SUNY, New York, 2018) for recent research on al-Muḥāsibī. 9 al-Sulami Early Sufi Women Trans. Rkia Cornell, Fons Vitae, Louisville, 1999. 10 Early Sufi Women, p. 278. This story is not from al-Sulamī’s account but from additional material by Jamāl al-din al-Jawzī (d. 1201) included in the appendix. 11 Muslim Saints and Mystics, p. 40. 12 Traditions that she had in fact been married and only entered the spiritual life after she was widowed also arise, Cornell believes, because of confusion with Rābiʿa al-Azadiyya. 13 Abu ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Bahr al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa-l-tabyin, ed. Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Daljamuni (Reprint of 1900 edition, Cairo, n.d.) vol. 3, p. 66. Quoted in Rābiʿa, p. 46 14 Abū Ṭālib Muhammad ibn ʿAli b. ʿAtiyya al-Makki, Qūt al-qulūb fi maʿāmalat almaḥbūb wa waṣf ṭarīq al-murīd ilā maqām al-tawḥīd, ed . Basil ʿUyun al-Sadr (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, Beirut, 1997), vol. 2, p. 86. Quoted in Rābiʿa, p. 196 15 Ibid, vol. 2, p. 94. Quoted in Rābiʿa, p. 198