Bābā Luqmān, Mausoleum. A mausoleum associated with Bābā Luqmān al-Sarakhsī, the well-known 4th/10th-century mystic, located in Sarakhs (see Fig. 1). His mausoleum bears many similarities with other Khurāsānī mausolea associated with Sufi masters such as Abū al-Faḍl al-Sarakhsī, Abū Saʿīd b. Abī al-Khayr (q.q.v.) and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī al-Ṭūsī. Anecdotes recorded about Bābā Luqmān identify him as one of al-ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn (‘holy fools’) (see Muḥammad b. al-Munawwar, 24–25, 217, 42, 199, 244–225, 264; Jāmī, 301–303), and he became the object of such …

ʿAlī b. Mahziyār, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ahwāzī, was a Shiʿi jurist and traditionist of the first half of the 3rd/9th century. Reports treating his life between the years 220–229/835–844 are extant (al-Ṣaffār, 357; al-Kashshī, 549; al-Kulaynī, 1/384; al-Najāshī, 145). He may have died in the following decade. His family was originally from the village of Dawraq in Khūzistān (al-Najāshī, 253) or Hindikān (apparently the same place referred to as Hindījān in modern Khūzistān) in Fārs (al-Kashshī, 548), but he became known as al-Ahwāzī after moving to that city (al-Kashshī, 548; al-Ṭūsī, al-Ri…

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār Bukhārī (d. 802/1399), Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, the first khalīfa of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, eponym of the Naqshbandiyya order. He was apparently born in Bukhārā, the son of an immigrant from Khwārazm. After his father’s death, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn renounced his inheritance and took up residence in a madrasa in Bukhārā, studying various sciences there and observing a strict ascetic lifestyle (Kāshifī, 139–140; Ghulām Sarwar, 1/551–552). It is related that Khwājah Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband received inspiration directing him to give his daughter in marriage to …

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Walad (Bahāʾ Walad or Sulṭān al-ʿUlamāʾ), Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn Khaṭībī Bakrī (543–628/1148–1231), a prominent Sufi master and preacher ( wāʿiẓ), and ¶ the father of Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī Rūmī. Bahāʾ Walad’s lineage is said to have gone back to the first caliph, Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, while on his mother’s side he was the grandson of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad Khʷārazm-Shāh (Aflākī, 1/7–9; see also Jāmī, 459), but this lineage is not attested to in reliable historical accounts (see Furūzānfar, 7–8). In the Maʿārif, a record of his sermons and sayings, his honori…

Bābā Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Mausoleum, the mausoleum and takiyya of Bābā Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī (q.v.) is an Īlkhānid structure located in the Takht-i Fūlād district of Iṣfahān (see Fig. 3). The earliest reference to this building in historical sources relates to its renovation during the Ṣafawid period by order of Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629) (see Jābirī Anṣārī, 326). This information, together with the style of its structure, suggest that the mausoleum was first built in the Īlkhānid period, i.e. …

Bābā Qāsim, Mausoleum. The mausoleum of Bābā Qāsim al-Iṣfahānī, a prominent mystic of the 8th/14th century, is located in the Shahshahān area of Iṣfahān (see Fig. 2). According to an inscription over the entrance, and several within the mausoleum, the building was erected in 741/1340 by Sulaymān b. Abī al-Ḥasan b. Ṭālūt Dāmghānī, one of Bābā Qāsim’s disciples and an official of the late Īlkhānid and post-Īlkhānid era (see Iṣfahānī, 73; Rafīʿī, 785–786; Godard, ‘Le tombeau de Bābā Ḳāsem et la Madrasa Imāmī’, 165, ‘Le tombeau’, 38). The architectural style of the Bābā Qāsim mausoleu…

Bā ʿAlawī or Āl Bā ʿAlawī, a prominent clan of South Arabian sayyids, many of them distinguished scholars and Sufis, living primarily in Ḥaḍramawt and in the town of Tarīm in particular. The clan’s name refers to an eponymous forebear, ʿAlawī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad. According to the sources, the first member of the clan was Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn al-ʿAlawī (d. 345/956), the chief of the ʿAlids of Ḥaḍramawt, who traced his lineage back to Imam ʿAlī via Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. He was born into a family of scholars in Baṣra and subsequently emigrated to the Yemen (al-Shāṭirī, 1/142, ¶ 152). Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn stu…

Bābāʾī Movement, a socio-religious insurrectionist movement that arose in Anatolia during the reign of the Saljūqs of Rūm in the first half of the 7th/13th century, at the ¶ time of the Mongol invasion. The founder of this movement seems to have been one Bābā Ilyās Khurāsānī (q.v.), a prominent Turkoman Sufi shaykh, who came to Anatolia from Khurāsān at the beginning of the 7th/13th century. Ibn Bībī, the contemporary court chronicler of the Saljūqs of Rūm, refers instead to a certain Bābā Isḥāq of Kafarsūd in northern Syri…

Al-ʿAyyāshī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Masʿūd b. ʿAyyāsh al-Samarqandī (260–329/874–941), a well-known Shiʿi traditionist and Qurʾān commentator during the period of the Minor Occultation; he was said to be descended from the tribe of Tamīm (al-Ardabīlī, 2/192). ¶ Originally a Sunni, he subsequently converted to Imāmī Shiʿism (Ibn al-Nadīm, 244; Mudarris, 3/142). Drawing upon his substantial patrimony (Qummī, 642), he converted his personal residence in Samarqand into a centre for scholarship, and hosted debates there between scholars an…