In his famous work on Sufis, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (5/4, 84, 91) writes about four Sufis of Kūfa, Abū Sinān Ḍirār b. Murra, Muḥammad b. Sūqa, Muṭarrif b. Ṭarīf and ʿAbd al-Malik b. Abjar, who were called the ‘Weepers’ (al-bukkāʾūn). Elsewhere he writes that two of them, Abū Sinān Ḍirār b. Murra and Muḥammad b. Sūqa, used to search for each other on Fridays and, upon finding one another, would sit down and start weeping. He also refers to a gathering of the bukkāʾūn which the famous Sufi Muḥammad b. Wāsiʿ attended (2/347). In his biography of a number of the S…