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Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn ʿAbdallāh al-Jurayrī (d. 311/924) was a Ṣūfī of Baghdad and a prominent student of al-Junayd (d. 298/910), a leading thinker and teacher of the Baghdad-based mystical-pietistic tradition of Ṣūfism. After al-Junayd’s death, al-Jurayrī reportedly assumed the leadership of his master’s circle of Baghādī Ṣūfī aspirants. Even before his death, al-Junayd had charged al-Jurayrī with instructing and disciplining his followers, and al-Jurayrī appears regularly as the d…

Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan Abū Bakr al-Fūrakī (408–78/1017–85) was an Ashʿarī scholar who wrote the theological treatise Kitāb al-Niẓāmī fī uṣūl al-dīn, so named for his patron the Saljūq vizier Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092). Born in Nīshāpūr in 408/1017 al-Fūrakī later moved to Baghdad where, after his death, he was buried by the tomb of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935–6). His father, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abī Ayyūb (d. 421/1030), was a student of the influential Ashʿarī theologian Ibn Fūrak (d. 40…

Al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Aḥmad Abū ʿAlī l-Daqqāq (d. 405/1015) was a Ṣūfī mystic of Nīshāpūr who owes his posthumous fame largely to his renowned disciple and son-in-law Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072–3), a major Central Asian religious scholar, Ṣūfī manualist, and hagiographer. Little is known of al-Daqqāq’s early life, beyond the facts that he was a native of Nīshāpūr and that his nisba al-Daqqāq (the miller) probably indicates a family trade. More is known about his religious education, especially in Ṣūfism. Al-Daqqāq’s silsila (spiritual gen…

Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Sahl b. ʿAṭāʾ al-Adamī, called Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Aḥmad (d. 309/922) was a prominent early Ṣūfī exegete of the Qurʾān and a leading Ṣūfī personality in Baghdad. He was closely linked to the Ḥanbalī-affiliated pietistic movement and was, as a result, well regarded by much of the city’s Ḥanbalī population. Because of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ’s ardent defence of the famous Baghdadi mystic al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922)—who was imprisoned and on trial at the time—and his harsh criticism of the wazīr Ḥāmid b. al-ʿAbbās (d. 311/923), he was put to death in Dhū l-Qaʿda 309/March 922. Louis Massignon estimat…

Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan Ibn Fūrak al-Iṣfahānī (d. 406/1015–6) was an important proponent of the early Ashʿarī school of theology and a Shāfiʿī legal scholar. Judging from his nisba, he was probably from the city of Isfahan. Ibn Fūrak’s theological training began in Baghdad, under the tutelage of a direct disciple of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935–6), the little known Abū l-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī (fl. fourth/tenth century), who also instructed Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyīnī (d. 418/1027) and Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), …