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The Fayḍiyya is an Egyptian Ṣūfī order (Ar., ṭarīqa, lit. way) founded in 1920 by Maḥmūd Abū l-Fayḍ al-Minūfī al-Ḥusaynī (d. 1972). Abū l-Fayḍ mentioned the spiritual genealogy (silsila) of his order, a branch of the Shādhiliyya, in a short autobiography published at the end of his book Jamharat al-awliyāʾ wa-aʿlām ahl al-taṣawwuf (“Assembly of saints and grand masters of Ṣūfism”; Cairo 1967, 269–70) (the Shādhiliyya, founded by the Moroccan Abū l-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), is well established in North Africa and the central Middle East). H…

Al-Tādilī (d. 627/1229–30 or 628/1230–1), known as Ibn al-Zayyāt, was a Moroccan qāḍī and scholar renowned for his hagiographical work al-Tashawwuf ilā rijāl al-taṣawwuf. 1. Life His full name is Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf b. Yaḥyā b. ʿĪsā b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Tādilī. He was born in the region of Tādla during the second half of the sixth/twelfth century and died in Marrakech. He did not attract the attention of such later authors as al-Bādisī (d. after 722/1322) and Ibn Qunfudh (d. 810/1407–8), but they nevertheless used al-Tashawwuf in their writings. Al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) devoted some…

Intoxication or drunkenness (Ar. sukr) is a metaphor that refers to a Ṣūfī concept and mystical experience of ecstasy that is often characterised by bewilderment and perplexity. It describes the state of a Ṣūfī who has lost awareness of all except God, the sole object of his adoration. S ukr is generally coupled and contrasted with saḥw (sobriety). As technical terms, sukr and ṣaḥw are discussed in the earliest extant Ṣūfī manuals and lexical works, such as Kitāb al-lumaʿ (“Book of flashes”) by Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988) from Ṭūs, in Khurāsān, al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf (…

Haji Abdur Rozak Fakhruddin (1916–95) was a national leader of the Muhammadiyah, one of the largest Muslim organisations in Indonesia. Fondly nicknamed “Pak A. R.” (after his initials), he was born in February 1916 in the village of Cilangkap, in the Purwanggan area of Pakualaman, near Yogyakarta, Central Java. Yogyakarta had been the birthplace of the Muhammadiyah in 1912. His father was K. H. Fakhruddin (d. 1972), who was a penghulu (judge) and batik trader. Fakhruddin completed his primary education at Standaard School Muhammadiyah in 1923, and then continued w…

Üsküplü Ata (ʿAṭā of Üsküb, d. after 939–40/1533) was an Ottoman poet who flourished in the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, but it can be assumed that he died post 939–40/1533. All sources about him relate that his ancestors emigrated from Iran to Rumelia and settled in Üsküp (Skopje), and he claimed descent from the famous Islamic mystic Aḥmed Yesevī (d. 562/1166). He left his education unfinished to devote himself to mysticism (taṣawwuf), first joining the Yesevi (Yasawī) order and then the Nakşibendi (Naqshbandī) order. Ata …

Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Isḥāq al-Kalāabādhī was the author of the Kitāb al-taʿarruf li-madhhab ahl al-taṣawwuf (“Book of acquaintance with the Ṣūfī school”), a famous treatise on Ṣūfism. His year of death is contested but was perhaps 380/990. He probably came from Kalābādh, a town near Bukhara, where his tomb is located. He is said to have been of the Ḥanafī rite, like many Transoxanians of his time. While it may be questioned whether he was the great jurist, the Indian author ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Lakhnawī (d. 1886) (Arberry, xi) made him out to be, he does seem to have been trained as a reporter of ḥadīth…

ʿAlī b. Ḥusām al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Mālik b. Qāḍī Khān, known as “ Muttaqī” (885–975/1480–1568) was a leading ḥadīth scholar, reform-oriented Ṣūfī, and political advisor in the sultanate of Gujarat. He wrote approximately sixty books about ḥadīth, Ṣūfism, and morality. 1. Life Born in Burhānpūr in 885/1480, ʿAlī Muttaqī was initiated into the Chishtiyya brotherhood ( ṭarīqa, lit. “way”) under Bahāʾ al-Dīn Shāh Bājan (d. 911/1506). He served in the court at Māndʾū in his teens, but soon afterwards renounced worldly ambition. In his extreme asceticism and interest in reviving the sharīʿa, …

The Arabic term Iḥsān connotes an intricate range of commendable qualities and virtues including righteousness, benevolence, decency, moderation, perfection, and acting in a moral and apposite manner. The historical significance of the term rests not only on its moral and devotional import within the context of its Qurʾānic usage, but also on its importance as a construct within ethical, ascetic, theological, and mystical discourses. Etymologically, iḥsān is the verbal noun derived from the fourth form of the verb aḥsana, whose base triliteral root is the verb ḥasuna (to be good …

Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Jullābī Hujvīrī (year of death traditionally taken as 465/1071–2) was a Ṣūfī scholar born and raised in the Jullāb and Hujvīr suburbs of Ghazna, in present-day Afghanistan. He settled eventually in Lahore, which was, at that time, like Ghazna, a major town under Ghaznavid rule. The most reliable source about his life is his sole surviving work, the Kashf al-maḥjūb (“The revelation of the veiled”). This work suggests that, whilst he was first and foremost a Ṣūfī, he had received a traditional scholastic education and was particularly interested in Ḥanafī kalā…

Abū Naṣr Abū Muḥammad b. Saʿīd al-Fatḥ al-Mawṣilī (d. 220/835) was a renunciant (zāhid), weeper ( bakkāʾ), and minor transmitter of ḥadīth, and he was claimed as a forebear by Ṣūfīs. He was an Arab from Kār, near Mosul (Mawṣil), who spent time in Baghdad visiting his close friend Bishr al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841), a renunciant and forebear for the Sufis who lived most of his life in Baghdad, as well as the circle of Sarī al-Saqaṭī (d. c. 251/865), uncle of the famous early Persian Ṣūfī Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 298/911). He i…

Abū Manṣūr Maʿmar b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ziyād al-Iṣfahānī (d. 418/1027) was a traditionist, a self-proclaimed Ḥanbalī Ṣūfī shaykh, and author of several treatises on Ṣūfī doctrine and a Ṣūfī manual. Born between 335/946 and 339/950, in Isfahan, Abū Manṣūr studied there with renowned traditionists of his time, such as Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī (d. 353/964), Abū l-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/971), and ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Ḥayyān (d. 369/979), known as Abū l-Shaykh. He was also …

Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Zayn al-Faṭānī (1856–1908), was a Southeast Asian scholar and publisher based in Mecca. Born in the town of Yaring in Patani, then a semi-autonomous sultanate on the Malay-Thai Peninsula, he came from an reputable family of shaykhs and had been taken to Mecca while still a boy. He received an eclectic education by studying with many of his countrymen, who were numerous in Mecca at the time, as well as a number of esteemed ḥadīth scholars, leaders of the Aḥmadiyya ṭarīqa (Sufi order), anti-Salafī figures such as Sayyid Aḥmad b. Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1886), and well…

Abū l-Faḍl Muḥammad b. Abī l-Ḥusayn Ṭāhir b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī al-Shaybānī (448–507/1056–1113), known by his contemporaries as Ibn al-Qaysarānī or Ibn Ṭāhir, was a renowned transmitter of Prophetic traditions and the author of many works, including Ṣūfī treatises. Born in Jerusalem in Shawwāl 448/December 1056 to a family from Caesarea, in Palestine (whence his nisbas al-Maqdisī and Ibn al-Qaysarānī), he first heard ḥadīth recited in his native town at the age of twelve. After his first pilgrimage to Mecca and his visit to Baghdad on his way back in 4…

The Ḥulmāniyya were the followers of Abū Ḥulmān al-Fārisī (d. c.340/951), a native of Persia, who was educated in Aleppo and later resided in Damascus, where he disseminated his ideas. The term “Ḥulmāniyya” appears for the first time in the writings of the Ashʿarī heresiographer ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037), the Shāfiʿī scholar, heresiologist, and mathematician born and raised in Baghdad and educated in Nīshāpūr: “Amongst the Ḥulūlī (incarnationist) sects, the Ḥulmāniyya derives its na…

The relationship between the master (Ar. shaykh or murshid, Pers. pīr) and the disciple (murīd) is fundamental to the transmission of knowledge (ʿilm) in Islam and especially in Ṣūfism. It reflects hierarchical categories of domination and subordination prevalent in Islamic societies and owes its existence to the personal way in which true learning is conveyed through genealogical lineages ( silsila) that extend back to the prophet Muḥammad. The master-disciple relationship is a hallmark of Ṣūfism (taṣawwuf) and other expressions of Islam such as Ismaʿīlī Shīʿism for w…

Muradi (Murādī) was the pen name of three Ottoman sultan-poets: Murad II (Murād, r. 824–48/1421–44 and 850–5/1446–51), Murad III (r. 982–1003/1574–95), and Murad IV (r. 1032–49/1623–40). Ottoman princes in general received an excellent education from the best teachers and men of learning available. Their education included classes in calligraphy, the arts, and literature. Consequently, more than half of all Ottoman sultans left works of poetry, some of which are sizeable divans (dīvān, the collection of one poet’s poems). Murad II is considered to be the first Ottoman sul…

Absence and presence are Ṣūfī concepts for which the Arabic terms are, respectively, ghayba and ḥuḍūr (with some authors, ḥaḍra or shuhūd). The duality of ghayba and ḥuḍūr is formulated as a pair of words of opposite or complementary meaning, as is often the case in Ṣūfism, for example, qabḍ (contraction)— basṭ (expansion), ṣaḥw (sobriety)— sukr (drunkenness), and fanāʾ (effacement)— baqāʾ (subsistence). Ṣūfī authors have been unable to agree on terminology or on the usage and proper place of the terms ghayba and ḥuḍūr in their respective versions of Ṣūfī doctrine. Ghayba is commonly …

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Daqqāq al-Sijilmāsī (d. second half sixth/twelfth century) was a Moroccan Ṣūfī born in Sij̲ilmāsa and one of the teachers of the great Andalusī saint Abū Madyan (d. 594/1197). Many of his assertions, such as openly proclaiming his sanctity, were criticised by some ʿulamāʾ and Ṣūfīs, which led Vincent Cornell to suggest that he may have followed the doctrines of the Malāmatiyya (“adepts of blame,” malāma), who were Ṣūfīs who thought that all outward appearance of religiosity was ostentation and that real piety should remain hidden, reac…

Cheikh Ahmed Tijani Ba (Shaykh Aḥmad Tījānī Bā), 1932–2001) was a Malian-born ʿālim (religious scholar), author of Islamic books, imām of the Grand Riviera Golf Mosque in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s first national muftī, and khalīfa (lit. “deputy”) of the Al Hajj Umar (al-Ḥājj ʿUmar) Tall branch of the Tījāniyya. (The Tijāniyya was founded in 1195/1781 in Tlemcen, Algeria, by the shaykh and religious scholar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Tijānī, d. 1815, and it gained influence in large parts of North and West Africa and, later and to a lesser extent, in Egypt, Suda…

Saʿīd b. Ismāʿīl Abū ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī (d. 298/910) was a Shāfiʿī scholar of ḥadīth and an adherent of the ascetic tradition of Nīshāpūr. He purportedly obtained his nisba from the fact that he was buried in the al-Ḥīra cemetery in the city of Nīshāpūr, an important cultural centre of western Khurāsān. Although he was from the city of Rayy, according to a report in Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ (“The ornament of the saints”) by Abū Nuʿaym al-Isfaḥānī (d. 430/1038)—a scholar of Persian origin who wrote exculsively in Arabic, mostly biographies of Ṣūfīs, scholars, and the Prophet—he does not bear the nisba …