TOPBy all accounts the earliest Muslims to bear the name "Sufi" were ascetics, Muslims whose rejection of "this world" bore all the signs of a religious conversion. Such was certainly the case for the early and much celebrated holy man Ibrahim ibn Adham, a prince of Balkh in eastern Iran who died sometime about 777 C.E.
My father was of Balkh, Ibrahim ibn Adham is reported to have said, and he was one of the kings of Khurasan. He was a man of wealth and taught me to love hunting. One day I was out riding with my dog, when a hare or a fox started. I spurred on my horse; then I heard a voice behind me saying, "It was not for this that you were created. It was not this you were charged to do." I stopped and looked right and left, but I saw no one; and I said, "God curse the devil!" Then I spurred on my horse again; and I heard a voice clearer than before, "O Ibrahim! It was not for this that you were created; it was not this you were charged to do." I stopped once more and looked right and left, but still I saw no one. And I repeated, "God curse the devil!" Then I spurred on my horse once again; and I heard a voice from the bow of my saddle, "O Ibrahim, it was not for this that you were created. It was not this that you were charged to do." I stopped and said, "I have been roused! I have been roused! A warning has come to me from the Lord of the Worlds. Truly, I will not disobey God from this day on, so long as the Lord shall preserve me." Then I returned to my people, and abandoned my horse. I came to one of my father's shepherds, and took his robe and cloak, and put my raiment upon him. Then I went towards Iraq, wandering from land to land. (Abu Nu’aym, the Ornaments of the Saints 7.368) [Cited by ARBERRY 1950: 36]
Or, in the manner of the holy in every religion, the saint is marked as such from birth. The following is told, with an interesting prologue, of Rabia, a famous holy woman of Basra in Iraq who died in 752 or 801 C.E.
If anyone asks, "Why have you included Rabia 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." Moreover, if it is proper to derive two-thirds of our religion from Aisha [referring to the great bulk of Prophetic traditions reported on the authority of the Prophet's wife Aisha], surely it is permissible to take religious instruction from a handmaiden of Aisha. When a woman becomes a "man" in the path of God, she is a man and one cannot any more call her a woman.
The night when Rabia came to earth, there was nothing whatsoever in her father's house; for her father lived in very poor circumstances. He did not possess even one drop of oil to anoint her navel; there was no lamp, and not a rag to swaddle her in. He already had three daughters, and Rabia was his fourth, which is why she was called Rabia, "the fourth."
"Go to our neighbor so and so and beg him for a drop of oil so I can light the lamp," his wife said to him. Now the man had entered into a covenant that he would never ask any mortal for anything. … The poor woman wept bitterly. In that anxious state the man placed his head on his knees and went to sleep. He dreamed that he saw the Prophet.
"Be not sorrowful," the Prophet bade him. "The girl child who has just come to earth is a queen among women, who shall be the intercessor for seventy thousand of my community. …"
When Rabia had become a little older, and her mother and father were dead, a famine came upon Basra, and her sisters were scattered. Rabia ventured out and was seen by a wicked man who seized her and sold her for six dirhams. Her purchaser put her to hard labor.
One day when she was passing along the road a stranger approached her. She cried and, as she ran, she fell headlong and her hand was dislocated. "Lord God," she cried, bowing her face to the ground, "I am a stranger, orphaned of mother and father, a helpless prisoner fallen into captivity, my hand broken. Yet for all this I do not grieve; all I need is Your good pleasure, to know whether You are well pleased or not." "Do not grieve," she heard a voice say, "Tomorrow a station will be yours such that the cherubim in heaven will envy you."
So Rabia returned to her master's house. By day she continually fasted and by night she worshiped standing until day.
Her owner one night sees Rabia at her prayers, a lantern suspended without chain above her head, and whose light fills the house. He is moved and chastened and gives her freedom.
She left the house and went into the desert. From the desert she proceeded to a hermitage where she served God for a while. Then she determined to perform the pilgrimage and set her face toward the desert (road from Basra to Mecca). She bound her bundle of possessions on a donkey. In the middle of the desert her donkey died. … "O God," she cried, lifting her head, "do kings so treat the powerless? You have invited me to Your House, then in the midst of the way, You have suffered my donkey to die, leaving me alone in the desert."
Hardly had she completed her prayer when her donkey stirred and rose up. Rabia placed her load on its back and continued on her way. … She travelled on through the desert for some days, then she halted. "O God," she cried, "my heart is weary. Where am I going? I am a lump of clay and Your house is a stone! I need You here."
God spoke unmediated in her heart. "Rabia, you are travelling in the life-blood of eighteen thousand worlds. Have you not seen how Moses prayed for the vision of Me? And I cast a few notes of revelation upon the mountain, and the mountain shivered into forty pieces. Be content here in My name!" (Attar, Recollections of the Saints 1.73) [ATTAR 1966: 40–43]
The long process of experience and meditation upon that experience that constituted the beginnings of the Sufi path in Islam is largely concealed from our eyes. But as occurred in Christianity, the "path" eventually became a broad and well-posted highway whose every turning had been charted by those who had gone before. By the time the philosopher-historian Ibn Khaldun came to write his Prolegomenon in 1377 C.E., there was already an extensive body of Sufi literature, much of it highly theoretical in nature. Indeed, Sufism constituted a well-defined discipline with its own somewhat ambivalent place in the hierarchy of Muslim religious disciplines, as Ibn Khaldun explains.
Thus the Sufis had their special discipline, which is not discussed by other representatives of the religious law. As a consequence, the science of the religious law came to consist of two kinds. One is the special field of jurists and muftis. It is concerned with the general laws governing the acts of divine worship, customary action and mutual dealings. The other is the special field of the "people" [that is, the Sufis]. It is concerned with pious exertion, self-scrutiny with regard to it, discussion of the different kinds of mystical and ecstatic experience occurring in the course of it, the mode of ascent from one mystical experience to another, and the interpretation of the technical terminology of mysticism in use among them.
When the sciences were written down systematically, and when the jurisprudents wrote works on jurisprudence and the principles of jurisprudence, on speculative theology, Quran interpretation and other subjects, the Sufis too wrote on their subject. Some Sufis wrote on the laws governing asceticism and self-scrutiny, how to act and not act in imitation of model (saints). That was done by Muhasibi [ca. 781–825 C.E.] in his Consideration of the Truths of God. Other Sufi authors wrote on the behavior of Sufis and their different kinds of mystical and ecstatic experiences in the "states." Al-Qushayri [986–1072 C.E.] in his Letter and Suhrawardi [1145–1234 C.E.] in his Connoisseurs of Wisdom, as well as others did this. Al-Ghazali combined the two matters in his book called The Revivification. In it he dealt systematically with the laws governing asceticism and the imitation of models. Then he explained the behavior and customs of the Sufis and commented on their technical vocabulary. (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima 6.16) [IBN KHALDUN 1967: 3:79–80]