Rabia al-Adawiyya

c. 717 - 801 CE

An eighth-century Iraqi mystic born in slavery and freed by a master who feared to keep her. Refused every marriage proposal to devote herself to Allah alone. Wrote what remain the founding poems of the Sufi 'theology of pure love', worship without hope of paradise, without fear of hellfire.

Life

Rabia bint Isma'il al-Adawiyya was born about 717 CE in Basra, the fourth daughter of a very poor family (rabia means "fourth"). Her parents died in her childhood and she was sold into slavery. Her master saw her one night in a vision surrounded by light while praying, and freed her the next morning.

She lived the rest of her life as a woman entirely devoted to the worship of Allah. She refused every offer of marriage, including from famous scholars of Basra, with the same argument: her heart had no room in it for anything but the love of Allah, so she could not fairly give any portion of it to another human being.

She lived austerely on the outskirts of Basra. Al-Hasan al-Basri, the great scholar and ascetic, sat at her feet as a peer. Sufyan ath-Thawri, another giant of the second Islamic century, consulted her.

Her poetry, the fragments that survive, founded a distinct current in Islamic spirituality that the later Sufi tradition called mahabba, love. Her most famous prayer:

"O Lord, if I worship You for fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship You in hope of paradise, exclude me from paradise. But if I worship You for Your own sake, do not withhold Your everlasting beauty."

She is said to have walked the streets of Basra one day with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Asked why, she answered: "I am going to burn paradise and put out hell, so that men may worship Allah for the sake of Allah alone."

She died in 801 CE at about 84.

Stories

Each story below is drawn from the classical Islamic historical sources.