Rābiʾah al-Adawiyah

BORN: c. 713 • Basra, Iraq

DIED: c. 801 • Basra, Iraq

Iraqi religious leader; poet; mystic

Rābiʾah al-Adawiyah was an eighth-century Muslim mystic, or a person concerned with religious mysteries. She is considered a saint of Islam, a virtuous and holy woman who was also able to perform miracles. Rābiʾah, a founding member of the branch of Islam called Sufism, established the principle of mystical love, or the pure love of Allah, as a path to knowing Allah. She rejected the notion that punishment or heavenly reward motivated religious devotion. Rābiʾah was also one of the most prominent early Sufi poets, leaving behind many verses and prayers that became part of the literature and oral tradition of Islam.

A Life of poverty

Rābiʾah was born about in 713 ce to the Al-Atik tribe of Qays clan and died, by most accounts, in 801. Her name means "fourth daughter" in Arabic. Other variations of her name include Rābiʾah al-Qaysiyya and Rābiʾah al Basri (Rābiʾah of Basra), after her hometown.

"If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell! / If I adore You out of desire for Paradise, / Lock me out of Paradise. / But if I adore You for Yourself alone, / Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty."

Little was written about Rābiʾah during her lifetime. Much of the legend in existence comes from the thirteenth century and the writings of Sufi mystic and poet Farid al-Din Attar. In his Tadhkirat al-Awliya or Biographies of the Saints, he related the words of Rābiʾah, who left no written documents herself. Attar says that Rābiʾah was "on fire with love and longing" and that she was considered "an unquestioned authority to her contemporaries."

Most sources note that Rābiʾpah was born into a poor household. Indeed, the family was so poor that on the night of Rābiʾah's birth, her father was sent out to beg for oil for the lamps. He had made a promise, however, to ask for assistance from no one but Allah and came back without any oil. That night, the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632; see entry) came to Rābiʾah's father in his sleep and told him not to worry, for his newborn daughter was destined to be a great Muslim saint. The prophet also told him that the local emir (high official) had failed to pray as a good Muslim should and that Rābiʾah's father should demand money from the emir as punishment. The money was supposedly paid, but it seems that this was the last bit of good luck the family had. Soon after, Rābiʾah's parents both died, famine struck Basra, her three older sisters moved away, and Rābiʾah was left on her own.

Some time later Rābiʾah was sold into slavery as a house servant, although accounts vary as to how this occurred. Some sources claim she was traveling in a caravan when it was attacked by robbers and taken prisoner. Most others report that she was walking down the streets of Basra one day and was kidnapped. After Rābiʾah finished her daily chores, she would turn to prayers and meditation on Allah. Her religious calling was confirmed one day when she fell in the street and dislocated her wrist. She was trying to avoid allowing a stranger to see her without her veil, which was forbidden for pure Muslim women. Praying to Allah at that moment, she was answered with a voice that said on the day of reckoning she would be among the select to sit near Allah in heaven.

After this experience Rābiʾah became increasingly religious. She practiced asceticism, or self-denial, living in a very simple manner as a means of gaining higher spiritual powers. Some ascetics wore clothing that scratched their bodies in order to remind them of their duty to God. Some also fasted or ate very little. Rābiʾah, according to legend, fasted during the day while working and then prayed much of the night. On one such night, her master happened upon her in the midst of prayer. He saw her bathed in a golden light called the sakina, something like a halo that marks a Christian saint. The next day he gave Rābiʾah her freedom, and she left to meditate in the desert.

Life of meditation

Rābiʾah soon established herself in the desert not far from Basra, where she lived a quiet life of prayer. She did not feel it necessary to have a teacher or other holy person direct her in her quest for Allah. Rather, she went directly to Allah for such teachings and inspiration. Rābiʾah found no comfort in organized religion with its officials and rituals. She once said of the Muslim House of God, the famed Kaʾaba, in Mecca, that she had no use for a house. It was the master of the house who interested her.

This belief in a direct knowledge of Allah placed her in the early ranks of mystical Sufis. From the time of the founding of the Islamic religion, there were believers who wanted a deeper experience than that provided by the simple adherence to the five pillars of Islam: professing faith, saying prayers five times daily, giving support to the poor, fasting during Ramadan, and making pilgrimage to Mecca. These people, like Rābiʾah, wanted direct communication with Allah. They attempted to establish it through continual prayer, reading of the Qurʾan, and focusing on Allah. They fasted, did not engage in sex, and repented for their sins.

What makes a Sufi

The term Sufi most likely comes from the Arabic word for the coarse wool many of these ascetics used for their robes. It was first seen in the literature of Islam during the eighth century, during Rābiʾah's lifetime. As Sufism evolved, two main concepts came to dominate that branch of Islam: tawakkul, or a total reliance on God, and dhikr, a continual remembrance of, or focusing on, Allah. Sufism combined elements of Christianity and Hinduism with its own distinctive Islamic concepts.

Early Sufism had a harsh, gloomy tone. Rābiʾah, however, brought joy to the obedience to and love of Allah. Rābiʾah looked to Allah not only as a master but also as a friend and companion. She was the first Sufi to preach that love and only love was the key to the mystic path. She also scorned the reward and punishment system of heaven and hell. One of her poems, translated by Charles Upton and published in Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rābiʾah, states, "I love God: I have no time left / In which to hate the devil."

Rābiʾah was also famous for a legend in which she was reportedly seen carrying a flaming torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. She explained in a poem published in Doorkeeper of the Heart: "With these things I am going to set fire to heaven / And put out the flames of hell / So that voyagers to God can rip the veils / And see the real goal." Rābiʾah meant that a person should not worship Allah out of fear of hell or in hopes of heaven. One should worship because one loved Allah. The emotions of fear and hope were like veils that kept the true vision of Allah hidden.

Hasan al-Basri

Rābiʾah was a resident of the city of Basra, located in the far southeast of modern-day Iraq, near the Persian Gulf. Founded in 636, the city was an important military and trading site. Also called Bassorah, the city was mentioned in Thousand and One Nights as the place where Sinbad the Sailor began his voyages. The city was called the "Venice of the Middle East," because of the series of canals that once flowed through the city at high tide. Basra was also a center for the cultivation of dates and date palm trees.

During Rābiʾah's lifetime, Basra was only about a century old, but was already famous in Islam as a home to many well-known Sufis. One of the most famous of these was Hasan al-Basri (642–728). Hasan was born one year after the death of the Prophet Muhammad and moved to Basra when it was still a primitive military encampment. As a young man this famous mystic scholar served as a soldier of Islam from 670 to 673 and participated in the conquest of eastern Iran.

Upon his return to Basra, Hasan quickly became a well-respected religious figure, preaching the importance of a permanent state of anxiety in the true believer. He claimed that such anxiousness was caused not by the certain knowledge of death, but by an uncertainty about what awaited a person after death. He also preached religious self-examination, which he said led to an avoidance of doing evil and an emphasis on doing good. Most importantly, Hasan believed that humans were responsible for their own actions and could not, therefore, blame such actions on the will of Allah.

Hasan appeared in many of the legends dealing with Rābiʾah. Her belief in the importance of love was the opposite of Hasan's emphasis on fear and hope as twin motivators for the faithful Muslim. According to one legend, Hasan asks Rābiʾah to marry him. When he is unable to answer a series of questions she puts to him, she declines the offer. Another legend tells of how Hasan, seeing Rābiʾah near a lake, decides to display his miraculous powers. He throws a prayer rug onto the water and invites her to pray with him on it. Unimpressed, she responds, as quoted by Farid al-Din Attar, "Hasan, when you are showing off your spiritual goods in the worldly market, it should be things which your fellow men cannot display." Then she throws her prayer rug into the air and flies up to sit upon it, inviting him to join her. The old man simply looks at her sadly. She feels badly for him then, and says, "Hasan, what you did fishes can do, and what I did flies can do. But the real business is outside these tricks. One must apply oneself to the real business." There is little chance these tales are true, however, as Raābiʾah was only eleven at the time of the death of the older Sufi master and had not yet become an ascetic.

Rābiʾah's teaching

Such wisdom won Rābiʾah followers, though she never developed a system of teaching. Later thinkers, however, found a logical organization in Rābiʾah's way of seeking Allah. This path began with tawba, or repentance, asking forgiveness of one's sins and turning from wrong actions to right ones. However, such repentance deals only with individual actions: each sin is repented after being committed. Instead, Rābiʾah focused on a more general, divine tawba, seeing repentance as a gift from God, whom she called the Healer of Souls. "If I seek repentance myself," Rābiʾah taught, "I shall have need of repentance again."

In order to achieve real "tawba," two qualities were needed: sabr, or patience, and shukr, or gratitude. Patience, in turn, required an end to complaint and desire. Rābiʾah's prayers were free of desires and expressed a simple, grateful acceptance of whatever happened in life.

Rābiʾah put little emphasis on rajaʾ, or hope, and khawf, fear, as motivating factors on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Instead she focused on mahabba, or love, the ascetic principle offaqr, or poverty, and zuhd, the giving up of anything that distracted one from the path to Allah. She believed that all of this led to tawhid, or the joining of the personal self with Allah.

Though Rābiʾah maintained a solitary existence throughout her life, she did have conversations with some of the other Muslim thinkers of the day and advised people who came to visit her. As an old woman, she possessed only a cracked jug, a mat made from stiff plants, and a brick that served as her pillow. She slept little at night, instead praying and meditating, and became angry with herself if she fell asleep for a short time and thus lost precious minutes or hours of devotion to Allah. In one tale, Rābiʾah refused to go out and admire nature on a fine spring day, saying that she would rather contemplate the beauty of Allah in the darkness of her dwelling. She never married, though it was reported she had many proposals.

The miraculous

Despite her disregard for the rituals of Islam, Rābiʾah went on at least one pilgrimage to Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) in order to visit the House of God, the Kaʾaba, the most sacred place in Islam. It also lies in the direction toward which Muslims face to pray each day. According to legend, while Rābiʾah was on her way to Mecca and traveling in the company of other pilgrims, her donkey died and she was left without transportation. She told the others to continue on their way, refusing their offers of help. She said she would rely solely on Allah for assistance. One version of this tale claimed the donkey came back to life after Rābiʾah prayed for a week. Another stated that the Kaʾaba actually came to her. She was unimpressed, however, saying that she wanted the master of the house and not simply the house. Though reportedly capable of performing miracles, Rābiʾah distrusted them and believed them to be the devil's temptations.

Toward the end of her long life, Rābiʾah became recognized as a saint. Islam, like many religions, has a high opinion of such holy people. They are called awliya, which literally means "Friends of Allah." Unlike the Catholic Church, Islam has no official process for conferring sainthood, but there are certain beliefs as to which conditions lead to sainthood. To be considered, a person must have a strong faith, follow the traditions laid out by the Prophet Muhammad, possess an excellent moral character, display an ability to perform certain miracles or marvels, and, finally, be accepted by other Muslims as a saint.

When she died in 801, Rābiʾah passed into legend. Many stories have been told of her great deeds and the thousand times each day she knelt to pray. Movies have been made of her life. Her name is still used by followers of Islam to praise an exceptionally religious woman.

For More Information

BOOKS

al-Adawiyah, Rābiʾah. Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rābiʾah. Translated by Charles Upton. Putney, VT: Threshold Books, 1988.

Attar, Farid al-Din. Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the "Tadhkirat al-Awliya" ("Memorial of the Saints"). Translated by A. J. Arberry Ames, IA: Omphaloskepsis, 2000. Also available online at http://www.omphaloskepsis.com/ebooks/pdf/mussm.pdf.

El Sakkakini, Widad, and Nabil Safwat. First Among Sufis: The Life and Thought of Rābiʾah al-Adawiyah, the Woman Saint of Basra. London, England: Octagon Press, 1982.

Schimmel, Annemarie. "Rābiʾah al-Adawiyah." Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd ed. Edited by Lindsay Jones. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.

Smith, Margaret. Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work of Rābiʾah and Other Women Mystics in Islam. Oxford, England: Oneworld Publishing, 2001.

WEB SITES

Lochtefeld, James G. "Stunningly Brief Introduction to Sufism." Sufism. http://www2.carthage.edu/∼lochtefe/islam/sufis.html (accessed on May 22, 2006).

"Rābiʾah al Basri." Poet Seers. http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/sufi/rabia (accessed on May 22, 2006).