رابعة العدوية

الموقف

Rabia stands at the origin of the Sufi doctrine of selfless love of God. The sayings ascribed to her turn the earlier asceticism of fear into a mysticism of love: she is said to have wanted to burn paradise and extinguish hell so that God might be worshipped for himself alone, neither from fear of punishment nor from hope of reward. Al-Ghazali quotes her in his “Revival of the Religious Sciences”, and later Sufis treat her as an authority. Because the sources are late and legendary, scholars read her as a figure of the tradition rather than a documented author; her influence, however, is historical.

الحياة والسياق

Rabia al-Adawiyya (c. 714–801) lived in Basra in present-day Iraq. According to the hagiographical tradition, especially Attar’s “Memorial of the Saints” (early 13th century), she was born poor, sold into slavery, freed because of her piety and lived as an ascetic, refusing offers of marriage. No contemporary record of her exists, and the sayings, prayers and poems attributed to her were written down centuries later.

الأعمال الرئيسة

• No writings survive; sayings and prayers transmitted in Attar’s Memorial of the Saints (Tadhkirat al-Awliya, c. 1220) and earlier Arabic sources