Rabia Basri

Rabia al-Adawiyya
Born	~ 713-717 C.E. Basra, Iraq
Died	~ 801 C.E. Mount of Olives[citation needed]
Residence	Basra, Iraq
Known for	1st female Sufi Saint, introduced Divine Love
Religious beliefs	Sufism

Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya (Arabic: رابعة العدوية القيسية) or simply Rabiʿa al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) was a female Muslim Sufi saint, considered by some to be the first true saint in the Sufi tradition. Little is known of her life apart from her piety, popularity with men and women followers of the Sufi path and her refusal to marry. The birth and death dates given for her are only approximate. She was orphaned then sold as a slave in her youth then set free by her Master to practice devotion and to engage in prayer. Many stories of her life were later told by Farid ad-Din Attar. She is associated in legend with Hassan of Basri as his pupil or even as his teacher, although it is unlikely that they met, since he died in 728 when she was still a child. The numerous stories of her piety, love for God, of people and of her ascetic life-style attest to the significance of her life in the story of the development of mystical Islam. Among women, perhaps only the wives of Muhammad, known as mothers of the believers, occupy so honored a place in the hearts of Muslims around the world,

Her reputation excels that of many Muslim men within the early days of Sufism; she "belongs to that elect company of Sufi women who have surpassed most of the contemporary masters of their time in wayfaring to God." She has been described as symbolizing "saintliness among women Sufis." Her love mysticism, which she is widely credited as pioneering, triumphed over other expressions that feared God rather than adored the divine. She was a teacher of men as well as of women, a women who called no man her master, indeed whose surrender to God was so complete that she placed all her trust in God to ensure that she was fed and clothed. Her devotion to God was so intense that relatively few solid facts about her life survived except that it was lived in complete and loving surrender to God, which is the Islamic path.

Life

She was born between 95 and 99 Hijri in Basra, Iraq. Much of her early life is narrated by Farid al-Din Attar. Many spiritual stories are associated with her and it is sometimes difficult to separate reality from legend. These traditions come from Farid al-Din Attar, a later sufi saint and poet, who used earlier sources. He is believed to have possessed a lost monograph on "her life and acts". Rabia herself did not leave any written works.

She was the fourth daughter of her family and therefore named Rabia, meaning "fourth". She was born free in a poor but respected family. According to Nurbakhsh, though poor, her family could trace its lineage back to Noah.

According to Farid al-Din Attar, Rabia's parents were so poor that there was no oil in house to light a lamp, nor a cloth even to wrap her with. Her mother asked her husband to borrow some oil from a neighbor, but he had resolved in his life never to ask for anything from anyone except the Creator. He pretended to go to the neighbor's door and returned home empty-handed.

In the night Prophet appeared to him in a dream and told him, "Your newly born daughter is a favorite of the Lord, and shall lead many Muslims to the right path. You should approach the Amir of Basra and present him with a letter in which should be written this message: 'You offer Durood to the Holy Prophet one hundred times every night and four hundred times every Thursday night. However, since you failed to observe the rule last Thursday, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars '.

Rabia's father got up and went straight to the Amir with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The Amir was delighted on receiving the message, knowing that he was in the eyes of Prophet. He distributed 1000 dinars to the poor and joyously paid 400 dinars to Rabia's father. The Amir then asked Rabia's father to come to him whenever he required anything, as the Amir would benefit very much by the visit of such a soul dear to the Lord.

After the death of her father a famine overtook Basra and Rabia. Separated from her sisters, legend has it that Rabia was accompanying a caravan, which fell into the hands of robbers. The chief of the robbers took Rabia captive, and sold her in the market as a slave. Her "purchaser put her to hard labour."<Farīd al-Dīn and Arbery, page 41.</ref>

She would pass the whole night in prayer, after she had finished her household jobs. She spent many of her days observing a fast.

Once the master of the house got up in the middle of the night, and was attracted by the pathetic voice in which Rabia was praying to her Lord. She was entreating in these terms:

"O my Lord, Thous knowest that the desire of my heart is to obey Thee, and that the light of my eye is in the service of Thy court. If the matter rested with me, I should not cease for one hour from Thy service, but Thou hast made me subject to a creature"

At once the master felt that it was sacrilegious to keep such a saint in his service. He decided to serve her instead. In the morning he called her and told her his decision; he would serve her and she should dwell there as the mistress of the house. If she insisted on leaving the house he was willing to free her from bondage.

She told him that she was willing to leave the house to carry on her worship in solitude. The master granted this and she left the house.

Rabia went into the desert to pray, spending some time at a Sufi hermitage. She then began what according to Farīd al-Dīn was a seven year walk (some accounts describe her as crawling on her stomach) to Mecca, to perform the Hajj. According to Farīd al-Dīn, as she approached the Ka'bah, her monthly period began, which made her unclean and unable to continue that day. Farīd al-Dīn uses this as lesson that even such a great saint as Rabia was "hindered on the way."

According to the legends, she attracted many disciples, including Hasan of Basra although their probable chronologies make this impossible. Hasan is also reputed to have asked her to marry him.

Throughout her life, her Love of God, poverty and self-denial did not waver. They were her constant companions. She did not possess much other than a broken jug, a rush mat and a brick, which she used as a pillow. She spent all night in prayer and contemplation, chiding herself if she slept because it took her away from her active Love of God.

As her fame grew she had many disciples. She also had discussions with many of the renowned religious people of her time. Though she had many offers of marriage, and (tradition has it) one even from the Amir of Basra, she refused them as she had no time in her life for anything other than God.

More interesting than her absolute asceticism, however, is the actual concept of Divine Love that Rabia introduced. She was the first to introduce the idea that God should be loved for God's own sake, not out of fear - as earlier Sufis had done.

She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance. She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did. For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshiping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils - i.e. hindrances to the vision of God Himself.

She prayed: "O Allah! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell,
and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.
But if I worship You for Your Own sake,
grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.”

At some point, according to Farid al-Din Attar, she went on pilgrimage to Mecca, crawling on her side for seven years until the Ka'bah itself went to meet her instead. Rabia was in her early to mid eighties when she died, having followed the mystic Way to the end. She believed she was continually united with her Beloved. As she told her Sufi friends, "My Beloved is always with me"

Philosophy

She was the one who first set forth the doctrine of Divine Love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi. The definitive work on her life and writing was a small treatise (written as a Master's Thesis) over 50 years ago by Margaret Smith .

Much of the poetry that is attributed to her is of unknown origin. After a life of hardship she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. When asked by Sheikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:

Legend persistently associates her with Hasa, p 11, although he died before she was born.

“Do you desire for us to get married?” Hasan asked Rabe’a. “The tie of marriage applies to those who have being,” Rabe’a replied. “Here being has disappeared, for I have become naughted to self and exist only through Him. I belong wholly to Him. I live in the shadow of His control. You must ask my hand of Him, not of me.” “How did you find this secret, Rabe’a?” Hasan asked. “I lost all ‘found’ things in Him,” Rabe’a answered. “How do you know Him?” Hasan enquired. “You know the ‘how’; I know the ‘howless’,” Rabe’a "You know of the how, but I know of the how-less."

One of the many myths that swirl around her life is that she was freed from slavery because her master saw her praying while surrounded by light, realized that she was a saint and feared for his life if he continued to keep her as a slave.

While she apparently received many marriage offers (including a proposal from Hasan al-Basri himself), she remained celibate and died of old age, an ascetic, her only care from the disciples who followed her. She was the first in a long line of female Sufi mystics.

Anecdotes

• One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said:

“Hasan,” Rabe’a replied, “when you are showing off your spiritual goods in this worldly market, it should be things that your fellow-men are incapable of displaying.” And she flung her prayer rug into the air, and flew up on it. “Come up here, Hasan, where people can see us!” she cried. Hasan, who had not attained that station, said nothing. Rabe’a sought to console him. “Hasan,” she said, “what you did fishes also do, and what I did flies also do. The real business is outside both these tricks. One must apply one’s self to the real business.”

"I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God."

Smith, page 98.

• At one occasion she was asked if she hated Satan. Hazrat Rabia replied: "My love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for loving or hating any save Him." Smith, page 99.

• When Hazrat Rabia Basri would not come to attend the sermons of Hazrat Hasan Basri, he would deliver no discourse that day. People in the audience asked him why he did that. He replied: "The syrup that is held by the vessels meant for the elephants cannot be contained in the vessels meant for the ants."

• Once Hazrat Rabia was on her way to Makka, and when half-way there she saw the Ka'ba coming to meet her. She said, "It is the Lord of the house whom I need, what have I to do with the house? I need to meet with Him Who said, 'Who approaches Me by a span's length I will approach him by the length of a cubit.' The Ka'ba which I see has no power over me; what joy does the beauty of the Ka'ba bring to me?"

At the same time the great Sufi Saint Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham arrived at the Ka'ba, but he did not see it. He had spent fourteen years making his way to the Ka'ba, because in every place of prayer he performed two rakats.

Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham said, "Alas! What has happened? It maybe that some injury has overtaken my eyes." An unseen voice said to him, "No harm has befallen your eyes, but the Ka'ba has gone to meet a woman, who is approaching this place." Ibrahim Adham responded, "O indeed, who is this?" He ran and saw Rabia arriving, and that the Ka'ba was back in its own place. When Ibrahim saw that, he said, "O Rabia, what is this disturbance and trouble and burden which you have brought into the world?"

She replied, "I have not brought disturbance into the world. It is you who have disturbed the world, because you delayed fourteen years in arriving at the Ka'ba." He said, "Yes I have spent fourteen years in crossing the desert (because I was engaged) in prayer." Rabia said, "You traversed it in ritual prayer (Salat) but with personal supplication." Then, having performed the pilgrimage, she returned to Basra and occupied herself with works of devotion.

• One day Hazrat Hasan Basri saw Hazrat Rabia near a lake. He threw his prayer rug on top of the water and said, "Rabia come! Let us pray two rakats here." She replied, "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 threw her prayer rug into the air and flew up onto it by saying, "Come up here, Hasan, where people can see us." Then she said, "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."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• El Sakkakini, Widad. 1982. First among Sufis: the life and thought of Rabia al-Adawiyya, the woman Saint of Basra. London: Octagon Press. ISBN 9780900860454
• Smith, Margaret. 2001. Muslim women mystics: the life and work of Rábiʻa and other women mystics in Islam. Great Islamic thinkers. Oxford: Oneworld. ISBN 9781851682508

• Nūrbakhsh, Javād. 1990. Sufi women. Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi.ISBN 9780933546424
• ʻAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, and A. J. Arberry. 2008. 29-47Rabe'a al-Adawiya. 29-47 Muslim saints and mystics: episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya'. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415442565
• Nicholson, A R. 2007. The Mystics of Islam. Eastbourne: Gardners Books. ISBN 9780979266546

External links

• Other women's Voices: [1]
• Islamicedfoundation.com - Poetry Excerpts
• [2] Rabia and the Bliss and Pleasure after the Heaviness of Struggle
• Ismaili Web - Rabia the Slave
• Khamush.com - Rabi'a Basri
• Mythinglinks.org - 8th Century Islamic Saint
• Many References to her life & work
• Poetseers.org - Rabia al Basri
• Rabi'a, Al-Hallaj and Ibn 'Arabi
• Sufimaster.org - Teachings

ar:رابعة العدوية de:Rabia al-Adawiyya al-Qaisiyya fr:Rabia al Adawiyya it:Rabi'a al-Adawiyya sr:Рабија ал-Адевија sv:Rabia al-Adawiyya tr:Rabia ur:رابعہ بصری

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