Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 09-12-08
Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya
/Rabi'ah /(Rabi'a Basri d.801)
========================================================================
"HOW LONG WILL YOU KEEP POUNDING ON AN OPEN DOOR?"
========================================================================
Apart from tradition, all we know is that Rabi'a lived in Basra, Iraq, in the second half of the 700s (the second Islamic century), that she was probably a freed slave, and that she is considered one of the first of the Sufis (from the Arabic for "mystic"), those Muslims who emphasize an intensely personal relationship with Allah.
According to tradition, Rabi'a was born free, but sold into slavery at her parents' death. She was freed by a miracle, and, except for at least one pilgrimage to Mecca, lived all of her life in Basra as a celibate ascetic who debated with and taught the major religious figures of her time. We have descriptions of Khansa from scholars of the 800s and 900s, but most of the stories of her come down to us from the writings of Faridu d-Din 'Attar (d. c.1230). It is through 'Attar that we have Rabi'a's words; she herself left no written documents.
Basra, near the Persian Gulf, was an important military and trading site, both for sea trade and for overland routes from the Arabian peninsula. From its foundation in the mid-600s, it was a center of Islamic religious and intellectual thought. Hasan al-Basri (d.728) was the city's first major ascetic figure; since he was probably dead before Rabi'a reached adulthood, the anecdotes about their meetings may reflect conflict between their respective disciples. Rabi'a represents those who, while never going outside the bounds of Muslim orthodoxy, moved from an emphasis on ritual to a total concentration on Allah and identification with his will.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Rabi'a
Faridu d-Din 'Attar
Information about secondary sources.
========================================================================
1. Translations of Rabi'a by Charles Upton:
(a) Eleven verses (some incomplete).
(b) Two verses and a "dream fable."
(c) Four anecdotes.
(d) One-third of the way down the page, "I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper."
2. From other translators (some are alternate versions of the same passages):
(a) A half dozen poems and anecdotes, some translated by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut.
(b) Four "sayings," translated by Richard Monckton Milnes.
(c)"O God, Whenever I listen to the voice of anything You have made," and at the same site, an anecdote about Rabi'a and an onion; the translator of both is Camille Adams Helminski.
(d) Second in this collection of poems is "Let me not love thee," translated by Gary C. Wilkens.
(e) Another version of the above (Rabi'a most famous lines), "O Lord, if I worship you out of fear of hell," translated by Paul Losensky .
(f) "My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude," translated by Margaret Smith.
(g) "My God and my Lord: Eyes are at rest."
(h) "With my Beloved I alone have been."
(i) An anecdote on Rabi'a's response to a scholar who complained about the world, translated by A. J. Arberry.
(j) At the bottom of the page, "In my Soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church."
3. The words of Faridu d-Din 'Attar, from whom most of our knowledge of Rabi'a comes (for more from 'Attar, see below, under "In print"):
(a) See section 9 for 'Attar's introduction to his 1200s presentation of Rabi'a.
(b) Use your browser's search function to go to "Rabi'ah" for 'Attar's story of her view on the eating of meat.
4. Essays, etc.:
(a) The traditional story of Rabi'a's life.
(b) The first chapter of Margaret Smith's 1928 Rabia the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam (for information on Smith's book. see "Secondary sources").
(c) "Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya, an 8th Century Islamic Saint from Iraq" (2003), by Kathleen Jenks, quotes verses translated by Smith (some of the links that follow the essay are dead, but Jenks quotes from the sources).
(d) After an introduction, the first part of "Sufis, Philosophers, and Nanak" (2003) by Sanderson Beck, is on Rabi'a; it includes translations by Paul Losensky (Nanak was a poet of the 1400s and 1500s).
(e) "Islamic Mysticism and Gender Identity" (1996), by Leonard E. Hudson, discusses and quotes Rabi'a (click on the down arrow to move from page to page).
(f) A 1993 essay by Maria Jaoudi on Rabi'a and her "ecological theology."
5. Reviews (for excerpts from both books, see "In print").
(a) Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat on Upton's 1988 translation, Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabia.
(b) Tom Collins on the 1996 essay collection, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur'an, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings.
6. For historical background:
(a) Sa'diyya Shaikh's 2006 essay on the Sufi, "Islam and the Path of the Heart."
(b) Jonah Winters' 1996 essay, "Themes of 'The Erotic' in Sufi Mysticism"; Rabi'a is one of the writers discussed.
========================================================================
[Charles Upton's book has prayers and sayings of Rabi'a and anecdotes about her. Upton points out that his "versions" are adaptations from English-language sources, not translations from Arabic (p.18). One correction: the introduction says Hasan al-Basri (who figures in several of the anecdotes) was of the generation after Rabi'a (p.8); in fact, current research indicates he was of the generation before:]
Doorkeeper of the heart: versions of Rabia / [translated by]
Charles Upton. Putney, Vt.: Threshold Books, c1988. (52, [4]
p.)
LC#: BP189.62 .R292 1988; ISBN: 0939660245
Bibliography: p. [56]
-----------------------------------------------
"If I adore You out of fear of Hell...."
-----------------------------------------------
[Rabi'a's most often-quoted prayer:]
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. [ll.8-12,
p.45]
------------------------------------------------
"Take my prayer as it is, devil and all."
------------------------------------------------
[But she acknowledges the difficulty of that kind of perfection:]
O God, take away the words of the devil
That mix with my prayer--
If not, then take my prayer as it is, devil and all.
[p.27]
--------------------------------------------------------
"You call yourself a teacher: Therefore learn."
--------------------------------------------------------
[Rabi'a's strongest voice is that of clear-sighted common sense:]
Where a part of you goes
The rest of you will follow---given time.
You call yourself a teacher:
Therefore learn. [p.39]
I love God: I have no time left
In which to hate the devil.
[p.41]
I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
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. [p.43]
[And her emphasis is on individual response rather than on ritual:]
How long will you keep pounding on an open door
Begging for someone to open it?
[p.51]
========================================================================
[This collection contains a translation by Paul Losensky of the Rabi'a section of 'Attar's Tadhkirat al-Awliya (Memorial of the Friends of God), the original source of most of our information on her. The general introduction to the book, by Michael Sells, is an excellent overview of the period; the section introductions and the notes are useful. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Early Islamic mysticism: Sufi, Qur'an, Miraj, poetic and theological
writings / translated, edited, and with an introduction by Michael
A. Sells; preface by Carl W. Ernst (The classics of Western spirituality;
#86). New York: Paulist Press, c1996. (xi, 398 p.)
LC#: BP188.9 .E2 1996; ISBN: 0809104776, 0809136198
Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-385) and indexes.
-------------------------------------
"When a woman is a man..."
-------------------------------------
[First, not Rabi'a's words, but 'Attar's defense of including a woman among the 75 "masters" whom he was memorializing; he gives three (perhaps inconsistent?) reasons: unimportance of gender, historical precedent, gender transformation:]
If anyone asks why her memorial is placed among the ranks of men, we reply that the chief of the prophets --- peace and blessing upon him --- declares: "God does not regard your forms." It is not a matter of form, but of right intention.
If it is right to derive two-thirds of religion from A'isha Sadiqah [Mohammed's wife] --- God be pleased with her --- then it is also right to derive benefit from one of his maidservants.
When a woman is a man on the path of the lord Most High, she cannot be called woman. [p.155]
--------------------------
"I am not my own."
--------------------------
[Anecdotes that quote Rabi'a:]
It is related that Hasan said to Rabi'a, "Would you like to take a husband?"
She said, "The marriage knot can only tie one who exists. Where is existence here? I am not my own---I am his and under his command. You must ask permission from him." [pp.161-62]
-----------------------------------------------
"We need something better than this."
-----------------------------------------------
It is related that Hasan Basri, Malik Dinar, and Shaqiq Balkhi, God Most High have mercy on them, went to visit Rabi'a, God have mercy upon her. The conversation turned to the question of sincerity.
Hasan said, "No one is sincere in his claim who is not patient under the blows of his master."
Rabi'a said, "This talk stinks of egoism."
Shaqiq said, "No one is sincere in his claim who is not grateful for the blows of his master."
Rabi'a said, "We need something better than this."
Malik Dinar said, "No one is sincere in his claim who does not delight in the blows of his master."
Rabi'a said, "We need something better than this."
They said, "Now you speak."
Rabi'a said, "No one is sincere in his claim who does not forget the wound of the blow in the vision of his master." [p.168]
========================================================================
[Barbara Lois Helm's article is a thorough study that reviews earlier work on Rabi'a:]
Helm, Barbara Lois. Rabi'ah as mystic, Muslim, and woman.
The Annual Review of Women in World Religions, 3
(1994), 1-87.
LC#: BL458 .A56 ; ISSN:1056-4578.
-----------------
[This 1928 study by Margaret Smith is unconvincing in its assumption that Sufism derives from Christian sources, but otherwise it is useful. The book includes most of the sayings and anecdotes of Rabi'a; the 1984 introduction by Annemarie Schimmel is good on the background of the period. (See online the table of contents of the book's 2001 re-issue.):]
Smith, Margaret. Rabia the mystic and her fellow-saints in
Islam: being the life and teachings of Rabia al-Adawiyya Al-Qaysiyya
of Basra together with some account of the place of the women
saints in Islam; with a new introduction by Annemarie Schimmel.
Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press,
1984. (xxxv, 219 p.)
LC#: BP80.R3 S6 1984; ISBN: 052126779X, 0521318637
[Re-issued in 2001 as Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work
of Rabi'a and Other Women Mystics in Islam. ISBN:1851682503]
-----------------
[Rkia Elaroui Cornell's 7-page entry on Rabi'a in this reference work gives a detailed description of how the tales told of Rabi'a and the words attributed to her have been used by both Islamic and non-Islamic writers over the centuries to define a feminine spirituality. The entry also provides a list of translations and secondary sources (including several in English). (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Arabic literary culture, 500-925 / edited by Michael Cooperson
and Shawkat M. Toorawa (Dictionary of literary biography; v.
311). Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. (xxiv, 447 p.: ill.; 29 cm)
LC#: PN451 .D5 v.311; ISBN: 0787681296
Includes bibliographical references and index
-----------------
[This is an rather sentimental biography written by Widad
El Sakkakini and translated by Nabil Safwat, but the brief introduction
by Doris Lessing is of interest:]
El Sakkakini, Widad. First among Sufis: the life and thought
of Rabia al-Adawiyya, the woman Saint of Basra; translated by
Nabil Safwat; introduction by Doris Lessing. London: Octagon
Press, c1982. (85 p.)
LC#: BP80.R3 E413 1982; ISBN: 0900860456
Translation of: 'Ashiqah al-mutasawwifah.
========================================================================
Updated 09-12-08