دار بيبليون
Rabi’a and Women in Sufism
Notes of a conference given by Prof. Lwiis Saliba
On Zoom – Wednesday 01/09/2021
Rabi’a or Caritée From the bookof J P Camus
Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya (100-180h/717-796) was a major figure (Muslim mystic) in the Sufism of the early centuries of Islam. She is a historical figure whose biography has been mixed with several hagiographic elements. All that we know about her depends, in fact, on hagiographic accounts written two centuries and more after her death: Ibn Al-Jawzi (d 597h/1201), ‘Attar (d1229) and others. And since then, the legend of Rabi’a has continued to grow. She remains a prototype (model) of the mystical woman in Islam. She was, according to most of her biographers, a slave singer from the region of Basra in southern Iraq, where she lived all her life. This is a recurring theme in Christian hagiography of the complete conversion of the woman of ill repute. As an adult she lived as a hermit in the desert and then in the city of Basra.
We will divide our presentation on her into 3 points which seem to us the most essential in her life and her mystical teaching.
1-The celibacy of Rabi’a
Rabi’a’s attachment to celibacy is an exceptional fact in Islam where marriage is a general rule and monasticism is explicitly disavowed. It is well known that female monasticism is a later phenomenon in Christianity itself. Many women disguised themselves as men to live in monasteries, such as Mary the Egyptian, Marina the Maronite and many others.
In Islam, although marriage is the general rule, there are many Sufis who have lived as celibates. Jesus, the 1st example of celibacy in Islam as in Christianity, and as a Tunisian researcher and colleague (Sarah Jawini الجويني) has well shown in her thesis, is the ideal model and prototype of the realized being in Sufism.
Tirmizi الترمذي (m320h) said, “The one who deserves the seal of holiness is a man through whom the cycle of kingship has been sealed. He has a minister called Yahya (John) spiritual and human.”
Ibn Arabi (558-638h/1164-1240) said in support of Tirmizi’s thesis: “The absolute Seal of Holiness is Issa (Jesus). He is the saint by the absolute prophecy in the time of this community”.
Sufis have found verses in the Qur’an that support their orientation towards celibacy. Like 14/64-65 (al-taghabon): {O you who have believed, you have in your wives and children enemies. So beware of them. Your property and your children are but a temptation, but with Allah is a great reward}.
Another verse 18/46 Al-Kahf: {Goods and children are the ornament of the life of this world. However, good deeds that persist have a better reward with Your Lord and raise a beautiful hope}.
A great Sufi Malek ben Dinar (d127h/748) said: “A man does not attain the status of the saints until he leaves his wife, leaves her as a widow, and takes refuge in the shelters of dogs.
Ibrahim ben Adham (100-162h), who has been called the Buddha of Islam, contemporary of Rabi’a used to answer those who asked him, “Why don’t you marry?” “If I could repudiate my own soul, why then bind myself to a woman?”
This orientation towards celibacy was a common trend in early Sufism. But Rabi’a’s uniqueness consisted in the fact that she was a virgin woman (batul) something that was not at all usual (ordinary) in Islam.
When asked about marriage, Rabi’a said, “Marriage is necessary for those who can choose. As for me, I have no choice in my life. I belong to my Lord and in the shadow of His commandments my person has no value” (Lory Pierre, Rabi’a Al’Adawiyya, article in: Les Femmes Mystiques histoire et dictionnaire, collection Bouquins, Paris, Editions R Laffont, 2013)
She was asked to marry several times by Sufis and even governors. For example, when asked by the Sufi ‘Abd al-Wahed ben Zayd (m177h/793), she replied: “O sensual one, go run after a sensual woman like you. What have you seen in me as an instrument of concupiscence?”
‘Attar the famous biographer of Rabi’a calls her the second Mary, a denomination worth meditating on. Mary in the Qur’an is the ideal of the woman and especially of the chaste and virgin woman. She is the only woman that the Qur’an names by her name. And Mary in Christianity is the female face of God (Mother of God). In one of my books, I showed how the portrait of Fatima daughter of the Prophet (604-632/11h) was drawn in Imamite Shiism with Marian features. Among the names of Fatima in Shi’ism are “The Virgin”, Batul, when she was married and had children, and also: Mary the Great.
In Sunnism, which does not attribute this role to Fatima, Rabi’a comes to replace Fatima and play the role of Mary.
This role attributed to Fatima in Shi’ism, or to Rabi’a in Sunnism, like that attributed to Mary in Christianity, can be understood by returning to the theory of the feminine principle in the divinity developed by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). He confirms that the uniqueness of the adoration of the male principle, while excluding the female principle, disturbs the balance of the human psyche. This leads the collective unconscious among peoples to find a historical and religious representative of this principle.
2-Divine love in Rabi’a
Rabi’a occupies an important place in Sufism because she has marked for generations the orientations of the emerging Muslim spirituality. She marks an important turning point because she seems to be the first to have spoken openly and lyrically about the love relationship between Creator and creature.
She wanted to love God for himself, categorically rejecting any idea of fear of hell or expectation of the pleasures of paradise, judging the latter attitude to be low and mercenary. Let us listen to her in one of her invocations: “O my God, if I adore you for fear of hell, burn me, and if I adore you for hope of paradise, exclude me from this paradise. But if I worship You for the sake of You alone, then do not deprive me of the sight of Your face” (Badawi, A R, Rabi’a Al-‘Adawiyya, Cairo, 1962, p.91)
Rabi’a often seems to want to free human beings permanently from the notion of heaven and hell. True worship, according to her, is that which is purified of any sense of persuasion and intimidation. Her slogan concerning paradise, as well reported by ‘Attar, was: “The Neighbor (God) first, then his house (paradise)” Al-Jâr thoumma ad-dâr.
And in this sense, Aflaki, a Persian author of the 14th century, tells the following anecdote about him: “One day, a group of people saw Rabi’a carrying fire in one hand and water in the other and running fast. They asked her, “Where are you going?” She replied that she was going to heaven to throw fire on paradise and water on hell, so that both would disappear and men would look at God without hope or fear” (Badawi, op. cit, p90).
It is interesting to note at this point in our study that Joinville (1225-1317), biographer and historian of King Saint Louis, recounts a similar anecdote a century earlier, and that Jean Pierre Camus (1584-1652), bishop of Belley, relies on this very account in his work: ‘Caritée’ or the portrait of true charity: a devotional history drawn from the life of Saint Louis (1641), a collection of sermons in which he defended the doctrine of pure love.
Among Rabi’a’s invocations in the sense of Integral Love, this famous oration that she repeated during the night: “O Lord, the stars are shining, the eyes of humans are asleep, the kings have closed their doors, every lover is alone with his beloved, and I stand before you” (Badawi, op. cit, p23)
One of his most beautiful and famous poems about divine love is the following:
I love you with two loves: passionate love and a love that you are worthy of.
As for the love of passion, it is that I am only busy mentioning You to the exclusion of all others,
And as for the love of which You are worthy, it is that You remove the veil so that I see You.
No praise for me in either of these, but in both of them praise is due to You (Saliba, Lwiis, les Dix Commandements Sufis, Lebanon, Editions Byblion, 2021, pp162-163. And Lory, op. cit).
Another typical mystical love poem, a Sufi ghazal, in which one feels that the poetess is at first addressing her beloved while she is in fact addressing her Lord:
1-O my joy, my desire, my support,
My companion, my provision, my goal,
2-You are the spirit of my heart, you are my hope,
You are my confidant; my desire for You is my viaticum.
3-Hereafter, your love is my goal and my delight
And the splendor of the eye of my thirsty heart.
4-As long as I live, I shall not depart from you,
You are definitely Master in the depths of my heart.
5-If you find pleasure in me,
Then the desire of my heart and my Joy will overflow.
(Badawi, op. cit, p24, Lory, op. cit)
The Sufi Ghazal is a literary tradition that Rabi’a seems to have inaugurated in Sufism and in Arab literature in general. It reached its peak with Ibn Al-Fared (576-632h/1181-1235). It is even found among contemporaries like Nizar Kabbani (1923-1998). We have studied this kind of poems in his house (Saliba Lwiis, The Ten Commandments, op. cit, pp167-170).
3-Mystical Paradoxes (Shath) in Rabi’a
The Shath (mystical paradox) is a mode of expression which aims at transmitting in human language a spiritual experience incomprehensible to ordinary understanding. Henri Corbin (1903-1978) defined it as follows: “The expression of the inexpressible, that is the paradox par excellence” (Saliba Lwiis, Isharat shatahât wa rahîl, Lebanon, Editions Byblion, 2013, p9).
The Shath, or mystical paradox, is a typical phenomenon of Sufism. It had its beginnings with Rabi’a. It will evolve considerably with Abu Yazid Bistami (188-261h) who died 3/4 of a century after Rabi’a and half a century before Hallaj. Among Bistami’s paradoxes is the famous one: “Glory to me as my status is the highest”: Subhâni ma a’zama Shâni, knowing that this kind of glory is attributed only to God.
The Shath will reach its peak with Hallaj (244-309h/858-922) who said: Ana al-Haqq, “I am the True (God), I am the one I love and the one I love is me”.
Rabi’a is a pioneer of the Shath. She is said to have said something paradoxical about the Ka’ba: “This Idol worshipped on earth! God has not entered it, but neither is He absent” (Saliba Lwiis, The Ten Commandments, op. cit, p163). To say that the holiest place of Islam and the direction of their prayer, thus the stronghold of their strict monotheism, is an idol of polytheism is a real paradox quite shocking for any Muslim. Another paradox in one of his ‘sayings’: how God never entered the Ka’ba while never being absent there!
Another paradoxical saying of Rabi’a. It is said that one day she heard a reader chanting the Qur’an. He was reading the verse 36/55-56: {The people of paradise are on that day in an occupation that fills them with happiness, they and their wives are under shades, leaning on couches}.
She commented, “How unfortunate are these people of paradise! What kind of occupation do they have!”.
The traditional interpretation of this verse is that the people of paradise are busy with the houris, i.e. depriving the virgins. Rabi’a seems to categorically and strongly reject this sensual interpretation of paradise.
Abdel-Rahman Badawi (1917-2002) considers that Rabi’a was the first to criticize the Qur’an and Islam, especially regarding the sensual descriptions of paradise. She wanted, in fact, to erase all sensual interpretations and transform them into pure spiritual meanings, and subsequently elevate the spiritual and religious life in Islam. Rabi’a has indeed the greatest merit of being the pioneer of this movement which will reach its peak with Bistami. He said in some of his paradoxes
1- “He who sees God, what does he still want from houris?
2- “Paradise is in fact twofold: the paradise of delights and the paradise of knowledge. The first is ephemeral while the second is eternal.
3- “What is paradise? A game for little children!” (Saliba Lwiis, Ishârât, op. cit, pp 41 and 48).
And it is here that the rather important influence and role of Rabi’a appear very clearly.
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