ON TASAWWUF Imam al-Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 297)
The Imam of the world in his time, al-Junayd al-Baghdadi, said defining a Sufi:
- al-sufi man labisa al-sufa `ala al-safa
- wa ittaba`a tariq al-mustafawa
- athaqa al-jasada ta`m al-jafa
- wa kanat al-dunya minhu `ala qafa
The Sufi is the one who wears wool on top of purity, followed the path of the Prophet, endured bodily strains dedicating his life to worship and reclining from pleasures, and left behind all that pertains to the world.1
The text of al-Junayd’s book Kitab dawa’ al-arwah (Book of the cure of souls) was edited in Arabic and translated into English by the scholar A.J. Arberry.2
1 In `Afif al-Din Abu Muhammad `Abd Allah Ibn As`ad al-Yafi`i (d. 768), Nashr al-mahasin al-ghaliya fi fadl mashayikh al-sufiyya (Beirut : Dar Sadir, 1975).2 al-Junayd, Kitab dawa’ al-arwah, ed. & trans. A.J. Arberry in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1937).
Reproduced with permission from Shaykh M. Hisham Kabbani’s The Repudiation of “Salafi” Innovations (Kazi, 1996) p. 305.
Blessings and Peace on the Prophet, his Family, and his Companions
