Rabia Basri
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Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya (Arabic: رابعة العدوية القيسية) or simply Rabiʿa al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) was a female Sufi saint.
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[edit] Life
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She was born between 95 and 99 Hijri in Basra, Iraq. Much of her early life is narrated by Farid al-Din Attar.
But many spiritual stories are associated with her and what we can glean about her is reality merged with legend. These traditions come from Farid al-Din Attar a later sufi saint and poet, who used earlier sources. Rabia herself though has not left any written works.
She was the fourth daughter of his family and therefore named Rabia, meaning "fourth". She is reported to be born free in a poor but respected family.
Rabi'a'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 requested 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; so 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 have failed to observe the rule last Thursday, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars '.
Rabi'a's father got up and went to the Amir straight with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The Amir was delighted on receiving the message and knowing that he was in the eyes of Prophet, he distributed 1000 dinars to the poor and paid with joy 400 to Rabi'a's father and requested him to come to him whenever he required anything as he will 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 she parted from her sisters. Once she was accompanying a caravan, which fell into the hands of robbers. The chief of the robbers took Rabi'a in his custody and as an article of loot, and sold her in the market as a slave. The new master of Rabi'a used to take hard service from her.
She used to pass the whole night on prayers, after she had finished her household jobs. She used to pass many of her days observing fast.
Incidentally, 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:
"Lord! You know well that my keen desire is to carry out Your commandments and to serve Thee with all my heart, O light of my eyes. If I were free I would pass the whole day and night in prayers. But what should I do when you have made me a slave of a human being?"
At once he 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 his decision that thenceforward he would serve her and she should dwell there as the mistress of the house and 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. This the master granted and she left the house.[1]
Rabia went into the desert to pray and became an ascetic. Unlike many sufi saints she did not learn from a teacher or master but turned to God himself.
Throughout her life, her Love of God, Poverty and self-denial were unwavering and 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 for 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, worshipping 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.”
Rabia was in her early to mid eighties[2] when she died, having followed the mystic Way to the end. By then, she was continually united with her Beloved. As she told her Sufi friends, "My Beloved is always with me"
[edit] Philosophy
She was the one who first set forth the doctrine of mystical love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. The defining work on her life and writing was written over 50 years ago by Margaret Smith, a small treatise written as a Master's Thesis.
Much of the poetry that is attributed to her is of unknown origin. After a life of hardship she became spontaneously realized. When asked by Sheikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:
You know of the how, but I know of the how-less. [3]
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.
[edit] 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:
- 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."
- 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 and 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, 'Whose 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, he did not see it.(As he spent fourteen years making his way to the Ka'ba, because in every place of prayer he performed two raka'ts).
- Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham said: "Alas! What has happened? It maybe that some injure 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 said: "O indeed, who is this?" He ran, and saw Rabia arriving and 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 raka'ts 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."
[edit] References
- ^ "Freed from slavery by her master.", Jaihoon.com.
- ^ "In her early to mid eighties when she died.", Poetseers.org.
- ^ Farid al-Din Attar, Rabe'a al-Adawiya, from Muslim Saints and Mystics, trans. A.J. Arberry, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983
[edit] External links
- Islamicedfoundation.com - Poetry Excerpts
- [1] 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
