A full and vivid picture of early Ṣúfiism might be drawn from the numerous biographies in Arabic and Persian, which supply abundant details concerning the manner of life of these Muḥammadan Saints, and faithfully record their austerities, visions, miracles, and sayings. Here we have only space to add a few lines about the most important members of the group--Ibráhím b. Adham, Abú ‘Alí Shaqíq, Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyáḍ, and Rábi‘a--all of whom died between the middle and end of the second century after the Hijra (767-815 A.D.). Ibráhím belonged to the royal family of Balkh. Forty scimitars of gold and forty maces of gold were borne in front of him and behind. One day, while hunting, he heard a voice which cried, "Awake! wert thou created for this?" He exchanged his splendid robes for the humble garb and felt cap of a shepherd, bade farewell to his kingdom, and lived for nine years in a cave near Naysábúr.[447] His customary prayer was, "O God, uplift me from the shame of disobedience to the glory of submission unto Thee!"
"O God!" he said, "Thou knowest that the Eight Paradises are little beside the honour which Thou hast done unto me, and beside Thy love, and beside Thy giving me intimacy with the praise of Thy name, and beside the peace of mind which Thou hast given me when I meditate on Thy majesty." And again: "You will not attain to righteousness until you traverse six passes (_‘aqabát_): the first is that you shut the door of pleasure and open the door of hardship; the second, that you shut the door of eminence and open the door of abasement; the third, that you shut the door of ease and open the door of affliction; the fourth, that you shut the door of sleep and open the door of wakefulness; the fifth, that you shut the door of riches and open the door of poverty; and the sixth, that you shut the door of expectation and open the door of making yourself ready for death."
Shaqíq, also of Balkh, laid particular stress on the duty of leaving one's self entirely in God's hands (_tawakkul_), a term which is practically synonymous with passivity; _e.g._, the _mutawakkil_ must make no effort to obtain even the barest livelihood, he must not ask for anything, nor engage in any trade: his business is with God alone. One of Shaqíq's sayings was, "Nine-tenths of devotion consist in flight from mankind, the remaining tenth in silence." Similarly, Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyáḍ, a converted captain of banditti, declared that "to abstain for men's sake from doing anything is hypocrisy, while to do anything for men's sake is idolatry." It may be noticed as an argument against the Indian origin of Ṣúfiism that although the three Ṣúfís who have been mentioned were natives of Khurásán or Transoxania, and therefore presumably in touch with Buddhistic ideas, no trace can be found in their sayings of the doctrine of dying to self (_faná_), which plays a great part in subsequent Ṣúfiism, and which Von Kremer and others have identified with _Nirvána_. We now come to a more interesting personality, in whom the ascetic and quietistic type of Ṣúfiism is transfigured by emotion and begins clearly to reveal the direction of its next advance. Every one knows that women have borne a distinguished part in the annals of European mysticism: St. Teresa, Madame Guyon, Catharine of Siena, and Juliana of Norwich, to mention but a few names at random. And notwithstanding the intellectual death to which the majority of Moslem women are condemned by their Prophet's ordinance, the Ṣúfís, like the Roman Catholics, can boast a goodly number of female saints. The oldest of these, and by far the most renowned, is Rábi‘a, who belonged to the tribe of ‘Adí, whence she is generally called Rábi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. She was a native of Baṣra and died at Jerusalem, probably towards the end of the second century of Islam: her tomb was an object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, as we learn from Ibn Khallikán († 1282 A.D.). Although the sayings and verses attributed to her by Ṣúfí writers may be of doubtful authenticity, there is every reason to suppose that they fairly represent the actual character of her devotion, which resembled that of all feminine mystics in being inspired by tender and ardent feeling. She was asked: "Do you love God Almighty?" "Yes." "Do you hate the Devil?" "My love of God," she replied, "leaves me no leisure to hate the Devil. I saw the Prophet in a dream. He said, 'O Rábi‘a, do you love me?' I said, 'O Apostle of God, who does not love thee?--but love of God hath so absorbed me that neither love nor hate of any other thing remains in my heart.'" Rábi‘a is said to have spoken the following verses:--