Saints and Tombs of Baghdad

Saint

Najm al-Din al-Razi (Daya)

Kubrawi shaykh and Qur'an commentator; author of Mirsad al-'ibad , one of the most widely read books among Persian prose works of Sufism. His full name is Abu Bakr Najm al-Din Daya 'Abd Allah b. Muhammad b. Shahawar al-Asadi al-Razi ; he is also known as Najm al-Din Razi. Holding an important place in the history of the Kubrawiyya, Daya became known through his writings rather than through activity as a shaykh in the order and in spiritual guidance. He was born in Rayy in 573 (1177). The name Najm al-Din derives from the word “Najm/Najma”, which he used as a pen name; the epithet Daya (wet nurse) points to his having trained many disciples. Even so, the sources name only one disciple of his, called al-Daymuni. In 599 (1202) he left Rayy in pursuit of learning; it appears that he was in Egypt the following year. From there he went on to the Hijaz and, after the pilgrimage, stayed for a while in Baghdad. He then went to Khurasan and later to Khwarazm; from Khwarazm he returned to Iraq, toured Baghdad and other cities, and visited Azerbaijan. He went back to Khurasan once more, above all to take lessons in hadith and exegesis. After staying there for a time he went to Khwarazm to join the circle of Najm al-Din Kubra , founder of the Kubrawiyya order. Najm al-Din Kubra entrusted his Sufi training to Majd al-Din al-Baghdadi . He left Khwarazm and returned to Rayy either before the Mongol invasion of Khwarazm or after Majd al-Din al-Baghdadi was killed by the Khwarazmshah 'Ala' al-Din. When the Mongol danger threatened Rayy as well, he moved to Hamadan; as he himself confessed, by leaving Rayy he abandoned his family to death at the hands of the Mongols. After a year in Hamadan he crossed into Anatolia by way of Erbil and Diyarbakir. In Malatya he met Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi , adviser to the Caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah, and received from him a letter of recommendation to be presented to the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan 'Ala' al-Din Kayqubad. He reached Kayseri in Ramadan 618 (November 1221) and in 620 (1223) presented his famous Mirsad al-'ibad to 'Ala' al-Din Kayqubad in Sivas. 'Abd al-Rahman Jami states that he met Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi and Sadr al-Din Qunawi in Konya and relates this report: leading the sunset prayer, Najm al-Din recited Surat al-Kafirun in both units, and Mawlana joked to Sadr al-Din, “He recited one for you and one for us.” After about three years in Central Anatolia, in 621 (1224) he went to Erzincan, ruled by the Mengujekid Sultan 'Ala' al-Din Dawud Shah, and there wrote his Marmuzat-i Asadi dar Mazmurat-i Dawudi in the sultan's name. Not finding in Erzincan the interest he had hoped for, he left Anatolia for Baghdad to enter the service of the Abbasid caliphate. In 622 (1225) the Caliph al-Zahir bi-Amr Allah sent him as envoy to Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah in Tabriz, and he lived for a while in Tabriz. He spent roughly the last thirty years of his life in Baghdad, and wrote his exegesis Bahr al-haqa'iq wa-l-ma'ani in this period. He died in Baghdad in 654 (1256) and was buried in the Shuniziyya cemetery beside the graves of Junayd al-Baghdadi and Sari al-Saqati. His Works — ① Mirsad al-'ibad min al-mabda' ila al-ma'ad : a work with many copies in the libraries of Iran, Turkey, India and Central Asia, more influential than the works of other Kubrawi authors, written in a literary and moving Persian; it consists of an introduction and five parts. Its main subjects are the levels of creation, prophethood and the dimensions of religion, the etiquette and principles of Sufism, dreams and visions, the colours of the light arising from dhikr, the inner form of the human being, and the spiritual benefits gained from different trades. It was translated into Turkish in 825 (1422) by Qasim b. Muhammad of Karahisar as Irshad al-murid ila al-Murad and dedicated to Murad II; as one of the basic Sufi texts of Chinese Muslims it was translated into Chinese by Wu Zixan in the 1670s, and this translation was read until the early twentieth century; Hamid Algar translated it into English (New York 1982). ② Bahr al-haqa'iq wa-l-ma'ani fi tafsir al-sab' al-mathani : his large exegesis, also known as 'Ayn al-hayat and al-Ta'wilat al-Najmiyya , which aims to blend the outer and inner meanings of the Qur'an; despite its wide influence it has not yet been published. ③ Marmuzat-i Asadi dar Mazmurat-i Dawudi : a work in ten chapters dedicated to 'Ala' al-Din Dawud Shah, in effect a “special edition” of the Mirsad ; in the first chapter the saying “I was a hidden treasure” is explained word by word. ④ Manarat al-sa'irin wa-maqamat al-ta'irin : a work in ten chapters probably written in his last years, in effect an Arabic version of the Mirsad . ⑤ Risala-yi 'Ishq u 'Aql : a commentary on Kharaqani's ecstatic utterance “The Sufi is not created.” ⑥ Ash'ar-i Shaykh Najm al-Din Razi : compiled from his poems found in his works and in the biographical anthologies. ⑦ Risalat al-tuyur : a short treatise written around 590 (1194) describing the oppression in Rayy. He also has two further treatises: Siraj al-qulub , containing answers to thirty questions of jurisprudence, and Hasrat al-muluk wa-Tuhfat al-Habib .

BağdatDied 654 AHView

Saint

Abdul-Qadir Gilani

Founder of the Qadiriyya order; his full name is Muhyi al-Din Abu Muhammad Abd al-Qadir b. Abi Salih Musa Zangidost al-Gilani. He was born in 470 (1077) in the village of Nayf , in the province of Gilan southwest of the Caspian Sea. His nisba is pronounced "al-Jili, al-Jilani" in Arabic, "Gili, Gilani" in Persian and Geylani in Turkish. His father Abu Salih Musa is known to have been a pious man, but little more is recorded of him. His mother, Umm al-Khayr Amat al-Jabbar Fatima , daughter of the well-known ascetic and Sufi Abu Abdullah al-Sawma'i, is herself held to have been among the women saints. He lost his father in childhood and grew up with his mother under the care of his grandfather al-Sawma'i. At eighteen, with his mother's leave, he joined a caravan and went to Baghdad (1095), then the foremost centre of learning. There he studied hadith with scholars such as Abu Ghalib b. Baqillani, Ja'far al-Sarraj, Abu Bakr Susan and Abu Talib b. Yusuf; jurisprudence with jurists such as Abu Sa'd al-Mukharrimi, Abu Khattab and Qadi Abu Husayn; and literature with philologists such as Zakariyya al-Tabrizi. In a short time he acquired wide learning in the principles and branches of law and in the schools of thought. In these years, during which he formed close friendships with the Sufis of Baghdad, he entered the Sufi path through Abu'l-Khayr Muhammad b. Muslim al-Dabbas (d. 525/1131); the sources report that he received the cloak of the order from al-Dabbas and became his son-in-law. In the madrasa at Bab al-Araj assigned to him by his teacher Abu Sa'd he taught hadith, exegesis, Qur'anic recitation, law and grammar, and began to preach; after a time he abandoned all of this and withdrew into seclusion. According to the legend , at the end of a period of seclusion lasting some twenty-five years he vowed to eat nothing by his own hand unless another fed him; and although forty days passed and the cries "I am hungry, I am hungry" rose from within him, he held out with an extraordinary power of endurance. When he first began to preach in 1127 he addressed only a few people. As his congregation steadily grew and the madrasa became too small, he moved his preaching assembly to a mosque at Bab al-Halba . It is related that 70,000 people came to Baghdad to hear the sermons he gave in the open air, and that those in the back rows heard his voice as easily as those in the front. Because he at once brought those he met under his influence he was also called Baz Allah (the falcon of God) and al-Baz al-ashhab (the falcon that does not lose its prey); according to al-Damiri this title was given him in the assembly of his shaykh al-Dabbas. The sources mention with one voice that in his sermons he promised his hearers salvation and paradise, that he spoke with enough certainty to give them a guarantee of it, and that his oratory was extremely effective. His chain of transmission reaches Junayd of Baghdad through Abu Sa'd Mubarak al-Mukharrimi, Abu'l-Hasan al-Hakkari, Abu'l-Faraj al-Tarsusi, Abd al-Wahid al-Tamimi and Shibli. At the end of his period of seclusion he went on the pilgrimage with his son, and invested many of the Sufis he met at Mecca with the cloak. He died at Baghdad in 561 (1166). His Circle of Influence — The Qadiriyya became one of the most widespread orders in the Muslim world. Its members are known in North Africa chiefly as sharif, shurafa, shorfa , and in Iraq, Syria and Anatolia as sayyid and Geylani . The Gilani sayyids of Baghdad and its region were at times compelled by the Mongol and Timurid invasions to leave Baghdad for Mosul and Iran, but later returned to Baghdad, where the tomb of their ancestor lies. He holds an important place in Turkish folk literature and folklore as well; the lines attributed to Yunus Emre, "Though you roam the world as a traveller, you will find no man like Abd al-Qadir" , are among the examples. His Poetry and Sufi Line — On going to Baghdad he left the Shafi'i school, to which he had belonged, for the Hanbali school, which he found better suited to his temperament, while continuing to issue legal opinions according to both schools to the end of his life. In his own time he became the imam of the Hanbalis, and for this was given the title Muhyi al-Din ('reviver of religion'). Saying "the best of the schools is the school of Imam Ahmad" , he defended Ahmad b. Hanbal fervently in both practice and belief, and did not attempt to interpret the ambiguous verses figuratively. His attachment to the school is plain in all his works, and especially in al-Ghunya . His Works — His best-known works are al-Ghunya li-talibi tariq al-haqq , which he states he wrote at the request of a disciple, and Futuh al-ghayb , compiled by his son Abd al-Razzaq from his addresses in his assemblies and divided into seventy-eight discourses. The most important part of al-Ghunya from the Sufi standpoint is its final section, "Adab al-murid" . Futuh al-ghayb was commented upon by Ibn Taymiyya and by Abd al-Haqq al-Dihlawi. 🔴 The treatise Ghawthiyya ( Khamriyya ) ascribed to him — purporting to contain conversations between God and himself — is, in the source's explicit words, not his .

BağdatDied 561 AHView

Saints and Tombs of Baghdad

Map of Baghdad

Records in Baghdad

Najm al-Din al-Razi (Daya)

Nearby cities

Al-Hallaj (Husayn ibn Mansur)

Abu Sa'id al-Mubarak al-Makhzumi

Abu Bakr al-Shibli

Abu al-Fadl Abd al-Wahid al-Tamimi

Abu al-Faraj al-Tarsusi

Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi

Muhammad al-Zajjaj (Abu Amr al-Zajjaji)

Junayd al-Baghdadi

Abdul-Qadir Gilani

Ma'ruf al-Karkhi

Sari al-Saqati

Bishr al-Hafi

Imam Abu Hanifa

Imam Musa al-Kazim

Imam Muhammad al-Jawad