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A Sufi who won fame in Baghdad, named as a deputy of Qutb al-Din al-Abhari; he appears in the sources as Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi, and in Jami's account as Muhammad Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi. He is the link between Shihab al-Din Mahmud and Qutb al-Din al-Abhari in the chains of İbrahim Zahid-i Gilani and of the Khalwatiyya and Safawiyya that branched off from him.
He has no article of his own in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam; what is known of him is scattered through the articles on Awhad al-Din al-Kirmani, Shams-i Tabrizi, İbrahim Zahid-i Gilani and the Safawiyya. These articles give neither his dates of birth and death, nor his birthplace, nor his grave.
According to the article on Awhad al-Din al-Kirmani, in the years Awhad al-Din spent in Baghdad he was a Suhrawardi shaykh of very wide renown. Awhad al-Din — who probably came to Baghdad after 1180 and taught there, then left teaching for a life of strict austerity but could not reach the point he sought without binding himself to a guide — took initiation from him. One of Awhad al-Din's nine pilgrimages was made together with his shaykh Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi.
His Circle of Influence — The Sufi poet Awhad al-Din al-Kirmani was his disciple and pupil. His tie to Shams-i Tabrizi is told differently in the sources: 'Abd al-Rahman Jami says that Shams served Muhammad Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi, "deputy of Qutb al-Din Abhari and teacher of Awhad al-Din al-Kirmani"; Dawlatshah traces Shams's chain through al-Sujasi to Abu'l-Najib al-Suhrawardi and Ahmad al-Ghazali, and writes that it was al-Sujasi who sent Shams to Anatolia to find a spiritual friend; Cemaleddin Hulvi and Sarı Abdullah Efendi also count Shams among al-Sujasi's deputies. In the records of the chains, the path of İbrahim Zahid-i Gilani reaches Abu'l-Najib al-Suhrawardi through Jamal al-Din Tabrizi, Shihab al-Din Mahmud, Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi and Qutb al-Din al-Abhari; the chain of the Safawiyya likewise runs from Safi al-Din Ardabili through the same links to Qutb al-Din al-Abhari (d. 572/1177), founder of the Abhariyya.
Differing Scholarly Views
Was Shams-i Tabrizi his disciple — According to the article on Shams-i Tabrizi, since Rukn al-Din al-Sujasi's name does not appear in the Maqalat, Shams's being his disciple has been met with doubt, though as a wandering dervish he could well have met and conversed with him; and according to Jami it was Baba Kemal-i Jandi, not al-Sujasi, who sent Shams to Anatolia. The article on İbrahim Zahid-i Gilani, for its part, records that Shams states clearly in his Maqalat that he was a disciple of Abu Bakr Sallebaf, and that it is a remote possibility that the free-spirited Shams and İbrahim Zahid, who followed the path of asceticism and piety, belonged to the same shaykh. The atlas makes no choice between the reports.
Location of the grave — None of the four articles relied upon mentions his grave, his place of death or the location of Sujas, the town of his nisba. The point the atlas shows for this record is inferred from the nisba and is not confirmed by a source; the atlas leaves the pin location to confirmation by a second source.
Sources
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) · vol. 21, pp. 359-360, entry “İbrâhim Zâhid-i Geylânî”
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) · vol. 11, pp. 518-520, entry “EVHADÜDDÎN-i KİRMÂNΔ
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) — Semih Ceyhan · vol. 38, pp. 511-516, entry “ŞEMS-i TEBRÎZΔ
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (DİA) — Reşat Öngören · vol. 35, pp. 460-462, entry “SAFEVİYYE”
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