Rabia of Basra

Birth

Said to have been born between 714 and 718 CE (95 and 98 Hijri) in Basra, Iraq of the Qays tribe. much of Rābiʻas early life has been recounted by Farid ud-Din Attar, a later Sufi saint and poet. She herself left no written works about her life. She was the fourth daughter of her family and therefore named Rābiʻa, meaning "fourth". Although not born into slavery, her family was poor yet respected in the community.

According to Fariduddin Attar, when Rābiʻa was born, her parents were so poor that there was no oil in house to light a lamp, nor even a cloth to wrap her with. Her mother asked her husband to borrow some oil from a neighbor, but he had resolved in his life never to ask for anything from anyone except God. He pretended to go to the neighbor's door and returned home empty-handed. At night Muhammad 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 failed to observe the rule last Thursday, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars'".

Life

However, after the death of her father, famine overtook Basra. She parted from her sisters. Rabia went into the desert to pray and became an ascetic. She is often cited as being the queen of saintly women, and was known for her complete devotion in the form of "pure love of God." As an exemplar among others devoted to God, she provided a model of mutual love between God and His creation; her example is one in which the loving devotee on earth becomes one with the Beloved.

She prayed:

O God! 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.

Death

Rābiʻa died in her 80s in Basra in 185 AH/801 CE, where her tomb was shown outside the city.

Philosophy

Often noted as having been the single most famous and influential Sufi woman of Islamic history, Rābiʻa was renowned for her extreme virtue and piety. A devoted ascetic, when asked why she performed a thousand ritual prostrations both during the day and at night, she answered:

"I desire no reward for it; I do it so that the Messenger of God, may God bless him and give him peace, will delight in it on the day of Resurrection and say to the prophets, 'Take note of what a woman of my community has accomplished'".

She was intense in her self-denial and devotion to God. As an explanation of her refusal to lift her head toward the heavens [to God] as an act of modesty, she used to say: "Were the world the possession of a single man, it would not make him rich ... [B]ecause it is passing away."

She was the one who first set forth the doctrine of Divine Love known as Ishq-e-Haqeeqi and is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets.

Much of the poetry that is attributed to her is of unknown origin. After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. When asked by Shaikh Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating:

"You know of the how, but I know of the how-less."

One of the many myths that surround 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.

Feminist theory based on the life of Rabi'a al-Adawiyya

Several aspects of the Sufi religion suggest that Sufi ideologies and practices have stood as counters to dominant society and its perception of women and the relationships between men and women. The stories detailing the life and practices of Rabi'a al-Adawiyya show a countercultural understanding of the role of gender in society. Her role as a spiritual and intellectual superiority is depicted in several narratives. In a Sufi narrative, Sufi leader Hasan al-Basri explained, "I passed one whole night and day with Rabi'a ... it never passed through my mind that I was a man nor did it occur to her that she was a woman...when I looked at her I saw myself as bankrupt [i.e. as spiritually worth nothing] and Rabi'a as truly sincere [rich in spiritual virtue]."

Anecdotes

One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a pot of fire in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said,"I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to Allah. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of Allah."

In popular culture

The life of Rabia has been the subject of several motion pictures by Turkish cinema. One of these films, Rabia, released in 1973, was directed by Osman F. Seden, and Fatma Girik played the leading role of Rabia.

Rabia, İlk Kadın Evliya (Rabia, The First Woman Saint), another Turkish film on Rabia, also of 1973 was directed by Süreyya Duru and starred by Hülya Koçyiğit.