Sufis, Renunciants, and Worshippers in Tārīkh Baghdād

Abstract

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. Baghdad, 463/1071) adhered to the Shāfiʿi school of law and suffered for his adherence to the Ashʿari school of theology. As a littérateur, he collected amusing stories of misers and spongers. However, his principal importance lies in the fields of hadith and biography. As for hadith, he was a major systematizer; in biography, he left what is usually referred to as Tārīkh Baghdād, a hugely useful dictionary of over 7,000 persons who lived or at least passed through Baghdad. I propose to review those identified as renunciants (zuhhād, nussāk), worshippers (ʿubbād), and Sufis, or at least are associated with famous renunciants, worshippers, and Sufis. A useful list of them was abstracted by Balsam Baṣrī ʿIzzat (2004) from the new edition of Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (also 2004), his supervisor, although I would add or subtract some names. It is useful to have them profiled by someone outside the Sufi tradition himself; e.g., so that we read of al-Qushayrī as an Ashʿarī, not a Sufi. Al-Khaṭīb also to some extent documents the continuation of the old renunciant tradition into the Sufi period. However, classical Sufism originated in and spread from Baghdad, and al-Khaṭīb’s heavy dependence on earlier biographers testifies partly to how thoroughly that tradition took over the literature of otherworldly piety.