The Weeping King of Muslim Pietistic Tradition

Kitāb al-waraʿ (Book of Religious Scrupulosity) by ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ḥabīb (d. 238/853) belongs to a tradition of third/ninth-century ḥadīṯ compilations that deal with themes of piety and zuhd (lit. “mild asceticism” or “renunciation”).1 The surviving compilations on waraʿ, a term usually translated as “religious scrupulosity,” were authored by or ascribed to Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 242/855), al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857), Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894),2 and ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ḥabīb (d. 238/853). To this list we may add Kitāb al-zuhd wa-’l-ʿibāda wa-’l-waraʿ (The Book of Renunciation, Worship and Religious Scrupulosity) written by Asad b. Mūsā (d. 212/827), but the state in which this work has been preserved sets it apart from other similar compilations, as only traditions on Hell have survived from the book that must have originally included ḥadiṯ on other topics as well.3 ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ḥabīb was one of the principal figures in the early Malikism of al-Andalus. A full description of his life goes beyond the scope of the present work. Suffice it to say that he initially adhered to the maḏhab of al-Awzāʿī (which was, supposedly, the most popular legal school in al-Andalus before