Early Pious, Mystic, and Sufi Women
From a Twitter Thread posted by me on March 7, 2021
Early pious and mystic women were famous for their stubborn trust in their knowledge of God and making their own way in a world that was threatening to exclude them.
Sculpture by Maimouna Guerresi, "Carpet Bronze."
Some of what follows may be familiar to you if you've read my novels, especially The Lover. Zaytuna and Tein's mother is a composite of early Sufi women and her life story and dialogue and is adapted from these sources.
Unfortunately, Women almost entirely disappear from the biographies of Sufis by the 5th/11th century. We argue about why. I think Sara Abdel Latif is right to point at a complex of reasons, an important one being the real risk of violence and shunning over accusations of impiety.
So it may be that biographies defining the Sufi path and its history become more pious-than-thou to protect these communities. The problem is that later Sufis read these sources and think that is how things were and women should be rightfully excluded from authority and even attendance.
A taste of that trouble brewing shows up in the early reports which depict men vouching for women who teach publicly and privately. In these stories, men challenge the women who then show the men up spiritually with sharp-tongued answers proving they are above reproach.
She recited this poem in ecstasy, declaring to him that she was chosen by God for this (not men).
There are elect chosen for His love
He chose them in the beginning of time
He chose them before the splitting of His creation
As ones entrusted with wisdom and eloquence.
The elderly Umm al-Husayn al-Qurayshiyya of Nasa visited the circles of male teachers and berated Abū al-Qāsim al-Nasrabadhi for his teachings. He snapped at her to be quiet, to which she replied, “I will be quiet when you are quiet!
Accounts show that women taught others most often in informal environments, through friends, family, met wandering on the road, meeting in the marketplace, on hajj, and anywhere else you can imagine! But sometimes formal gatherings, too.
If a woman had wisdom to share, Sufis, men and women alike, were going to seek her out and pass along her stories. Men would ask other men if they had memorized sayings of well-known Sufi women. Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 778) was asked about the wisdom sayings of women he met.
They would visit women who wept and inspired them to weep as well. Shawana was visited by men and women alike in formal gatherings and would preach and weep so profoundly out of her love of God that people could not even understand her!
Parents sent their children to study with wise women. A child was sent to sit and learn from Talha al-Adawiyya. He describes how she would sit with baskets of raisins, buckthorn, and fresh beans before her, counting praises to God with them and snacking on them in turn.
Not all women appreciated men’s interest in learning from them. One particularly effective way to get rid of men was simply to pray straight through their visit, leaving the men waiting for her to finish until they leave impressed with her piety, not irritated she ignored them.
Some women taught only other women. Shabaka of Basra led women in rigorous spiritual seclusion in underground cells dug into the floor of her home, where they likely fasted, prayed, and recited litanies.
From later sources other than biographies (like art) we know that even when women disappear from the sources they are attending mixed-gender gatherings and teaching. But by being excluded from formal sources, they come to be almost entirely excluded from most formal authority.
Small numbers of female Sufi teachers continue on to this day, mainly informal, but some formal. Formally, look to Seyyeda Zainabu Mbathie and her disciples in Senegal of the Fayda Tijaniyya. On women teachers of Senegal see, for instance, Joseph Hill's Wrapping Authority.
Or Cemâlnur Sargut, guide of the Rifai Sufi order in Turkey whose teachings have recently been translated in Beauty and Light.
Or Fariha al-Jerrahi of the Nur Askhi Jerrahi order in New York and Mexico.
For a collection of stories of Sufi women read Helminski's Women of Sufism: A Hidden Treasure. It's not academic as it compiles accounts from different periods, reliable and unreliable, together. But it they are wonderfully engaging stories of Sufi women that give a wonderful feel for them and their importance to those who passed on their accounts over the years.
Historical, scholarly, and also wonderful is Rkia Cornell's Early Sufi Women (a translation and introduction to Sulami's biographies of early pious and mystic women). And DO NOT miss Cornell's book on Rabia al-Adawiyya, Rabia from Narrative to Myth, which collects every scrap of information about her and offers incisive analysis of the sources showing how she came to be the Rabia we know today.
I mentioned Sara Abdel-Latif’s “Narrativizing Early Mystic and Sufi Women” above for the latest scholarship on early pious and mystic women or Sufism and gender.
Arin Salamah Qudsi's Sufism and Early Islamic Piety which has quite a bit on early women.
Maria Dakake’s “Walking along the Path like Men?
Women and the Feminine in the Islamic Mystical Tradition” and “Guests of the Inmost Heart.”
Finally my articles, “God Loves Me,” and “Early, Pious, Mystic, and Sufi Women.”
More can be found by going through our footnotes and bibliographies. my own work
The artist is Maimouna Guerresi. “Carpet Bronze.” Follow her on Instagram.