The following bibliography presents the Arabic sources that are extant or largely reproduced in later writings1 by the earliest Sufis or "proto-Sufis" who were active before or contemporary with ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. Nishapur, 465/1072). In total, this corpus comprises 149 works, treatises, or fragments by thirty-two authors, who were active during the period ranging from the beginning of the third/ninth century to the middle of the fifth/eleventh century. The focus on these early Arabic sources is important for three reasons.
First, the rate of publication of Arabic sources on early Sufism has increased dramatically over the past thirty years. Many of the works that appear in this bibliography - especially those from the fourth/tenth and early fifth/eleventh centuries – were documented by Fuat Sezgin (d. 2018) in the first volume of his monumental Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: Brill, 1967). However, there is no comprehensive, up-to-date record of the availability of these works in published editions, and some additional material has been located subsequent to Sezgin's study. As a consequence, many of the works noted here have rarely featured in relevant studies of early systematic Sufi literature or activity. The remark of Julian Baldick, who describes a "peculiar gap in the middle of the fourth century" in Sufis' production of documents, typifies the extent to which some of these works have remained marginal in scholarship on Sufism in European languages. 2 Although a number of the sources listed here do not provide more polished or explicit commentary on the nature of early Sufism than works from the later fifth/eleventh century, such as al-Qushayrī's voluminous output or al-Hujwīrī's Kashf al-Maḥjūb (ed. and trans. Nicholson / ed. Žukhovskiy), they are nonetheless historiographically valuable. In fact, most were composed by figures who either witnessed the formative period of the late third/ninth century firsthand, or who lived at a single remove from it and were in contact with individuals who fit the preceding description.3
Second, many of the works that appear in this bibliography are based on relational data. That is, the authors explicitly identify the source of quotes or, even more significantly, preface quotations with extensive "pathways of transmission" (Ar. asānīd; sg. isnād). The value of these relational data for better describing the dynamics of early Sufi actvity has been remarked upon by Sara Sviri: "The formative period of Islamic mysticism cannot be properly described without an attempt to map the affiliations that connected individual mystics of this period to one another."4 In the Blog, I outline a number of ways that such relational data can be used in historical investigations of the development of early Sufism.
Finally, drawing attention to these early works and their relational data is especially appropriate in light of the criticisms of "neo-skeptical" scholarship as it has been applied to the analysis of early Sufism. For instance, Jawid Mojaddedi claims that the contents of fifth-/eleventh-century works like al-Sulamī's (d. 412/1021) Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfīyah should not be treated as "databanks of factual information," and insists rather that such works convey the impression that their contents have been "creatively reworked through time." Similarly, Kenneth Avery contends that, with respect to early Sufis, "it is not the historical biography that is really preserved [in later works], though some historical data are revealed."5 Such conclusions may hold up in the end, but the relative lack of attention to actual isnād-analysis in these works – Mojaddedi examines a maximum of five isnāds for any single conclusion about the historiographical worth of early Sufi prosopographies, Avery none – should make the comprehensive examination of these data a priority in future research.
Continue reading»The order of this bibliography proceeds according to the author's date of death. Authors are grouped according to the century of their death; click the century to see the listing of authors. Dates of death and publication are given according to the (hijrī qamarī / Gregorian) calendars; a carat (^) indicates the shamsī calendar used in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Authors whose names are marked with a (+) composed multiple works which survive. Click on an author's name to see a list of surviving works. Click on the name of the work to find bibliographic information, including: Editions, Translations, unedited manuscripts (MS), and works that are explicitly Reproduced in later sources.
Individual works are marked using a color system. The specific information relating to each color is given below:
Button | Types of Works |
---|---|
Epistles (rasaʾil) and most topical works. If a work has never been described, it is filed to this default setting. | |
Works composed (largely) using isnāds; this includes, but is not limited to, works on ḥadīth. | |
Works that have been reconstructed by modern scholars. Information about the source or sources of reconstruction is given after the title, between parentheses. | |
Works that are fragmentary, show evidence of multiple layers of redaction, or which may have been excerpted from later sources; all works of this type are marked with the abbreviation attr. Typical of several minor works of al-Muḥāsibī and the waṣīyah genre. |
This bibliography is taken - with modifications from Sezgin, GAS, I:640-642 - from Gavin Picken, Spiritual Purification in Islam. The Life and Works of al-Muḥāsibī, Routledge Sufi Series (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 67-122.
This bibliography is taken from Florian Sobieroj, "Ibn Khafīf al-Shīrāzī," in Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE (Brill Online).
This list of editions and translations is taken - with amendments and additions - from Saeko Yazaki, Islamic Mysticism and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Role of the Heart, Routledge Sufi Series (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 7-9.
This bibliography is taken - with additions and ammendments - from Gerhard Böwering and Bilal Orfali (eds.). Rasāʾil Ṣūfīyah li-l-Sulamī / Sufi Treatises of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, La Collection Recherche, Nouvelle Série: Vol. 22 (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 2009), pp. 9-17; and S.Z. Chowdhury, A Ṣūfī Apologist of Nīshāpūr: The Life and Thought of Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (London: Equinox, 2019), 109–43.
This bibliography is taken from Nasrollah Pourjavavdy, "Abū Manṣūr al-Iṣfahānī," in Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE (Brill Online).
Abū Nuʿaym's scholarly interests extended well beyond the bounds of Sufism, as detailed in the bibliography of ʿAlīriḍā Dhakāwatī Qarāguzlū (Alireza Zakavati Gharagzlou) (trans. Hassan Ansari and Farzin Negahban), "Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī: Published Works; Manuscripts," in Wilferd Madelung and Farhad Daftary (eds.).Encyclopædia Islamica (Brill Online). Only those works with a discernible relation to Sufism are given here.