Abu Bakr al-Shibli

Abu Bakr al-Shibli (full name traditionally given as Abu Bakr Dulaf ibn Jahdar al-Shibli) was a Sufi (Islamic mystic) of Baghdad, counted among the leading figures of the early "sober" school associated with his teacher al-Junayd. Reference works place his life at roughly 247/861 to 334/946; these dates are traditional estimates rather than firmly documented. His family was of Khurasani origin — sources connect the name "al-Shibli" to a village (given as Shibliyya or Shibla) in the Usrushana region of Transoxania — while he himself is generally said to have been born in Samarra; one tradition instead has the family from Samarqand and his birth in Baghdad. Before turning to the mystical path he is reported to have served the Abbasid state as a court official (hajib, "chamberlain"), and some accounts make him a deputy-governor of the district of Demavand; he is said to have renounced this career around the age of forty to follow al-Junayd. Later tradition remembers him as a Maliki in law (one of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence), though this is not uniformly reported. He became famous for shathiyat — ecstatic, paradoxical utterances spoken in states of mystical intoxication — and biographers report episodes of confinement linked to this conduct. He is frequently associated in later narrative with the controversial mystic al-Hallaj, executed in Baghdad in 922, though such anecdotes are reported rather than securely attested. He died and was buried in Baghdad, where his tomb was long venerated.