Abu Nasr al-Sarraj
?–c. 988 CE · Tus
Abu Nasr 'Abd Allah ibn 'Ali al-Sarraj al-Tusi was a teacher and writer of Sufism (tasawwuf, the inward, mystical dimension of Islam) who came from Tus in Khurasan, the region of north-eastern Iran. His birth date is not recorded, and even his death is known only approximately: the sources place it in the month of Rajab 378 AH, that is October–November 988 CE.
He is remembered above all for the Kitab al-Luma' ("Book of Light-Flashes"), widely regarded as one of the earliest surviving systematic handbooks of Sufism. In it he set out to define the discipline, trace its roots to the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims, and defend its practitioners against the charge of departing from Islamic law. Because he quotes many earlier mystics, the book is a major source for the sayings of figures who would otherwise be lost. Modern scholarship dates his importance partly to Reynold A. Nicholson, who edited the Arabic text in 1914.
According to his editor, al-Sarraj travelled widely and recorded conversations with Sufis in Basra, Baghdad, Damascus, Ramla and Antioch, among other places. Later Persian biographers gave him the affectionate title "Peacock of the Poor" (ta'us al-fuqara'). He is described as a careful Sunni, learned in religious law as well as mysticism. Reports differ on where he died: one tradition says he passed away while praying at Nishapur, another that he was buried in his native Tus, where his tomb later became a place of pilgrimage.
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Tus
What they did here
His editor Nicholson, drawing on the medieval biographers, states that al-Sarraj 'was a native of Tus'; his nisba al-Tusi reflects this. His birth date is not recorded by any source.
About Tus
Tus is an ancient city of Khurasan in northeastern Iran, near modern Mashhad. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid died there in 809, and the imam Ali al-Rida was buried in 818 beside him at nearby Sanabad; the shrine that grew around his tomb gave Mashhad its name. The poet Ferdowsi, born in a village near Tus, died and was buried there, and the theologian al-Ghazali was born in its district and died there in 1111. Other figures associated with the city include Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Shaykh Tusi and Jabir ibn Hayyan. The Mongols sacked Tus in 1220.
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