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Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi
Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi
1145 CE–1234 CE · Baghdad
Shihab al-Din Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi (c. 1145–1234 CE / c. 539–632 AH) was a Persian Sunni Sufi master and Shafi'i jurist, and the nephew of the Sufi teacher Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi. He is best known for his manual Awarif al-Maarif, an influential systematic treatise on Sufi doctrine, etiquette, and the discipline of spiritual life that became a standard textbook of the tradition. Based in Baghdad, he gave enduring institutional form to the Suhrawardiyya order founded by his uncle, and served the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah as a diplomat to several courts and in the office of Shaykh al-Islam. He is not to be confused with his contemporary Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi, the founder of the Illuminationist (Ishraqi) school.
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BaghdadIraq
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About Baghdad
Baghdad, on the Tigris, is the capital of modern Iraq. The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded it in 762 as his capital, and for five centuries it was a leading centre of Islamic learning, with the House of Wisdom, the Nizamiyya madrasa and many jurists, Sufis and scientists; Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, eponym of the Qadiriyya order, is buried there. The Mongol sack of 1258 ended the caliphate, and the city later passed to Ottoman rule. It was also a seat of the patriarchs of the Church of the East and of the exilarch who headed Babylonian Jewry. Its Jewish community, whose foremost nineteenth-century rabbi was Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai), almost entirely emigrated to Israel in 1950-52.
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