Rābiʿah al-ʿAdawīyah (wafat, 801) who first formulated the Sufi ideal of a love of Allah. The introduction of the element of love, which changed asceticism into mysticism
al-Muḥāsibī (wafat, 857) The Iraqi school who believed that purging the soul in preparation for companionship with God was the only value of asceticism. teachings of classical sobriety and wisdom were perfected by Junayd of Baghdad
Nubian Dhū al-Nūn (wafat, 859) introduced the technical term maʿ rifah (“interior knowledge”)
Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (wafat, 874) representative of the important doctrine of annihilation of the self, fanāʾ
Sahl al-Tustarī (wafat, 896) The first of the theosophical speculations based on mystical insights about human nature and the essence of the Prophet Muhammad
Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (922)
Junayd al-Baghdadi (wafat, 910), to whom all later chains of the transmission of doctrine and legitimacy go back
Abū Ṭālib Makkī, Sarrāj, and Kalābādhī in the late 10th century, compendiums composed in Arabic
Qushayrī and, in Persian, by Hujvīrī in the 11th century reveal how these authors tried to defend Sufism and to prove its orthodox character.
Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (wafat, 1111) the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious Sciences”)
Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, (Sawāniḥ; “Occurrences” [i.e., stray thoughts]) on mystical love, a subject that then became the main subject of Persian poetry.
Awal Munculnya Tarekat (Abad 13)
Ibn alʿArabī theory of “Unity of Being.”
Ibn al-Fāriḍ wrote the finest mystical poems in Arabic.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī (1207–73), Mas̄navī-yi Maʿnavī in about 26,000 couplets—a work that is for the Persian-reading mystics second in importance only to the Qurʾān
al-Shādhilī (wafat, 1258); its main literary representative,
Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh of Alexandria, wrote sober aphorisms (ḥikam).
al-Shaʿrānī in Egypt (wafat, 1565)
ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī in Syria (wafat, 1731).
The first systematic books explaining the tenets of Sufism date from the 10th century
Sarrāj
Sulamī, Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī
Ādāb al-murīdīn (“The Adepts’ Etiquette”) by Abū Najīb al-Suhrawardī (died 1168)
Awārif al-maʿārif (“The Well-Known Sorts of Knowledge”).
Ibn al-ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”) is the textbook of waḥdat al-wujūd (God and creation as two aspects of one reality). His smaller work on the peculiar character of the prophets—Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”)—became even more popular.
malfūẓāt, a collection of sayings of the mystical leader,
Sanāʾī’s (wafat, 1131?) Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah wa sharīʿat ạt-ṭariqah (“The Garden of Truth and the Law of Practice”),
ʿAṭṭar’s Manṭeq al-ṭeyr (“The Conference of the Birds”)
Rūmī’s Mas̄navī-ye maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”).