Abu Turab al-Nakhshabi

Abu Turab al-Nakhshabi was one of the shaykhs of the East. Abu Nu'aym gives him notice 462 in the tenth volume of Hilyat al-Awliya and calls him a leading figure among those who trust in God and a master of those who strip themselves of possessions, known for his austerities and his journeys. He records that Abu Turab was trained by Hatim al-Asamm and Ali al-Razi al-Madhbuh, and that he came to Isfahan and heard hadith there. Abu Nu'aym had a close link to him: his own grandfather Muhammad ibn Yusuf kept his company for a long time in Mecca and the Hijaz, and Abu Bakr ibn Abi Asim accompanied him in the desert. One chain of transmission calls him "Abu Turab the ascetic, of Balkh". ^{1 2}

Much of the notice is teaching that Abu Turab relates from Hatim al-Asamm, from Shaqiq al-Balkhi. It includes four kinds of knowledge without which no one is safe: knowledge of God, of one's self, of God's command and prohibition, and of God's enemy and one's own, each explained. It also includes Hatim's saying that he calls people to three things, knowledge, reliance and trust, and that trust is the heart's rest in what God has promised. ^{3 4}

Abu Abd Allah ibn al-Jalla' says that he met six hundred shaykhs and saw none like four of them, the first being Abu Turab. He relates from him that a teacher must have four things, among them telling God's act from the act of creatures and knowing temperaments and selves. Ibn al-Farji relates that he saw a hundred and twenty companions around Abu Turab, and that only Ibn al-Jalla' and Abu Ubayd al-Busri held to poverty until death. ⁵

He tells that his self asked him for something only once: on a journey it wanted bread and eggs, and he turned aside to a village. A man seized him and said he had been with the robbers, and he was given seventy lashes. Then someone recognised him and cried out "this is Abu Turab"; they apologised, and the man took him home and set bread and eggs before him. ⁶

He said he knew nothing more harmful to novices than journeys made at the bidding of their own selves. Seeing a Sufi reach for melon rinds, he told him: Sufism is not for you; keep to the market. He said that when hearts grow used to turning away from God, slander of God's friends follows. He told people that they love three things that are not theirs, the self and the spirit, which are God's, and wealth, which is the heirs'; and that they seek two things they will not find in this world, joy and rest. When a man offered to see to any need he had, he said: the day I have a need of you, I shall have no need of God. ⁷

Ibrahim al-Khawwas relates that he died between Mecca and Medina, mauled by wild beasts. Abu Amr al-Istakhri relates that he saw him dead in the desert, standing upright with nothing holding him. The notice gives no year for his death. ⁸