At a glance
- Roles
- mystic
- Era
- The Umayyad Period
- Region
- Levant & Iraq
In space
Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph
Place in the story
Sunni (transmitted)
Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.
Summary
Bahriyya al-Abida is among the women ascetics of Basra in Sifat al-Safwa (no. 601); she was strenuous in devotion and held a gathering in which she admonished, and when she spoke she trembled and shivered. 1
Her prayer and her hunger
From Rabah ibn Abi al-Jarrah: he saw her weeping and telling her Lord that she had left Him when she was a fresh date and come to Him a dry one, asking Him to accept the dry date as it was. She had some beauty, hunger had worn her down, and she once went forty days eating nothing but a little chickpea. 1
From her words
Ahmad ibn Abi al-Hawari reports from an old woman of Basra that she heard Bahriyya say: "When the heart leaves its desires it becomes familiar with knowledge and follows it, and bears all that comes upon it." 1
For young visitors
Bahriyya was a woman of Basra who taught people in her own gathering, and said that a heart which leaves its cravings comes to love knowledge.
Connections
- Lived in
- Basra
People and things also explored
Ufayra the Devout· Ajrada al-Ammiyya· Amat al-Jalil bint Amr al-Adawiyya· Amra, wife of Habib al-Ajami· Burda al-Sarimiyya· Habiba al-Adawiyya· Hafsa bint Sirin· Kurdawiyya bint Amr al-Basriyya
Sources
- Sifat al-Safwa — Ibn al-Jawzi (ed. Khalid Mustafa Tartusi, Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, Beirut 1433/2012) , p.714
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Bahriyya al-Abida”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/bahriyya-al-abida/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-04.
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