Bayazid al-Bistami

Abu Yazid Tayfur ibn Isa ibn Surushan al-Bistami, one of the leading figures of Islamic Sufism. He was born around 188 AH (804 CE) and died around 261 AH (875 CE). ¹

The encyclopaedia says that his influence was great on his contemporaries and on those who came after them. ¹

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), unsigned, gives his full name as Abu Yazid Tayfur b. 'Isa b. Surushan al-Bistami. He spent much of his life in Bistam, in the province of Kumis, after a period when orthodox theologians' hostility forced him to live away from home. He died there in 261/874 or 264/877-8. The Ilkhanid Uljaytu Muhammad Khudabanda is said to have had a dome built over his grave in 713/1313. He wrote nothing, but some five hundred of his sayings were handed down, in part extremely daring and expressing an experience of the self merged with God. His disciple and attendant Abu Musa 'Isa b. Adam, son of his elder brother, first collected them, and al-Junayd received such sayings in Persian and translated them into Arabic. ²

Other transmitters were 'Isa's son Musa, known as 'Ammi, and the "lesser Tayfur" b. 'Isa. Among visitors who recorded his sayings were Abu Musa al-Dabili of Dabil in Armenia and Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Harawi, known as Istanba, a pupil of Ibrahim b. Adham. Abu Yazid was a friend of Dhu 'l-Nun al-Misri, and al-Junayd wrote a commentary on his utterances, of which parts survive in al-Sarraj's Luma'. The fullest source is the Kitab al-Nur fi Kalimat Abi Yazid Tayfur by Abu 'l-Fadl Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sahlaji al-Bistami (born 389/998-9), an incomplete edition of which exists. Al-Sahlaji's authorities include Ibn Baboya, who met him in 419/416. The Kitab al-Qasd ila 'llah of the pseudo-Junayd embroiders Abu Yazid's "journey to heaven". ³

His teacher in Sufism was an unlettered mystic called Abu 'Ali al-Sindi, whom he taught the Quranic verses needed for prayer and who in return introduced him to mysticism; the article finds Indian influence possible. Unlike Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni or Abu Sa'id b. Abi 'l-Khayr, he did not engage in social work, but he would have been ready to save humanity from hell by vicarious suffering, and he criticised the punishment of the damned. His sense of the numinous was strong, with a sense of horror before God, and his aspiration was to free himself from every barrier between him and God. He described this process in autobiographical sayings. Once he had shed his "I" in annihilation and reached the goal, his changed self-consciousness produced the famous ecstatic utterances, "Glory be to me! How great is my majesty!" and "I am the throne and the footstool". A later legend has him solve riddles put to him in a Christian monastery, which converted to Islam. ³