📍Basra, Iraq
“I was born Rabia al-Adawiyya around 717 AD in Basra, Iraq, into a poor family. According to tradition I was the fourth daughter — Rabia means fourth in Arabic. My parents died when I was young and I was sold into slavery. I was eventually freed by my master who recognised my spiritual gifts. I settled in Basra and became one of the most important figures in the history of Islamic mysticism — the Sufi tradition of direct experience of the divine. I am credited with introducing the concept of divine love into Islamic spirituality: the idea that God should be loved for God's own sake, not from fear of hell or hope of paradise. I spent my life in Basra in poverty and prayer, refusing marriage and worldly attachment, composing prayers that Sufi masters have quoted for thirteen centuries.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Smith, M. Rabi'a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam (1928), Cambridge University Press; Upton, C. Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabia (1988), Threshold Books