Abu Said al Kharraz

Hz. Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz: Life, Writings, and Legacy

A source-based biography and guide to early texts and modern scholarship

Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā al-Kharrāz was a Baghdadi artisan and Sufi teacher of the third Islamic century, remembered especially for explaining how the self gives way to undivided attention to God and how faithful action continues afterward. His surviving Arabic treatises reveal more than the later label “the teacher of fanāʾ and baqāʾ”: they address truthfulness, work and wealth, remembrance, prayer, spiritual training, and the precedence of prophets over saints. No secure birth date, uninterrupted itinerary, or universally accepted death year survives. The strongest evidence comes from his own texts, read alongside early transmitted biographies and the manuscript studies that have brought additional works to light. [1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12]

The historical record

The name al-Kharrāz comes from stitching or working leather; “cobbler” is a useful but somewhat narrow English rendering. Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā was known by the honorific Abū Saʿīd and identified with Baghdad. The earliest notices establish this affiliation, while later accounts call the city his birthplace. Neither a birth year nor a family biography is known. Stories about his pious labor have an intelligible social setting: early Baghdad’s Sufi circles included artisans and traders who earned a livelihood while cultivating remembrance, restraint, and generosity. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī preserves a report that al-Kharrāz worked at his craft over many years without neglecting remembrance. Such reports disclose what pupils admired, although their dramatic detail cannot always be independently verified. [3, 4, 9, 16]

Several kinds of witness need to be kept separate. The Arabic treatises are our closest access to his own formulations, although the surviving copies were made centuries after his lifetime. Al-Sulamī, Abū Nuʿaym, al-Khaṭīb, and al-Qushayrī preserve attributed sayings and memories in tenth- and eleventh-century collections. Al-Hujwīrī’s Persian Kashf al-maḥjūb is important for early reception; ʿAṭṭār’s later Persian Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ gives a fuller saintly portrait but requires greater caution as evidence for events. Modern manuscript work has also corrected the once-common assertion that Kitāb al-Ṣidq was his only surviving book. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Teachers, companions, and pupils

Al-Sulamī associates al-Kharrāz with Sarī al-Saqaṭī and Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith in the Baghdadi milieu, and with Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Nabbājī, and Abū ʿUbayd al-Busrī beyond it. Al-Khaṭīb names Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr al-Ṭūsī and Ibrāhīm ibn Bashshār among those from whom he learned or transmitted. The evidence supports contact and instruction, but it does not establish that each figure formally initiated him or provide dates for these relationships. Ibrāhīm ibn Adham belonged to an earlier generation: al-Kharrāz received material associated with him through Ibrāhīm ibn Bashshār, not through a demonstrable personal meeting. [3, 4, 9]

His relationship with al-Junayd of Baghdad is best understood as a relationship between leading contemporaries within overlapping circles. A report preserved by al-Khaṭīb and Ibn ʿAsākir makes al-Junayd praise the rigor of al-Kharrāz’s spiritual state. Among the people who transmitted from him were Abū Bakr al-Kattānī, al-Jurayrī, and ʿAlī ibn Ḥafṣ al-Rāzī. The accounts show an active teacher whose counsel traveled through pupils and letters; a formal institutional “order” organized by him in the later Sufi sense is not documented. [4, 9, 16, 18]

Journeys, criticism, and last years

Baghdad remained his chief intellectual setting, but transmitted accounts place him in Mecca and Egypt. One report attributed to a companion says that the two first met in 272 AH and remained together for fourteen years; another places their meeting in Mecca. Reports also situate him on the Syrian coast and, more tentatively, in Qayrawan. Later biographies arrange Baghdad, Bukhara, Mecca, Egypt, and Basra into a smooth journey. The surviving evidence cannot sustain a precise itinerary or length of residence in each place. [4, 5, 9, 18]

His words could provoke unease. Early and later writers report objections to expressions in a book called Kitāb al-Sirr, particularly language about the person so absorbed in God’s remembrance that ordinary self-reference falls away. The account says he was denounced in Egypt, left, and was subsequently welcomed back. Another transmitted story describes an order to leave Mecca after he spoke about a Sufi question. These are reported controversies with identifiable textual traditions; they do not establish a dated legal trial, a settled accusation of doctrinal error, or the full contents of a surviving Kitāb al-Sirr. Scholars disagree whether al-Sirr was a separate lost text or another name for material preserved under Kitāb al-Ṣafāʾ. [9, 10]

The year and place of his death remain disputed. Al-Qushayrī reports 277 AH, the printed text of al-Sulamī gives 279 AH, and a named associate is reported to have met al-Kharrāz in 272 AH, accompanied him fourteen years, and recorded his death in 286 AH. The last report lends 286 AH, approximately 899–900 CE, particular weight, but it does not cancel the earlier alternative reports. Later writers variously place his final period in Egypt or elsewhere; a much later notice of a grave in Mosul does not prove that he died there. It is sounder to give the competing years than to state a birthplace or death place as certain. [3, 4, 5, 9, 18]

Truthfulness as a way of life

Kitāb al-Ṣidq, often translated The Book of Truthfulness, is the longest securely surviving work. It takes the form of an exchange between a seeker and a teacher. Its subject, ṣidq, exceeds avoiding spoken falsehood: an intention, an act of worship, a claim to trust in God, and a response to hardship should agree with one another. The chapters work through sincerity, patience, knowledge of the self and temptation, scrupulous livelihood, renunciation, reliance, fear, gratitude, love, longing, and intimacy. They draw on Qurʾānic examples and earlier pious sayings, offering practical guidance while reflecting on the inner motives behind conduct. Nicholson argues that the dialogic voice is a literary teaching form, not a transcript that identifies an otherwise unknown master, although it might easily well be an actual teacher. [1, 11, 12]

The treatment of wealth is particularly revealing. In a discussion of lawful and “pure” goods, the seeker asks how earlier prophets (such as Prophet Sulaiman AS) and exemplary Muslims could possess property if spiritual reliance calls for restraint. Al-Kharrāz’s answer examines the owner’s intention, the distinction between need and excess, and the claims of other people upon resources. As John Zaleski shows, possession can be a test: one can hold goods while remaining ready to meet others’ rights, whereas merely imitating the wealth of revered predecessors offers no moral excuse for self-indulgence. The seeker is therefore concerned with concrete decisions about livelihood and giving, not simply with withdrawing from society. [1, 12]

Near the end of the treatise, sustained truthful practice can become easier and more joyful, yet the path still includes testing and renewed difficulty. This keeps ethical formation and divine gift together. A saying transmitted by al-Qushayrī attributes to him a related test of sincerity: an inward condition that contradicts outward conduct is false. The saying points to the tension his work repeatedly examines between profession and practice. [1, 5, 12]

Passing away, abiding, and oneness

Early Sufi authors describe al-Kharrāz as among the first to teach systematically about fanāʾ and baqāʾ. Al-Sulamī’s wording is qualified: “it is said” that he first spoke of their science. Fanāʾ, in these accounts, concerns the fading of possessive self-attention, habitual claims, and the sight of one’s own achievement before God; baqāʾ concerns the transformed, continuing life of worship and awareness made possible by God. Neither term requires the physical destruction of the worshipper or the cancellation of religious responsibility. More importantly, the surviving treatises show several modes of explanation; the later two-word summary should not replace the books themselves. [2, 3, 7, 9, 15]

Kitāb al-Ṣafāʾ traces degrees of nearness and describes the shift from preoccupation with the self to absorption in God. Kitāb al-Farāgh explains how the heart becomes free of competing attachments through remembrance and how worship, knowledge, longing, and love relate to that freedom. Its title can be rendered “disengagement” or “making room,” rather than an empty, nihilistic state. Kitāb al-Ḥaqāʾiq defines roughly seventy-two terms or stages of the path; its unusually concise vocabulary makes it a valuable but demanding witness to early Sufi conceptual formation. Read together, these texts concern the training of attention, intention, and action. [2, 9, 10, 14]

A saying attributed to him holds that God is known through the joining of opposites. Ibn al-ʿArabī later cites it while reflecting on the Qurʾānic description of God as First and Last, Manifest and Hidden (Q 57:3). That later interpretation is a major part of al-Kharrāz’s intellectual afterlife, but Ibn al-ʿArabī’s full metaphysical system cannot simply be read back into a ninth-century author. Al-Kharrāz’s own treatises remain the better starting point for determining his meaning. [9, 13, 20]

Prophecy, sainthood, and religious practice

Kitāb al-Kashf wa-l-Bayān considers a dispute about the relative standing of prophets and God’s friends. Against claims that sainthood confers a higher rank, it defends the precedence of the prophets, whose role includes guiding others as well as their own nearness to God. This matters when weighing reports of startling statements about spiritual intimacy: his extant writing places mystical experience within a continuing account of revelation, prophecy, and obligation. The much later claim that he authored hundreds of books, found in ʿAṭṭār, is a literary tribute rather than a verified inventory. [2, 8, 9, 10]

His legacy continued through remembered sayings, manuscript transmission, and later explanations. Al-Hujwīrī describes a Kharrāziyya group associated with his treatment of fanāʾ and baqāʾ. That designation attests an intellectual or devotional affiliation; it need not imply a later-style Sufi order with a continuously documented institution. Historians prize him partly because his own prose survives alongside the biographical legends: it lets readers examine a ninth-century teacher who tested lofty language against ordinary acts of work, prayer, justice, and truthful self-scrutiny. [1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 12]

Guide to his earliest surviving writings

These works were composed or attributed to al-Kharrāz’s ninth-century setting, but their surviving manuscripts are later copies. “Earliest” here identifies his oldest available writings through the manuscript witnesses and editions discussed by scholarship; no autograph or secure order of composition is known. Links below lead to readable scholarly editions or catalog and study pages. The original codices themselves have not been verified as freely available online. [1, 2, 9, 10, 17]

Surviving writings and attributed texts: manuscript witnesses and reading links

Work	Manuscript witness and reading link
Kitāb al-ṢidqBook of Truthfulness	Longest surviving treatise; Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, Şehid Ali Paşa 1374, approximately fols. 5–31 (published folio ranges differ). Copied by Ismāʿīl ibn Sawdakīn in the thirteenth century. A. J. Arberry’s 1937 edition prints Arabic and an English translation. [1, 12] Read the bilingual edition
Kitāb al-Ṣafāʾ or al-ṢifātPurity or Attributes	Kastamonu Manuscript Library, 37 Hk 2713, fols. 57v–62r. Al-Sāmarrāʾī prints al-Ṣafāʾ; Nwyia reads al-Ṣifāt for the same epistle, not a second established work. On degrees of nearness. [2, 9, 10] Read the 1967 Arabic edition
Kitāb al-ḌiyāʾBook of Light	The same Kastamonu codex, fols. 62v–64v. Presents seven degrees in the seeker’s approach to God. [2, 10] Read the 1967 Arabic edition
Kitāb al-Kashf wa-l-BayānDisclosure and Clarification	Fols. 64v–70v. Argues that prophets take precedence over saints. [2, 10] Read the 1967 Arabic edition
Kitāb al-FarāghDisengagement	Fols. 71v–78r. On remembrance, making the heart free for God, and the path to knowledge, love, and abiding. [2, 10, 14] Read the 1967 Arabic edition
Kitāb al-ḤaqāʾiqBook of Realities	Fols. 78r–87v. Defines around seventy-two terms and stages of early Sufi practice. [2, 10] Read the 1967 Arabic edition
Risāla fī l-ṣifāt wa-ʿilm al-tawḥīdEpistle on Attributes and Oneness	Damascus, al-Assad National Library MS 17018, fols. 7r–16r. A distinct attributed treatise edited by Nada Saab in 2020; the codex preserves damaged remnants of other items and its attribution requires care. [9] Read Saab’s edition and study

Kastamonu 37 Hk 2713 is a composite with a dating discrepancy: the manuscript is reported to say 615 AH (1218–19 CE), while an older catalog recorded 623 AH (1226–27 CE). Its catalog also conflated al-Kharrāz with Sahl al-Tustarī; the attribution of a further item, Miʿyār al-Taṣawwuf (fols. 88v–133r), needs separate assessment. Likewise, the titles al-Sirr, Ādāb al-Ṣalāt, and Darajāt al-Murīdīn are known from reports or quotations, but their status as independent, complete surviving books is unsettled. [9, 10, 17]

Sources and further reading

Reference numbers in the biography lead to the following sources. Links point to original texts, scholarly editions, journal or publisher records, and open academic studies where available. Later retellings are useful for reception; they are not equally strong evidence for ninth-century events.

Primary texts and editions

1. [1]Al-Kharrāz, Kitāb al-Ṣidq: The Book of Truthfulness, ed. and trans. A. J. Arberry (London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1937). Arabic text and English translation from the Istanbul manuscript. Digital bilingual scan
2. [2]Al-Kharrāz, Rasāʾil al-Kharrāz, ed. Qāsim al-Sāmarrāʾī, Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 15 (1967), beginning p. 158. First published collection of five Kastamonu epistles. Arabic page images
3. [3]Al-Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, entry on al-Kharrāz, ed. Nūr al-Dīn Sharība, pp. 228–232. Early Arabic notice; its printed death date is 279 AH. Read the Arabic entry
4. [4]Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, biographical entry on Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā al-Kharrāz, vol. 5, pp. 31–32 in a common printed edition. Includes the conflicting death reports. Read the full Arabic entry
5. [5]Al-Qushayrī, al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya, notice on Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz. An early source for his reported 277 AH death and attributed maxims. Read the Arabic entry
6. [6]Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, vol. 10, pp. 246–249. A large early collection of attributed sayings. Read the Arabic entry
7. [7]Al-Hujwīrī, Kashf al-maḥjūb, Persian discussion of the Kharrāziyya and its account of fanāʾ and baqāʾ. The original Persian makes the later group designation explicit. Read the Persian chapter
8. [8]Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, chapter on al-Kharrāz. Read as later Persian devotional biography, particularly for reception. Read the Persian chapter
18. [18]Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Dimashq, entry on al-Kharrāz, with the transmitted testimony of an associate who met him in 272 AH. Read the Arabic entry

Modern scholarship and manuscript studies

9. [9]Nada Saab, “Risāla fī l-ṣifāt wa-ʿilm al-tawḥīd: A Sufi Treatise Attributed to Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā al-Kharrāz,” in Light upon Light, ed. Jamal J. Elias and Bilal Orfali (Brill, 2020), 139–163. Critical Arabic edition and unusually careful biographical and manuscript study. Open editor hosted volume
10. [10]Naile Baltacı, “Ebû Saʿîd el-Harrâz ve Üç El Yazma Eseri: Kitâbü’l-Keşf ve’l-Beyân, Kitâbü’l-Ferâğ, Kitâbü’l-Hakâik,” Çukurova Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 15, no. 2 (2015): 103–122. Turkish study with folios, contents, and manuscript cautions. Open article and PDF
11. [11]John J. Wainwright, Treading the Path of Salvation: The Religious Devotion of Shaqīq al-Balkhī, al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, and Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (DPhil, University of Oxford, 2015). A substantial comparative study of ethical training and Kitāb al-Ṣidq; the repository lists a file whose access may vary. Open Oxford thesis record
12. [12]John Zaleski, “The Treasurers of God: Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz and the Ethics of Wealth in Early Sufism,” in Mysticism and Ethics in Islam, ed. Bilal Orfali, Atif Khalil, and Mohammed Rustom (American University of Beirut Press, 2021), 53–69. Directly reads his response to wealth, work, and obligations to others. Open publisher chapter PDF
13. [13]Sara Sviri, Perspectives on Early Islamic Mysticism: The World of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī and His Contemporaries (Routledge, 2020), especially chapters 5, 7, and 8. Places al-Kharrāz’s surviving writings among other early mystics. Publisher description
14. [14]Paul Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1970), 231–310. A major French reading of al-Kharrāz’s language and Kitāb al-Farāgh. Bibliographic record
15. [15]Gerhard Böwering, “Baqāʾ wa Fanāʾ,” Encyclopaedia Iranica. A concise scholarly history of the technical terms and of al-Sulamī’s qualified attribution. Read the entry
16. [16]Mehmet Demirci, “Ebû Saîd el-Harrâz,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 10 (1994): 222–223. Turkish reference entry with a useful bibliography; some itinerary details warrant qualification. Read the entry
17. [17]Ahmed Ateş, “Kastamonu Genel Kitaplığında bulunan bazı mühim Arapça ve Farsça yazmalar,” Oriens 5, no. 1 (1952): 28–46. Early scholarly description of the Kastamonu material. Journal record
19. [19]Maryam Shaʿbānzāda and ʿAlī-Aṣghar Mīrbāqerī, “Abū Saʿīd-i Kharrāz,” Maʿārif 19, no. 1 (1381 SH / 2002): 131–144. A Persian scholarly treatment; a later bibliography expands the second surname to Mīrbāqerī-Fard. Read the Persian article scan
20. [20]Sara Sviri, “Seeing with Three Eyes: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Barzakh and the Contemporary World Situation,” Synthesis Philosophica 62 (2016): 385–393. Clarifies the later use of the saying about opposites. Open journal PDF
21. [21]Maryam Shaʿbānzāda, “Kharrāz, Abū Saʿīd,” Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Jahān-i Islām, vol. 15, 275–277. An accessible Persian reference entry with source notes. Read the Persian entry