Abu Talib Al Makki

Hz.Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī

(d. 386/996)

The scholar who made the heart a discipline

A documented life of the author of Qūt al-qulūb, with a critical account of his sources, writings, manuscript record, intellectual program, reception, and modern scholarship.

Reader’s orientation

Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī is famous, but his life is not richly documented. His importance rests less on a long chain of recoverable biographical events than on one vast book: Qūt al-qulūb, a synthesis of Qurʾān, prophetic report, early ascetic memory, ritual practice, moral psychology, and the emerging language of Sufism. The biography below therefore gives the book its proper weight while resisting the habit of turning later anecdotes into facts. [1]

Quick facts

Category	Historical finding
Full name	Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Ḥārithī al-Makkī al-ʿAjamī
Birth	Unknown date; reported origin in Jibāl, western/central Iran
Formation	Mecca; later association with Basra and Baghdad
Profile	Traditionist, ascetic, preacher, ethical and mystical writer
Key affiliation	The Basran Sālimiyya, shaped by Sahl al-Tustarī’s legacy
Legal school	Uncertain; Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī, and Mālikī links have all been proposed
Death	Jumādā II 386/June 996, Baghdad
Secure work	Qūt al-qulūb, in forty-eight sections
Central legacy	A practical theology of the heart that strongly informed al-Ghazālī and later Sufi manuals

1. Why al-Makkī matters

An author with a sparsely documented life and an unusually large intellectual influence.

Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī occupies a decisive place in the formation of classical Islamic spirituality. Earlier ascetics had developed practices of vigilance, self-accounting, renunciation, trust, and fear; figures such as al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī and Sahl al-Tustarī had given those practices a searching psychological and theological vocabulary. Al-Makkī gathered much of this inheritance into an encyclopedic program of life. His subject was not mystical experience isolated from religious duty. It was the formation of a believer whose prayer, earning, eating, companionship, intention, thought, and inward awareness all answer to God. [2]

This is why Qūt al-qulūb—“Nourishment of Hearts”—belongs beside the manuals of al-Sarrāj and al-Kalābādhī, yet differs from them. Those authors often explain who the Sufis are and what their technical terms mean. Al-Makkī more often writes as a guide to disciplined living. He rarely needs to announce that a practice is “Sufi”; he shows how outward action and inward truth should form one religious life. Ahmet Karamustafa accordingly places him among traditionist forms of Sufism, while Saeko Yazaki stresses that his preferred vocabulary is often “inner,” “hidden,” and “of the heart.” [3]

His historical importance is clearest in the work of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. The architecture and language of the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn repeatedly recall Qūt al-qulūb, and comparison reveals close rewriting as well as reorganization. Al-Ghazālī’s synthesis was more polished and became far more famous, but al-Makkī supplied a major part of its earlier devotional grammar. Later writers—including ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī—also reused or cited his material. To study al-Makkī is therefore to study one of the channels through which formative asceticism became the normative spiritual literature of medieval Sunni Islam. [4]

2. How the biography can be reconstructed

The evidence is uneven, and repetition among later biographers is not independent confirmation.

No contemporary biography of al-Makkī survives. The closest evidence is internal: names, places, and first-person recollections embedded in Qūt al-qulūb. The earliest substantial external notice is in al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Tārīkh Baghdād, compiled roughly three generations after al-Makkī’s death. Ibn al-Jawzī, Ibn Khallikān, al-Dhahabī, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn Ḥajar, and later authors repeat, compress, or amplify that notice. Their agreement often traces back to the same report rather than to several independent memories. [5]

The silence of several early Sufi compilers is also notable. Al-Sarrāj, al-Kalābādhī, al-Sulamī, Abū Nuʿaym, al-Qushayrī, and al-Hujwīrī do not give him a normal biographical entry. This does not prove that al-Makkī was marginal: Qūt al-qulūb circulated widely, and later manuals drew on it. It does mean that the personal networks around him are harder to recover than those of many comparable figures. His influence traveled through a book more clearly than through a documented order or line of disciples. [6]

A responsible biography must therefore distinguish degrees of certainty. His Persian or non-Arab origin, Meccan formation, Basran Sālimī connection, Baghdad preaching, authorship of Qūt al-qulūb, and death in 386/996 are well supported. Exact birth details, the sequence of some journeys, a firm legal-school identity, and many colorful ascetic stories are not. The account that follows uses “reports,” “probably,” and “may” where the sources require them. [1, 5]

3. From Jibāl to Mecca

A non-Arab origin, a Meccan scholarly identity, and an unknown birth date.

His fullest commonly transmitted name is Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Ḥārithī al-Makkī al-ʿAjamī. “Al-Makkī” identifies the city in which he was raised and formed, not a securely known birthplace. “Al-ʿAjamī” and the early report that he came from al-Jabal or Jibāl point instead to the broad highland region between Iraq and Khurasan, often called Persian Iraq. The term covered cities such as Hamadan, Rayy, Dinavar, Qazvin, and Isfahan; no source permits a narrower identification. His year of birth is likewise unknown. [1]

Mecca gave al-Makkī both his durable name and much of his scholarly formation. Internal evidence in Qūt al-qulūb identifies Abū Saʿīd Ibn al-Aʿrābī, Abū ʿAlī al-Kirmānī, and Muẓaffar ibn Sahl as shaykhs. Ibn al-Aʿrābī was a hadith scholar, jurist, and mystic who had known the Baghdadi circle of al-Junayd before becoming a leading teacher in Mecca. Al-Makkī also appears to have studied Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī with Abū Zayd al-Marwazī. These links place him in a culture where transmitted learning, juristic piety, and ascetic formation overlapped. [7]

Later biographical notices add permissions or transmission from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar Ibn Fāris, ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Maṣṣīṣī, and Abū Bakr al-Mufīd al-Jarjarāʾī, among others. The exact circumstances are unknown, and al-Makkī does not name all of them in his surviving book. Still, the pattern matters: he was not simply a preacher of inward experience. He was trained in the world of hadith transmission and wrote for readers who expected arguments to be anchored in Qurʾān, prophetic report, and the conduct of the early generations. [7]

4. Basra and the Sālimiyya

A firm intellectual connection, but a disputed travel chronology.

From Mecca al-Makkī went to Basra, a major center of commerce, theology, hadith, and ascetic culture. There he became associated with the Sālimiyya, a mystical-theological circle that transmitted the legacy of Sahl al-Tustarī through Muḥammad ibn Sālim and his son Aḥmad, known as Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn Sālim. Qūt al-qulūb repeatedly invokes Sahl with marked respect, and its concern with divine unity, watchfulness, certainty, and the disciplined reception of inner promptings belongs in this Basran inheritance. [8]

The chronology remains uncertain. Al-Khaṭīb and writers dependent on him say that al-Makkī entered Basra after Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn Sālim had died and then adopted his teaching. Qūt al-qulūb, however, twice speaks in a way that implies personal meetings with Ibn Sālim. The internal testimony is difficult to dismiss. The safest conclusion is that al-Makkī had direct contact with Ibn Sālim or his immediate circle, while the date and duration of his Basran stay remain uncertain. [9]

The label “Sālimī” should not be made to carry more than the evidence allows. Medieval opponents preserved lists of propositions attributed to the group, including charges about the divine attributes; those lists are polemical evidence, not neutral minutes of a school. Harith Bin Ramli has shown that the Sālimiyya is best understood as a Basran circle in which mystical practice and theology were transmitted together. Al-Makkī is its most important surviving witness, but Qūt al-qulūb is his synthesis, not a verbatim creed of Ibn Sālim. [8]

5. Baghdad: preaching, controversy, and death

The best-known episode in his life is also the hardest to interpret.

Al-Makkī eventually settled in Baghdad, then under Būyid rule and still the leading center of Arabic religious scholarship. He preached publicly. Al-Khaṭīb preserves a report from Abū Ṭāhir al-ʿAllāf that an opaque sentence attributed to al-Makkī provoked accusations of innovation and caused listeners to abandon him. The transmitted wording says, in effect, that no one is more harmful to creatures than the Creator. Without a context, tone, or explanation, the sentence is impossible to interpret securely. Suggestions range from a slip of the tongue to an extreme statement about divine omnipotence. Later biographers largely repeat al-Khaṭīb; their repetition does not solve the problem. [10]

This episode is often allowed to define al-Makkī’s theology, but it should not. The report is hostile, late enough to require caution, and detached from the doctrinal arguments of Qūt al-qulūb. If it is historical, it tells us that public preaching was a hazardous medium: compressed mystical or theological speech could be heard as scandalous by a mixed audience. It may also explain why al-Makkī’s later influence came through writing rather than a continuing Baghdad preaching career. [10]

He died in Baghdad in Jumādā II 386 AH, conventionally converted to June 996; the date 6 Jumādā II/26 June is often given. He was buried in the Mālikī cemetery on the eastern side of the city near al-Ruṣāfa. Ibn Khallikān later described the grave as known and visited, while Ibn Kathīr located it near the congregational mosque of al-Ruṣāfa. The district and its cemeteries suffered severe destruction over time, and no secure trace of the grave remains. [11]

Later sources surround his death and ascetic life with memorable stories. One says that he asked a companion to hold his hand at the moment of death and to scatter sugar and almonds over his funeral if he gave a final confirming grip. Another says that prolonged hunger and subsistence on wild plants altered the color of his skin. Such reports express how later readers remembered him—as an uncompromising ascetic confident in a good end. They are better read as devotional memory than as clinical biography. [12]

6. Scholar, transmitter, and jurist without a secure school label

His intellectual profile crosses categories that later scholarship often separates.

Al-Makkī was a transmitter as well as an ascetic author. Al-Dhahabī lists several people from whom he narrated and names ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Azjī as one of those who transmitted from him. Al-Dhahabī also claimed to have seen a forty-hadith collection in al-Makkī’s own hand. The collection is now lost, but the report fits the texture of Qūt al-qulūb: a book saturated with reports even when its chains are shortened and its standards differ from those of a specialist hadith collection. [13]

No early source securely assigns him to one Sunni legal school. A Shāfiʿī affiliation has been inferred from teachers and some legal preferences; a Ḥanbalī affinity from his repeated citation of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; a Mālikī connection from the Sālimiyya and his burial place. None is conclusive. Yazaki counted roughly one hundred references to Ibn Ḥanbal, twenty-eight to Mālik, twenty-six to al-Shāfiʿī, and four to Abū Ḥanīfa, but Qūt al-qulūb is not a law manual and citation frequency cannot by itself establish affiliation. [14]

The more revealing description is “traditionist ascetic.” Al-Makkī grounds inward formation in transmitted authority, opposes knowledge that produces status without obedience, and distrusts speculative shortcuts to certainty. Yet he is not hostile to law or learning. He devotes long passages to ritual obligations and ordinary transactions, and he treats the sound heart as the inward condition of faithful outward practice. [3, 14]

7. Qūt al-qulūb: composition, architecture, and method

One secure book, forty-eight unequal sections, and a program that moves from practice to perception and back again.

The full title is Qūt al-qulūb fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb wa-waṣf ṭarīq al-murīd ilā maqām al-tawḥīd—“Nourishment of Hearts in Conduct toward the Beloved and a Description of the Seeker’s Path to the Station of Divine Unity.” The title announces both audience and purpose: it nourishes the inward organ by which a believer knows and responds to God, while guiding a novice through a disciplined path. The work must have been completed before al-Makkī’s death, and probably after Ibn Sālim’s, because the latter is referred to as deceased in the text. [15]

Its forty-eight sections vary greatly in length. Some are brief collections of Qurʾānic verses; section 32 alone occupies roughly a third of the book in a modern edition. This is not a modern systematic treatise with a single linear argument. It is a layered teaching archive. Qurʾānic verses, prophetic reports, sayings of Companions and Successors, recollections of ascetics, poetry, legal judgments, and the author’s own explanations accumulate around practical themes. Oral teaching and earlier written sources are both visible. [16]

The book’s four broad movements

Sections	Main concern	Representative topics
1–21	Rhythms of outward devotion	Day and night worship, prayer, recitation, remembrance, sleep, Friday, and voluntary practice
22–32	Formation of the inner life	Fasting, self-accounting, watchfulness, the novice’s foundations, the heart, knowledge, certainty, and the nine stations
33–38	The shared structure of Islam	Five pillars, faith and Islam, Sunna, innovation, major sins, sincerity, and intention
39–48	Ethics of daily life	Food, poverty, travel, leadership in prayer, companionship, marriage, bathing, earning, trade, and lawful or doubtful goods

This architecture matters. Al-Makkī begins with the body in time—night prayer, recitation, fasting, and repeated devotions—before turning to the interior processes that give acts their moral character. He then returns to shared doctrine, law, and everyday conduct. Inner and outer are not rival jurisdictions. Practice trains perception; inward sincerity animates practice; both are tested in ordinary social life. [16]

Among named sources, al-Makkī cites teachers such as Ibn al-Aʿrābī, Ibn Sālim, Abū ʿAlī al-Kirmānī, Muẓaffar ibn Sahl, and Aḥmad ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk. He knew or used works including Ibn al-Aʿrābī’s Ṭabaqāt al-nussāk and a work on poverty attributed to Ibn ʿAṭāʾ. Above all, he preserves a broad early ascetic archive. His book is therefore evidence not only for his own thought but also for how fourth/tenth-century readers organized memories of the first generations of Muslim piety. [17]

8. The discipline of the heart

For al-Makkī, the heart is not a decorative metaphor; it is the center of moral attention, discernment, and certainty.

The heart gives the book its name, but al-Makkī does not reduce religion to feeling. The heart understands, intends, remembers, and judges; bodily conduct displays its condition. A sound inward state is therefore not a private experience exempt from scrutiny. It becomes legible in worship, restraint, truthful action, lawful earning, and care for others. Conversely, repeated outward practice educates attention and weakens heedlessness. [18]

Section 30 offers al-Makkī’s most concentrated moral psychology. He describes six khawāṭir—promptings, impulses, or thoughts that arrive in the heart. Two are blameworthy: the prompting of the lower self and that of the enemy or devil. Two are praiseworthy: the prompting of the spirit and that of the angel. Intellect is double-sided, able to serve either direction. The sixth, certainty, is the mature prompting associated with the core of faith. The believer’s task is tamyīz, discrimination: learning the source, moral quality, and likely fruit of a prompting before acting on it. [18, 19]

This model avoids two simplifications. First, intellect is neither rejected nor treated as sovereign. It is an instrument whose moral direction depends on intention, training, and the company it keeps within the person. Second, divine sovereignty does not erase moral responsibility. Al-Makkī repeatedly speaks of human testing, choice, vigilance, and accountability, while also insisting that guidance and certainty are gifts from God. The tension is deliberate: effort matters, but spiritual possession cannot be manufactured. [18]

The nine stations of certainty

Section 32, the book’s longest unit, arranges the path through nine roots or stations: repentance (tawba), patience (ṣabr), gratitude (shukr), hope (rajāʾ), fear (khawf), renunciation (zuhd), trust in God (tawakkul), contentment (riḍā), and love (maḥabba). These are not simply emotions in sequence. Each is a trained disposition, known by its acts and tested in relation to the others. Fear without hope can become despair; renunciation without knowledge can become display; trust without lawful effort can become passivity. [20]

Atif Khalil’s study of repentance shows the density of this program. Al-Makkī’s treatment is the longest sustained early Sufi discussion of tawba known from the first four Islamic centuries. Repentance is not momentary regret. It includes recognition, remorse, stopping the offense, restoration where another person’s right is involved, watchfulness against relapse, and a changed orientation of the will. The station becomes a method for rebuilding the self. [21]

9. Knowledge, worship, and ordinary life

Al-Makkī’s “knowledge of hearts” is knowledge enacted, not an alternative revelation.

Section 31 contrasts knowledge that reaches the heart with knowledge that remains on the tongue. The contrast is ethical rather than anti-intellectual. Al-Makkī criticizes learning pursued for position, argument, or economic advantage when it does not produce obedience and fear of God. He gives priority to knowledge that a person is presently obliged to act upon: the duties of faith and worship, the lawful and unlawful conditions of one’s work, and the inward defects that corrupt intention. [22]

John Renard’s English translation of this section makes the point especially visible. The “knowledge of God” at issue is not merely information about doctrines. It is recognition that orders conduct. Al-Makkī can therefore speak of jurists, hadith transmitters, reciters, ascetics, and knowers within a single moral field: each form of learning is judged by truth, transmission, intention, and fruit. [22]

The final ten sections prevent readers from mistaking inwardness for withdrawal. Al-Makkī writes about food and hospitality, poverty and accepting gifts, travel, the prayer leader, brotherhood, marriage, bathing, livelihoods, markets, and doubtful property. A merchant must know the rules relevant to trade; a companion must protect another’s dignity; an ascetic must not make dependence or spectacle into a virtue. The heart is tested in the circulation of money, words, food, and trust. [16]

This practical range helps explain the book’s later usefulness. Qūt al-qulūb could feed a sermon, a legal-ethical discussion, a manual for novices, a theological meditation, or a chapter on social manners. Its breadth also explains its unevenness: the work preserves an inherited pious archive rather than presenting one stripped-down doctrine. [2, 16]

10. Hadith, theology, and the limits of the book

A foundational devotional source is not automatically a reliable hadith reference.

Al-Makkī cites a great quantity of hadith, but Qūt al-qulūb was not designed as a canonical collection arranged by full chains and graded report by report. Chains are often shortened or absent, and later hadith critics identified weak or fabricated material. Al-Khaṭīb, Ibn al-Jawzī, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Kathīr also objected to some statements on the divine attributes. Bilal Saklan’s Turkish doctoral study remains a specialized guide to the book’s hadith material. [23]

Two opposite readings should be resisted. It is inaccurate to dismiss the whole book because some reports fail later hadith standards: the work remains a major source for the history of devotion, ethical reasoning, and the transmission of early ascetic sayings. It is equally inaccurate to cite every report in it as prophetic without verification. A modern reader should check any hadith used for doctrine or law against specialist collections and current hadith scholarship. [23]

The theological setting also demands care. Al-Makkī defends a broadly Sunni religious order and criticizes groups such as the Muʿtazila, Murjiʾa, and Khārijites, yet some Sālimī formulations became targets of later polemic. The single shocking sentence attached to his Baghdad preaching cannot substitute for reading his sustained arguments. His characteristic concern is not speculative novelty but the relation of divine unity, transmitted revelation, moral agency, and the purification of intention. [8, 10]

11. Works: secure, lost, and doubtful

The familiar bibliography attached to al-Makkī is much larger than the surviving authentic corpus.

At least eight titles or categories have been connected with al-Makkī. Textual and bibliographical criticism sharply reduces the list. Qūt al-qulūb is the only complete surviving book that can be assigned to him securely. A pilgrimage manual and writings on divine unity are plausible lost works because early evidence points to them. Other titles rest on late or mistaken attribution. [24]

Work	Status	Evidence	Judgment
Qūt al-qulūb	Extant	Named by early biographers; wide manuscript tradition; internal consistency	Secure
Kitāb manāsik al-ḥajj	Lost	Al-Makkī refers in Qūt to an earlier detailed book on pilgrimage rites	Securely attested title
Works on tawḥīd	Lost	Al-Khaṭīb says he wrote books on divine unity	Plausible, titles unknown
Forty hadith	Lost	Al-Dhahabī says he saw a copy in al-Makkī’s handwriting	Strong later testimony
Qurʾān commentary	Lost or doubtful	Claim appears in a much later source; no manuscript securely identified	Unproven
ʿIlm al-qulūb	Extant under his name	Different style and authorities; cites material linked to al-Khargūshī, who died after al-Makkī	Probably pseudonymous
al-Bayān al-shāfī	No secure text	Likely arose from reading a phrase of praise as a book title	Probably never existed
Nuzul al-abrār	Later attribution	Known through a nineteenth-century Persian translation associated with Shiʿi material	Probably not his

The case of ʿIlm al-qulūb

The printed ʿIlm al-qulūb is often marketed as a second book by al-Makkī, but modern analysis gives strong reasons for caution. Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī showed that it preserves material connected with Abū Saʿd al-Khargūshī, who died around 406–407/1015–16, two decades after al-Makkī. Yazaki added comparisons of structure, style, citation habits, and named authorities. Her conclusion is that the work was not written by al-Makkī, although it depends deeply on his teaching and may preserve otherwise lost material. It should be cited as pseudo-al-Makkī unless new manuscript evidence changes the case. [25]

12. Influence and afterlife

His book became a quarry for later Sunni spirituality even when his own biography faded.

Al-Ghazālī

The most consequential reception is al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. Al-Ghazālī acknowledged reading Qūt al-qulūb, and detailed comparison shows dependence beyond general similarity. His Book 21 on the wonders of the heart reorganises passages from al-Makkī’s section 30; his treatment of repentance, knowledge, worship, intention, and everyday ethics also draws on the earlier book. Kojiro Nakamura rightly cautioned that the Iḥyāʾ does not merely copy: it systematizes, edits, and sometimes disagrees. The relation is inheritance transformed. [26]

ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī and al-Suhrawardī

Passages in ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī’s Ghunya closely reproduce al-Makkī’s account of the six promptings of the heart, sometimes changing terminology. Al-Suhrawardī’s ʿAwārif al-maʿārif names al-Makkī with respect, summarizes his teachings on obligatory knowledge and spiritual states, and uses Qūt al-qulūb in discussions of practice. Through such works, ideas first assembled by al-Makkī entered the teaching literature of later Sufi institutions. [27]

Later praise, commentary, and criticism

Ibn ʿAbbād al-Rundī treated Qūt al-qulūb as a healing guide and wrote on difficult passages. Jāmī later praised al-Makkī and the book in Persianate Sufi memory. At the same time, critical readers continued to question particular hadiths and theological formulations. Reception was therefore neither uniform approval nor rejection: the book was mined, corrected, praised, abridged, and debated. [28]

A Muslim–Jewish comparison

Modern scholars have compared Qūt al-qulūb with Baḥya ibn Paqūda’s Arabic Jewish Duties of the Hearts. Both distinguish bodily duties from inward obligations and organize religious life around the heart. Similar anecdotes and formulations have encouraged proposals of direct influence. The evidence does not yet prove a simple line of borrowing. Shared Arabic language, scriptural ethics, and overlapping ascetic traditions provide a more cautious frame; possible textual dependence must be argued passage by passage. [29]

13. Historical assessment

The most durable reading of al-Makkī is as an architect of integrated piety.

Al-Makkī did not found a named order, and we cannot reconstruct a large circle of disciples. His importance lies in textual architecture. He joined the inherited authority of Qurʾān and Sunna to a minute program of habit, intention, self-observation, and social ethics. He turned “the heart” from a theme into a field of disciplined knowledge without severing it from prayer, law, work, or community. [2, 18]

His achievement is best understood between two reductions. He was more than a transmitter of Sālimī doctrine: Qūt al-qulūb absorbs Meccan traditionism, Basran ascetic theology, Baghdadi Sufi memory, and the practices of early renunciants into a new whole. Yet he was not a modern author advancing an entirely personal system. Much of his craft lies in selection, arrangement, and the moral pressure created by accumulated authorities. [8, 17]

For historians, the book is both source and argument. It preserves older voices, sometimes in forms not otherwise extant, but it also edits them into a fourth/tenth-century vision of Sunni piety. For religious readers, it remains powerful precisely because its inwardness is demanding: sincerity must take visible form, knowledge must become action, and a thought entering the heart must be tested before it becomes a deed. That combination explains why al-Makkī’s own life can remain obscure while his intellectual presence is still felt. [2, 4]

14. Chronology

Dates before 386/996 are approximate unless the source states otherwise.

Date	Event	Confidence
Unknown	Born somewhere in Jibāl; exact place and date are not recoverable.	Low detail
Before 341/952	Formation in Mecca; possible direct study with Abū Saʿīd Ibn al-Aʿrābī, who died in 341/952.	Probable
Mid-4th/10th c.	Study and transmission in Mecca, including links to Abū ʿAlī al-Kirmānī and perhaps Abū Zayd al-Marwazī.	Probable
Before or near 356/967	Connection with Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn Sālim and the Sālimiyya in Basra; chronology disputed.	Secure link; date uncertain
Later 4th/10th c.	Move to Baghdad; public preaching and reported controversy.	Reported
After Ibn Sālim’s death?	Composition or completion of Qūt al-qulūb.	Likely
Jumādā II 386 / June 996	Death in Baghdad and burial near al-Ruṣāfa.	High
6th/12th c.	Chester Beatty Arabic MS 3930, an undated early manuscript volume, is copied.	Catalog dating
1310 AH / 1892–93	First known printed Arabic edition, Cairo.	High
1992–95	Richard Gramlich publishes a complete four-volume German translation and commentary.	High
2010–13	Saeko Yazaki’s thesis, authenticity study, and monograph reshape modern research.	High

15. Read the texts and scholarship online

Direct links are prioritized; access conditions vary by repository and publisher.

A. Manuscripts and early printed Arabic

Among the earliest cataloged witnesses: Chester Beatty Arabic MS 3930. An undated first volume, paleographically dated to the sixth/twelfth century; 251 folios in scholar’s naskh. See catalog entry 3930.

British Library Or 7726. A thirteenth-century Arabic manuscript in the British Library catalog. The record is accessible; the manuscript is not currently shown as digitized.

Digitized manuscript dated 1655: EAP521/1/39. A later witness with page images in the British Library Endangered Archives Programme.

Undated digitized manuscript fragment. A twenty-one-page fragment on Arabic Wikisource. It is useful for viewing script and layout, not for establishing the earliest date.

First known printed edition: Cairo, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1310/1892–93. Google Books scan of volume 1, from the Harvard copy.

Downloadable scan of an early reprint. Internet Archive/Open Library copy based on the early Cairo printing tradition.

Searchable Arabic text at Usul. Convenient full-text navigation. Check quotations against a scan or edited print.

Searchable Arabic contents at IbnArabi.com. The forty-eight sections are individually browsable; the site itself warns that not all texts are critically verified.

B. Early biographical notices in Arabic

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 3:89. The earliest substantial notice; use a reliable print edition. Its text is quoted by later online notices, including al-Dhahabī below.

Al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, “Ṣāḥib al-Qūt”. A compact notice preserving teacher and transmitter names, the preaching report, ascetic anecdotes, and the claim that al-Dhahabī saw a forty-hadith collection in al-Makkī’s hand.

Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, entry for 386 AH. A later synthesis that records praise, criticism of hadiths, the Baghdad preaching report, and the grave near al-Ruṣāfa.

Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān, no. 7206. A critical biographical notice that reproduces al-Khaṭīb’s objections and lists transmission details.

C. Translations and accessible selections

Richard Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen, 4 vols. (1992–95). The only complete translation into a major European language, with extensive source notes and indexes; German.

John Renard, Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism (2004). English translation of Qūt al-qulūb section 31 on knowledge, with contextual material; pp. 112–263.

W. Mohammed Azam Amin, Qūt al-qulūb … with an annotated translation of Kitāb al-tawba (1991). Open doctoral thesis; includes an English translation of al-Makkī’s book of repentance.

D. Modern scholarship: English and multilingual

Saeko Yazaki, A Study of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (PhD thesis, 2010). The fullest open research study of his life, works, heart-centered teaching, reception, and comparison with Baḥya ibn Paqūda.

Saeko Yazaki, Islamic Mysticism and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Role of the Heart (2013). The principal English monograph.

Saeko Yazaki, “A Pseudo-Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī?” Arabica 59.6 (2012). The key study of the authenticity of ʿIlm al-qulūb.

Atif Khalil, “Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī & the Nourishment of Hearts,” The Muslim World 102.2 (2012). Places Qūt al-qulūb in early Sufism.

Atif Khalil, “Tawba in the Sufi Psychology of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23.3 (2012). A close study of repentance in section 32.

Harith Bin Ramli, “The Sālimiyya and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī” (2012). Open French-volume chapter in English on the transmission of Sālimī theology.

Ndiouga Kebe, “La formation spirituelle du murīd selon Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī” (2012). French study of the novice’s formation.

Mounir El Kadiri Boutchich, “La notion de coeur…” (EPHE thesis, 2005). French doctoral study of the heart in the first four Islamic centuries, centered on al-Makkī.

Bilal Saklan, Kûtu’l-Kulûb’daki Tasavvufi Hadislerin Hadis Metodolojisi Açısından Değeri (1989). Turkish doctoral study of the book’s hadith material.

Hasan Aydemir, “Erken Dönem Sûfî Dilinin Bağlarını Birleştirmek…” (2024). Open Turkish article on khawāṭir and al-Makkī’s unifying early Sufi vocabulary.

Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī, Persian article on al-Khargūshī material in ʿIlm al-qulūb (1999). A foundational Persian contribution to the attribution problem; bibliographic discussion is noted in the linked BSOAS review record.

Bilal Saklan, “Ebû Tâlib el-Mekkî” and “Kūtü’l-kulûb,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Reliable Turkish reference entries with primary-source bibliography.

M. A. Mohamed Shukri, The Mystical Doctrine of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (PhD thesis, 1976). An early full study, openly available from Edinburgh.

Arabic: “Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī and his Jurisprudential Opinions” (2024). Recent Arabic article collecting and comparing legal views attributed to al-Makkī.

Notes

1. Saeko Yazaki, A Study of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2010, Introduction, pp. 2–9; Bilal Saklan, “Ebû Tâlib el-Mekkî,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
2. Atif Khalil, “Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī & the Nourishment of Hearts (Qūt al-qulūb) in the Context of Early Sufism,” The Muslim World 102, no. 2 (2012): 335–56.
3. Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 84–88; Yazaki, Study, 64–72.
4. Yazaki, Study, chs. 6–7; Kojiro Nakamura, “Makkī and Ghazālī on Mystical Practices,” Orient 20 (1984): 83–91.
5. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, 3:89; Yazaki, Study, 2 and 182–90.
6. Yazaki, Study, 190–216, on early Sufi works that omit al-Makkī and on his later reception.
7. Yazaki, Study, 6–8. The internal evidence in Qūt is more secure than later lists, though the form of each teacher relationship remains uncertain.
8. Harith Bin Ramli, “The Sālimiyya and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Transmission of Theological Teachings in a Basran Circle of Mystics,” in Les maîtres soufis et leurs disciples (Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2012), 101–29.
9. Yazaki, Study, 3–4; Qūt al-qulūb, ed. Maḥmūd Ibrāhīm Muḥammad al-Raḍwānī (Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, 2001), 3:1202 and 3:1318.
10. Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 3:89; Yazaki, Study, 4–5. The report’s wording is preserved in al-Dhahabī’s Siyar notice.
11. Yazaki, Study, 5–6; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, entry for 386 AH.
12. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, “Ṣāḥib al-Qūt,” 16:537; compare Yazaki, Study, 5, which treats the deathbed narrative cautiously.
13. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:537; Yazaki, Study, 318–19.
14. Yazaki, Study, 8–9 and 63–64.
15. Bilal Saklan, “Kūtü’l-kulûb,” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi; Yazaki, Study, 64–65.
16. Yazaki, Study, 65–72. The table condenses her section-by-section analysis.
17. Saklan, “Kūtü’l-kulûb”; Yazaki, Study, 60–64.
18. Yazaki, Study, 94–143, especially 138–40.
19. Hasan Aydemir, “Erken Dönem Sûfî Dilinin Bağlarını Birleştirmek: Ebu Tâlib el-Mekkî’de Havâtır,” Hitit İlahiyat Dergisi 23, no. 2 (2024): 959–90.
20. Qūt, section 32; Yazaki, Study, 70–71.
21. Atif Khalil, “Tawba in the Sufi Psychology of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 996),” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 3 (2012): 294–324.
22. John Renard, Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), 112–263.
23. Bilal Saklan, Kûtu’l-Kulûb’daki Tasavvufi Hadislerin Hadis Metodolojisi Açısından Değeri, PhD diss., Selçuk University, 1989; Saklan, “Kūtü’l-kulûb.”
24. Yazaki, Study, Appendix III, 312–20.
25. Naṣr Allāh Pūrjavādī, “Bāzmāndahā-yi kitāb-i al-Ishāra wa-l-ʿibāra-yi Abū Saʿd-i Khargūshī dar kitāb-i ʿIlm al-qulūb,” Maʿārif 15, no. 3 (1377 SH/1999): 34–41; Saeko Yazaki, “A Pseudo-Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī? The Authenticity of ʿIlm al-qulūb,” Arabica 59, no. 6 (2012): 650–84.
26. Yazaki, Study, 141–42 and chs. 6–7; Nakamura, “Makkī and Ghazālī,” 83–91; W. Mohammed Azam Amin, Qūt al-qulūb … with an Annotated Translation of Kitāb al-tawba, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1991.
27. Yazaki, Study, 198–216 and 326–46; Richard Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992–95).
28. Yazaki, Study, ch. 6; Ibn ʿAbbād al-Rundī’s letters are discussed at 190–216; Jāmī, Nafaḥāt al-uns, 121.
29. Yazaki, Study, ch. 8. The comparison is historically suggestive, but Yazaki repeatedly warns against claiming direct dependence without firmer textual evidence.

Selected bibliography

Arabic names and titles are transliterated in a simplified IJMES style. The author reports checking the online links on October 3, 2026. The list favors sources directly useful for biography, textual history, doctrine, or reception.

Primary sources, editions, catalogs, and translations

• Al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn. Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ. Vol. 16, “Ṣāḥib al-Qūt,” 537. Arabic text online.
• Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. Lisān al-mīzān. Entry no. 7206, “Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭiyya.” Arabic text online.
• Ibn Kathīr. Al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya. Entry under the year 386 AH. Arabic text online.
• Ibn Khallikān. Wafayāt al-aʿyān. Vol. 4, 303–4.
• Ibn al-Jawzī. Al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam. Vol. 7, 189–90.
• Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Nafaḥāt al-uns. 121.
• Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī. Tārīkh Baghdād. Vol. 3, 89.
• Al-Makkī, Abū Ṭālib. Qūt al-qulūb fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb wa-waṣf ṭarīq al-murīd ilā maqām al-tawḥīd. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1310/1892–93. Volume 1 scan.
• ———. Qūt al-qulūb. Edited by Maḥmūd Ibrāhīm Muḥammad al-Raḍwānī. 3 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, 2001.
• ———. Die Nahrung der Herzen: Abū Ṭālib al-Makkīs Qūt al-qulūb. Introduced, translated, and annotated by Richard Gramlich. 4 vols. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992–95. Catalog record.
• Pseudo-al-Makkī. ʿIlm al-qulūb. Edited by ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā. Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1964. Attribution disputed.
• Arberry, Arthur J. A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts: The Chester Beatty Library. Vol. 4, entry 3930. Dublin, 1962. Catalog PDF.
• British Library. Or 7726, Qūt al-qulūb fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb. Arabic manuscript, thirteenth century. Catalog record.
• Renard, John, trans. Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 2004. See 112–263 for al-Makkī. Publisher page.

Modern scholarship

• Amin, W. Mohammed Azam. “An Evaluation of the Qūt al-qulūb of al-Makkī with an Annotated Translation of His Kitāb al-tawba.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1991. Open thesis.
• Aydemir, Hasan. “Erken Dönem Sûfî Dilinin Bağlarını Birleştirmek: Ebu Tâlib el-Mekkî’de Havâtır.” Hitit İlahiyat Dergisi 23, no. 2 (2024): 959–90. DOI.
• Bin Ramli, Harith. “The Sālimiyya and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Transmission of Theological Teachings in a Basran Circle of Mystics.” In Les maîtres soufis et leurs disciples, 101–29. Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2012. Open chapter.
• El Kadiri Boutchich, Mounir. “La notion de coeur dans les quatre premiers siècles de l’Hégire: le modèle d’Abû Ṭâlib al-Makkî.” PhD diss., École pratique des hautes études, 2005. Thesis record.
• Karamustafa, Ahmet T. Sufism: The Formative Period. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Publisher page.
• Kebe, Ndiouga. “La formation spirituelle du murīd selon Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī.” In Les maîtres soufis et leurs disciples. Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2012. Open chapter.
• Khalil, Atif. “Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī & the Nourishment of Hearts (Qūt al-qulūb) in the Context of Early Sufism.” The Muslim World 102, no. 2 (2012): 335–56. DOI.
• ———. “Tawba in the Sufi Psychology of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 996).” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 3 (2012): 294–324. DOI.
• Nakamura, Kojiro. “Makkī and Ghazālī on Mystical Practices.” Orient 20 (1984): 83–91.
• Pūrjavādī, Naṣr Allāh. “Bāzmāndahā-yi kitāb-i al-Ishāra wa-l-ʿibāra-yi Abū Saʿd-i Khargūshī dar kitāb-i ʿIlm al-qulūb.” Maʿārif 15, no. 3 (1377 SH/1999): 34–41.
• Saklan, Bilal. “Ebû Tâlib el-Mekkî.” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Online entry.
• ———. “Kūtü’l-kulûb.” TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Online entry.
• ———. Kûtu’l-Kulûb’daki Tasavvufi Hadislerin Hadis Metodolojisi Açısından Değeri. PhD diss., Selçuk University, 1989. Catalog record.
• Shukri, M. A. Mohamed. “The Mystical Doctrine of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī as Found in His Book Qūt al-qulūb.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1976. Open thesis.
• Yazaki, Saeko. “A Pseudo-Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī? The Authenticity of ʿIlm al-qulūb.” Arabica 59, no. 6 (2012): 650–84. DOI.
• ———. A Study of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī. PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2010. Open thesis.
• ———. Islamic Mysticism and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Role of the Heart. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Publisher page.

Research note on manuscripts

No autograph or author-lifetime copy of Qūt al-qulūb is presently known. “Oldest” should therefore refer to the earliest securely cataloged witnesses located in a given survey, not to a definitive global first. The Chester Beatty handlist dates Arabic MS 3930 to the sixth/twelfth century; the British Library dates Or 7726 to the thirteenth. Brockelmann and Sezgin list many more copies across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Turkey, but a fresh census and full stemmatic study remain scholarly needs.