Ansari, Abdullah
(1005–1089), Sufi religious figure. Khwaja Abdullah Ansari was a Sufi sheikh from Heart, Afghanistan, and a Hanbali traditionist, renowned for his sermons in rhymed prose and for his polemics against rationalist theology (kalam). Ansari, a descendant of a Medinan companion of the Prophet Muhammad, was an exceptionally gifted child who composed poetry in Persian and Arabic and learned the Qurʾan and the Prophetic traditions (hadith) before the age of nine. He embarked on the Sufi path under the guidance of his father, but his mysticism was tempered by rigorous scholastic training, and he shunned practices that sought to induce ecstatic states. He was also a renowned teacher of the Qurʾan and the hadith, who castigated the influential Ashʿarite theologians for subjecting the revealed word to logical inferences.
Ansari was primarily an orator, not a writer, and his works abound with assonances and rhythmic patterns that aid memorization. Most were either compiled from disciples' notes or dictated to scribes in his old age. Among his famous works are Manazil al-Sa'irin (The Stages of the Pilgrims), a Sufi spiritual guide in Arabic analyzing the psychological states and stations of the Sufi path; Tabaqat al-Sufiyya (Biographies of Sufis), an expanded translation of the Arabic work of the great Sufi master Sulami (c. tenth–eleventh centuries) into the ancient dialect of Herat; and Kashf al-Asrar (Unveiling of the Secrets), the first systematic commentary on the Qurʾan written in a non-Arabic language. His popular appeal rests primarily on his quatrains and on the Munajat (Intimate Conversations)—mystical invocations to God abstracted from his other works. Ansari is one of the most influential early Sufi authors whose rhymed prose, interspersed with parables and verses, was emulated by Saʿdi, Jami and influenced other Persian classics.
Marta Simidchieva
Further Reading
Ansari, Abdullah. (1978) "Intimate Conversations." In The Book of Wisdom, edited by Ibn ʿAtaʾ Allah and translated by Wheeler M. Thackston. New York: Paulist Press, 163–233.
Beaurecueil, Serge de. (1985) "Abdallah al-Ansari." In Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. 1, edited by E.Yarshater. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 187–190.
Ravan Farhadi, A. G. (1996) Abdullah Ansari of Herat (1006– 1089 CE): An Early Sufi Master. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press.
Rypka, Jan. (1968) "History of Persian Literature up to the Beginning of the 20th Century." In History of Iranian Literature, edited by K. Jahn. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 234–235.
This complete Ansari, Abdullah contains 378 words. This
article contains 431 words (approx. 1 page at 300
words per page).
