Traditional attribution · Essential works
The Two Loves (attributed verses)
أحبك حبين: حب الهوى * وحباً لأنك أهل لذاكا
The most famous of the poems attributed to Rabia distinguishes two loves for God: the "love of desire", which occupies her in remembering Him to the exclusion of all else, and the love owed to Him "because He is worthy of it", in which God lifts the veils until He lets Himself be seen. It ends by denying any merit of her own: the praise, in both cases, belongs to God alone. Al-Ghazali made it the canonical example of pure love, and since then it has summed up the doctrine tradition associates with her name.
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Authorship note
Rabia left no written work. These four verses first appear attributed to her in Abu Talib al-Makki's Qut al-qulub (d. 996), some two centuries after her death; al-Ghazali quotes and comments on them in book XXXVI of the Ihya. Scholarship (Cornell) regards them as a late attribution, though consistent with the image of "Rabia the lover".
Editions and translations
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English
Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment (Ihya, libro 36)
Islamic Texts Society, 2012
Translation: Eric Ormsby
ISBN 9781903682272
Contiene la cita y el comentario de al-Ghazali.
Sufi Poems: A Mediaeval Anthology (texto árabe y traducción)
Islamic Texts Society, 2005
Translation: Martin Lings
ISBN 9781903682173
Français
Rabia al-Adawiyya
Les Chants de la recluse
The Conscious LibraryLes Chants de la recluse
Arfuyen, 2002
Translation: Mohammed Oudaimah
ISBN 9782908825930
Textos atribuidos a Rabia, elegidos y traducidos del árabe.
Other works by Rabia al-Adawiyya
- I Have Made You the Confidant of My Heart (attributed verses) · 1000
- Prayers and Sayings in Attar's Memorial of the Saints · 1221
- Ascetic Sayings Transmitted with Chains (Ibn Abi l-Dunya, al-Dhahabi) · 894
- Sayings in al-Sulami and al-Qushayri's Epistle · 1045
- First among Sufis · 1982
- Rabi'a the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam · 1928
- Rabi'a from Narrative to Myth · 2019
- Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabi'a · 1988
Sources
- Abu Talib al-Makki, Qut al-qulub (s. X), y al-Ghazali, Ihya ulum al-din, libro XXXVI (Kitab al-mahabba), trad. Eric Ormsby, Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment, Islamic Texts Society, 2012; texto árabe de los versos reproducido por Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi en Wikisource.
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