Diverse Personalities of the Ecstatic Sufi an-Nūrī According to the Earliest Sources

Besides the most prominent figures of the so-called intoxicated Sufis, Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 874) and al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāǧ (d. 922), a less-known early representative of ecstatic Sufis (arbāb al-mawāǧīd) was Abū l-Ḥusayn an-Nūrī (d. 907/8). The portrayals of an-Nūrī, as recorded in the different sources, are inconsistent and seem to depend on the authors’ main motives for compiling their works. The discrepancy between an-Nūrī’s different portrayals, as reconstructed from the divergent sources, is striking. The article discusses these portrayals in seven of the earliest works in which traditions attributed to an-Nūrī appear. These are: Kitāb at-taʿarruf li-maḏhab ahl at-taṣawwuf by Abū Bakr al-Kalābāḏī, Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī t-taṣawwuf by Abū Naṣr as-Sarrāǧ, Ṭabaqāt aṣ- ṣūfiyya by Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān as-Sulamī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ by Abū Nuʿaym al- Iṣfahānī, ar-Risāla al-qušayriyya by Abū l-Qāsim al-Qušayrī, Kitāb al-bayāḍ wa-s- sawād min ḫaṣāʾiṣ ḥikam al-ʿibād fī naʿt al-murīd wa-l-murād by Abū l-Ḥasan as-Sīrǧānī, and Salwat al-ʿārifīn wa-uns al-muštāqīn by Abū Ḫalaf aṭ-Ṭabarī. Although exact dates are not available for most of the sources, all of them were written within a hundred years, between the late 10th and the late 11th centuries.