ABSTRACT
·The Introduction sets the scene for the ideas, teachings and personalities that will be examined in subsequent chapters. The thread linking these chapters is the wish to weave together moments of the early period of Islamic mysticism, before it became known as Ṣūfism. Between the eighth and tenth centuries, and throughout the vast Islamic provinces, ‘mystics’ – known as wayfarers, seekers, knowers rather than Ṣūfīs – left not only memorials to be monumentalized by later hagiographers, but also personal records and individual writings. Teachings, ideas, experiences, practices and terminologies, which became eventually associated with Ṣūfism, had already germinated and blossomed in the works of Shaqīq al-Balkhī, al-Muḥāsibī, Sahl al-Tustarī, Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd and a few others. Foremost among these authors is al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, whose vast corpus and in-depth contemplations allow us to re-formulate teachings concerning polarity, mystical psychology, mystical linguistics, mystical knowledge – teachings which became hallmarks of Islamic mysticism, and to evoke their late antique reverberations. These provide the arena for a fresh overview of early manifestations of Islamic mysticism.
