Junayd of Baghdad

Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd lived in Baghdad in the ninth century, and died there in 910. He was a nephew and disciple of the Sufi Sarī al-Saqaṭī and was closely associated with al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, the great analyst of the inner life. Trained also in law, he became the most respected Sufi master of his day, later honoured as “the master of the group”.

His teaching survives in short treatises and letters (rasāʾil), written in a deliberately difficult style meant for those already on the path, and in sayings recorded by later authors. At a time when the ecstatic utterances of some Sufis brought suspicion and persecution, he taught discretion: the deepest states were to be guarded, not proclaimed. Tradition reports that al-Ḥallāj was among those who came to him, and that he disapproved of al-Ḥallāj’s public ecstasy.

Junayd was regarded by later Sufis as the model of “sobriety”, in contrast to the “intoxication” associated with Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī. Most later Sufi orders trace their chains of transmission through him, and his doctrine of passing away and remaining shaped all subsequent Sufi thought.