Rabi'ah al-Adawiyyah

Rabi’ah al-Adawiyyah is well known in Islamic history as Rabi’ah Basri was born in 714 A.C. in the city of Basra, Iraq.

 She was born in a very poor home and was stolen as a child and sold into slavery by her abductors. Her piety and her sanctity secured her freedom and she retired to a life devoted to prayer and meditation. She gathered around her many disciples and associates who came to seek her advise, or to ask her to pray for them or to listen to her teaching. Rabi’ah Basri was devoted completely to asceticism. She cared little for life on earth and its comforts, and preferred seclusion.
 Rabi’ah Basri is highly esteemed and her teachings quoted by most of the Sufi writers and biographers of the great saints in the history of Islam.

 She died in Basra, Iraq in 801 A.C. Here are but a few of the inspirational quotes from Rabi’ah…

"I am ashamed to ask for this world's goods from Him to Whom it belongs and how can I seek them from those to whom it does not belong!"

 

"O my Lord, I have made Thee the Companion of my heart, But my body is present for Those who seek its company, And my body is friendly towards its guests, But the Beloved of my heart is the guest of my soul. "

 

"O my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, then burn me therein, and if I worship Thee in the hope of Paradise, then exclude me from it, but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.''