Rabiah al-Adawiyah

Assalamu Alaykum,

[Post Moved]

R�bi'ah 'Adawiyyah

She used to cry profusely. When she used to hear about hell, she used to faint. When anyone offered her anything, she used to refuse it and say: "I do not want the world." When she turned 80, her condition was such that when she walked she was about to fall. She used to keep her kafan with her all the time. Her place of prostration used to get wet with her tears. All her extraordinary and astonishing ways are quite well known. She is also known as R�bi'ah Basriyyah.

Lesson: O women! You should also develop some fear of Allah and remembrance of death, after all she was also a woman (so it's not impossible for you to do the same).

[Source: Behisti Zewar]

Some info for Rabia al- Adawiyyah (r.a) here:
http://cislamonline.com/library/index.php?d=salaf&view=rabiya

[Above link article source: Muslim Saints and Mystics, Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya' (Memorial of the Saints) by Farid al-Din Attar, Translated by A. J. Arberry]

Also.. a bio below [Source: Unknown]

She was born in 714 A.D in Basra (Iraq), where she spent the greater part of her life. She was born in the poorest of homes, miraculous events were reputed to have taken place even at the time of her birth. At the night of her birth there was no oil on the house, no lamp nor swaddling clothes in which to rap the newborn child. Her father already had three daughters, and so she was called Rabia (the fourth). The mother asked her husband to go and ask for oil for the lamp from a neighbour, but he had made a vow that he would never ask anything of a creature (as a true Sufi he would depend only upon God to supply his needs), and so he came back without it. Having fallen asleep in great distress at the lack of provision for the child, he dreamt that the Prophet Muhammad SAWW appeared to him in his sleep and said: "'Do not be sorrowful, for this daughter who is born is a great saint, whose intercession will be desired by seventy thousand of my community". The Prophet SAW said further: "Tomorrow send a letter to Isa Zadhan, Amir of Basra, reminding him that 'You offer Durud to me (The Holy Prophet ) one hundred times every night and four hundred times every Thursday night. But this Thursday night you neglected me, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars.'" Hazrat Rabia's father got up and went straight to the Amir, with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The Amir was delighted on receiving the message and knowing that he was in the eyes of the Prophet SAWW he distributed in gratitude one thousand dinars to the poor and paid with joy four hundred to Rabia's father and requested him to come to him whenever he required anything as he will benefit very much by the visit of such a soul dear to the Lord.

When Rabia was a little older her mother and father died and she was left an orphan. A famine occurred in Basra and the sisters were scattered. One day an evil-minded man saw her and seized upon her and sold her as a slave for six dirhams and the man who bought her made her work hard. One night her master awoke from sleep and looked down through a window of the house and saw Rabia, whose head was bowed in worship, and she was saying: "O my Lord, you know that the desire of my heart is to obey you, and that the light of my eye is in the service of your court. If the master let me rested, I should not cease for one hour from your service, but you have made me subject to a creature." While she was still praying, her master saw a lap above her had, suspended without a chain, and the whole house was illuminated by the rays from that light. Rabia's master saw that strange sight, became afraid and returned to his own place and sat pondering until day came. When the day dawned, he called Rabia and spoke kindly to her and set her free. Rabia asked for leave to go away; so he gave her leave, and she left that place and journeyed into the desert.

One day she said to God: "If I worship You for the fear of hell burn me therein, and if I worship You for the hope of paradise, exclude me there-from, but if I worship you for Your own sake then withhold not from me Your Eternal Beauty."

She never married, once a man desired to marry her. She replied by thanking him for his proposal and said that she has no room in her heart for any other love besides God.

One day Hazrat Rabia was in jazb and hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. When people asked her to that where is she going?, she said: "I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..."

At one occasion she was asked if she hated Satan? Hazrat Rabia replied: "My love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for loving or hating any save Him."

When Hazrat Rabia Basri would not come to attend the sermons of Hazrat Hasan Basri, he would deliver no discourse that day. People in the audience asked him why he did that. He replied: "The syrup that is held by the vessels mean for the elephants cannot be contained in the vessels meant for the ants."

Once Hazrat Rabia was on her way to Makka, and when half-way there she saw the Ka'ba coming to meet her and she said" "It is the Lord of the house whom I need, what have I to do with the house? I need to meet with Him Who said, 'Whose approaches Me by a span's length I will approach him by the length of a cubit.' The Ka'ba which I see has no power over me; what joy does the beauty of the Ka'ba bring to me?" At the same time the great Sufi Saint Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham arrived at the Ka'ba, he did not see it.(As he spent fourteen years making his way to the Ka'ba, because in every place of prayer he performed two raka'ts). Hazrat Ibrahim bin Adham said: "Alas! What has happened? It maybe that some injure has overtaken my eyes." An unseen voice said to him: "No harm has befallen your eyes, but the Ka'ba has gone to meet a woman, who is approaching this place." Ibrahim Adham said: "O indeed, who is this?" He ran, and saw Rabia arriving and the Ka'ba was back in its own place, when Ibrahim saw that, he said: "O Rabia, what is this disturbance and trouble and burden which you have brought into the world?" She replied: "I have not brought disturbance into the world, it is you who have disturbed the world, because you delayed fourtenen years in arriving at the Ka'ba." He said: "Yes I have spent fourteen years in crossing the desert (because I was engaged) in prayer." Rabia said: "You traversed it in ritual prayer (Salat) but with personal supplication." Then, having performed the pilgrimage, she returned to Basra and occupied herself with works of devotion.

One day Hazrat Hasan Basri saw Hazrat Rabia near a lake. He threw his prayer rug on top of the water and said: "Rabia come! Let us pray two raka'ts here." She replied: "Hasan, when you are showing off your spiritual goods in the worldly market, it should be things which your fellow men cannot display." Then she threw her prayer rug into the air and flew up onto it by saying: "Come up here, Hasan, where people can see us." Then she said: "Hasan, what you did fishes can do, and what I did flies can do. But the real business is outside these tricks. One must apply oneself to the real business."

Hazrat Rabia Basri died in 801 CE in Basra (Iraq).