Rabi'a From Narrative to Myth

Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya is a figure shrouded in myth. Certainly a woman by this name was born in Basra, Iraq, in the eighth century, but her life remains recorded only in legends, stories, poems and hagiographies. The various depictions of her – as a deeply spiritual ascetic, an existentialist rebel and a romantic lover – seem impossible to reconcile, and yet Rabi‘a has transcended these narratives to...