Rabia of Basri

Rābia al-Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya (; 801 CE) or Rabia Basri was a poet, one of the earliest Sufi mystics and an influential religious figure from Basra. Her full name is said to be Rābiʿa bint Ismāʿīl; her kunya was Umm ʿAmr (or Umm al-Khayr), her wilāya was al-ʿAtakiyyah, and her nisba was al-ʿAdawiyya or al-Qaysīyya because she was a freed slave of the tribe of Qays ibn ʿAdī. She is regarded as one of the three preeminent Qalandars of the world. Cornell further notes that she was mentioned by two early Basran authors. Many of her hagiographies depict her using literary or philosophical tropes where she, like her Christian counterparts, embodied idealized religious individuals. and is widely considered as being the most important of the early renunciants, a form of piety that would eventually be labelled Sufism.

Poetry and stories Much of the poetry attributed to her is of unknown origin. After a life of hardship, she spontaneously achieved a state of self-realization. When asked by Hasan al-Basri how she discovered the secret, she responded by stating "you know of the how, but I know of the how-less."

One of the many stories that surround her life is that she was freed from slavery because her master saw her praying while surrounded by light, realized that she was a saint and feared for his life if he continued to keep her as a slave.

Biographer Rkia Elaroui Cornell discovered four main characterizations of Rabia: Rabia the Teacher, Rabia the Ascetic, Rabia the Lover, and Rabia the Sufi.

Asceticism Rabia is often described as being an ascetic, where "the ascetic attains the otherworldly not by rejecting the world but by treating it as unimportant. The ascetic avoids the World not because it is evil per se but because it is a distraction from God."

Legacy In a Sufi narrative, Sufi leader Hasan al-Basri explained, "I passed one whole night and day with Rabi'a ... it never passed through my mind that I was a man nor did it occur to her that she was a woman... when I saw her I saw myself as bankrupt and Rabi'a as truly sincere."

She decided to stay celibate in order to live life unlike other Muslim women of her time, and devote herself completely to God.

In popular culture

The life of Rabia has been the subject of several motion pictures of Turkish cinema. One of these films, Rabia, released in 1973, was directed by Osman F. Seden, and Fatma Girik played the leading role of Rabia.

Rabia, İlk Kadın Evliya (Rabia, The First Woman Saint) is another Turkish film on Rabia. It was also released in 1973 and was directed by Süreyya Duru, starring Hülya Koçyiğit. about worshipping God out of love, not out of fear of punishment or desire for a reward.

Rabia appears in 2025's Civilization VII as a Great Person for the Abbasid civilization. When used on a building, +10% happiness is added to the settlement.

Spanish musician Rosalía included the phrase "Ninguna mujer pretendió ser Dios" , attributed to Rabia Basri, inside the physical release of her 2025 album Lux. The full quote she refers to reads: "(...) women have never been so infatuated with themselves as men, nor have they ever claimed divinity." In the album's 11th track "La Yugular" she references Rabia with Arabic lyrics that refer to Rabia's wish to burn down heaven and quench the fires of hell, saying she'd do that for the divine love she has for God, for no promises or threats. The song is a deeply personal tribute to Rabia and Rosalía's journey to finding the God that's "as close to her as her jugular vein", a reference to a passage in the Quran that says the same.