al-Junaid, Abū ʾl-Qāsim

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al-Junaid, Abū ʾl-Qāsim (d. 910 (AH 298)). Sūfī teacher, who influenced al-Hallāj, and who laid the foundations of much of the development of Sufism. From his instructors he received his strong insistence that religious law and orthodox behaviour and belief control Sūfī experience. He thus distanced himself from the extreme statements of such men as al-Hallāj, and has therefore been known as the advocate of ‘sober Sufism’. Little of his own writing has survived, apart from fragments collected in a work given the general title of an Epistle, Rasaʾil.

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