al-Bāʿūniyyah (d. 923/1517) was an exceptional Muslim scholar. She was a mystic, and a prolific poet and writer, composing more works in Arabic than any other woman prior to the twentieth century. In her writings, ʿĀʾishah often speaks of her abiding love for God and His prophet Muḥammad, and her quest for mystical union. These concerns are central to The Principles of Sufism, a mystical guide book that ʿĀʾishah compiled to help others on this spiritual path. Drawing lessons and readings from a centuries-old Sufi tradition, ʿĀʾishah advises the seeker to repent of selfishness and turn to a sincere life of love. Fundamental to this transformation is the recollection of both human limitations and God’s limitless love. In The Principles of Sufism, ʿĀʾishah recounts important stages and states on the path toward mystical union, as she urges her readers to surrender themselves to God and willingly accept His loving grace.
Life
ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah was born in Damascus in the second half of the fifteenth century ad. She came from a long line of religious scholars and poets, originally from the small village of Bāʿūn in southern Syria. In search of education and employment, members of the Bāʿūnī family eventually made their way to Damascus, and for several generations, they served the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt and Syria. ʿĀʾishah’s father Yūsuf (d. 880/1475) was a scholar of Shāfiʿī jurisprudence and rose to prominence as the chief judge in Damascus. He made sure that all of his children received a fine education, and so ʿĀʾishah, together with her five brothers, studied the Qurʾān, the traditions of the prophet Muḥammad, jurisprudence, and poetry.1 ʿĀʾishah mentions that she had memorized the entire Qurʾān by the age of eight, and that, as a teen or young woman, she went with her family on the Hajj pilgrimage, during which she had a vision of the prophet Muḥammad:
God, may He be praised, granted me a vision of the Messenger when I was residing in holy Mecca. By the will of God the Exalted, an anxiety had overcome me, and so I resolved to visit the holy sanctuary. It was Friday night, and I reclined on a couch on an enclosed veranda overlooking the holy Kaaba and the sacred precinct. It so happened that a man there was reading a poem on the life of God’s Messenger, and voices rose with blessings upon the Prophet. Then, I could not believe my eyes—it was as if I was standing among a group of women. Someone said, “Kiss the Prophet!” and a dread came over me that made me swoon until the Prophet passed before me. So I sought his intercession and, with a stammering tongue, I said to God’s Messenger, “O my master, I ask you for intercession!” Then I heard him say calmly and deliberately, “I am the intercessor on the Judgment Day.” 2
As part of her education, ʿĀʾishah also studied Sufism, which was the general practice of the Bāʿūnī family. One of her great uncles had been a Sufi ascetic, while another uncle had been the director of a Sufi chantry in Damascus. Moreover, members of the Bāʿūnī family, including ʿĀʾishah’s father, were buried in a family plot near the lodge of the Sufi master Abū Bakr ibn Dāwūd (d. 806/1403). This shaykh was affiliated with the ʿUrmawī branch of the Qādiriyyah Sufi order to which the Bāʿūnī family belonged, and in a number of her writings, ʿĀʾishah specifically praised her two Qādirī masters, Jamāl al-Dīn Ismāʿīl al-Ḥawwārī (d. 900/1495), and his successor, Muḥyī al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-ʿUrmawī (fl. eleventh century/sixteenth century):
My education and development, my spiritual effacement and purification, occurred by the helping hand of the sultan of the saints of his time, the crown of the pure friends of his age, the beauty of truth and religion, the venerable master, father of the spiritual axes, the axis of existence, Ismāʿīl al-Ḥawwārī, may God sanctify his heart and be pleased with him, and, then, by the helping hand of his successor in spiritual states and stations, and in spiritual proximity and union, Muḥyī al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-ʿUrmawī, may God continue to spread his ever-growing spiritual blessings throughout his lifetime, and join us every moment to his blessings and succor.3
The Bāʿūnīs were a prominent family in Damascus, so ʿĀʾishah married a man known as Ibn Naqīb al-Ashrāf, the son of another distinguished family there who were descendants of the prophet Muḥammad. ʿĀʾishah’s husband’s full name was Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Naqīb al-Ashrāf (d. 909/1503), and he, too, was a devotee of shaykh Ismāʿīl al-Ḥawwārī. ʿĀʾishah and Aḥmad had at least two children together: a son, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (897–925/1489–1519), and a daughter, Barakah (born 899/1491). In ad 1513, ʿĀʾishah, by then a widow, left Damascus for Cairo with her son to seek a job for him in the Mamlūk administration. En route, bandits ambushed their caravan in the Egyptian delta and stole everything, including all of ʿĀʾishah’s books. As a result, ʿĀʾishah and her son were destitute when they arrived in Cairo, but they received the assistance of a family friend, Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Ajā (d. 925/1519), the foreign minister and confidential secretary of the Mamlūk sultan, al-Ghawrī (r. 906–22/1501–16). Ibn Ajā generously provided for them and employed ʿĀʾishah’s son as a secretary in the chancellery.
ʿĀʾishah spent the next three years in Cairo where she studied jurisprudence with a number of scholars. She graciously accepted Ibn Ajā’s financial support, for which she praised him in several poems, and she continued to write and compose new works. Then, in ad 1516, ʿĀʾishah left Cairo with her son, who had been assigned to accompany Ibn Ajā to Aleppo. There, the Sultan al-Ghawrī was preparing for war against the Ottomans to the north, yet he took the time to hold a personal audience with ʿĀʾishah. ʿĀʾishah then returned to her native Damascus, where she died soon thereafter in ad 1517. Our sources do not tell us why al-Ghawrī met with ʿĀʾishah, though al-Ghawrī was quite fond of Arabic poetry, and so was probably familiar with ʿĀʾishah’s poetic reputation. It is also possible that the sultan sought ʿĀʾishah’s spiritual blessings for his trials ahead, for it is quite apparent from accounts of ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah by her contemporaries that she was highly regarded as a pious woman and Sufi master.4
Thought and Work
As an educated Muslim woman, ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah was privileged, but she was by no means unique within medieval Muslim society. Throughout the Middles Ages, there was a significant number of educated Muslim women, though few of them wrote original works. ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah was truly exceptional for having composed over a dozen works of prose and poetry, praised by a number of her contemporaries. Today, many of ʿĀʾishah’s writings are lost, but we know from surviving manuscripts and from her own statements that much of her work addressed mystical themes and praised the prophet Muḥammad.5 ʿĀʾishah composed a number of laudatory accounts of Muḥammad’s life and prophetic career (mawlids), which combined prose and poetry. In fact, celebration of the Prophet appears to have been ʿĀʾishah’s vocation, perhaps undertaken, in part, thanks to her vision of him while on pilgrimage. ʿĀʾishah also composed a considerable amount of verse, including two collections of poetry that still survive. One, simply entitled The Collected Verse of ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah (Dīwān ʿĀʾishah al-Bāʿūniyyah), which ʿĀʾishah composed during her stay in Cairo, contains six long poems praising the prophet Muḥammad. Among them is an ode incorporating al-Būṣīrī’s (d. 694/1295) celebrated panegyric to Muḥammad, The Mantle Ode (al-Burdah),6 and ʿĀʾishah’s most famous poem, Clear Inspiration in Praise of the Trusted Prophet (al-Fatḥ al-mubīn fī madḥ al-Amīn). This latter work is a badīʿiyyah, a complex type of poem popular during the Mamlūk period, which praises the Prophet while illustrating various rhetorical schemes (badīʿ) used in Arabic verse. ʿĀʾishah composed one hundred and thirty verses for her Clear Inspiration, each containing a praiseworthy attribute or action of the Prophet illustrated by a rhetorical device (e.g., antithesis, alliteration). ʿĀʾishah consciously patterned this long ode on similar poems from earlier poets of the Mamlūk period, and she further displays her extensive knowledge of Arabic verse in her commentary on the poem in which she refers to nearly fifty earlier poets.7
The second surviving collection of ʿĀʾishah’s verse is
