Abu l-Abbas b. ata: Sufi und Koranausleger.

By RICHARD GRAMLICH. Deutsche morgenlandische Gesellschaft, Abhandlungen flit die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 51.2. Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1995. Pp. vii + 346. DM 184.

Abu 'l-Abbas Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Adami, known as Ibn Ata (d. 309/922), a renowned Hanbali Sufi of Bagdad, was highly respected among the Sufis for his subtle interpretation of the Qur an and his deep experience of mystical union with God. He was also known to have experienced life as a profound tragedy, having lost his wife, his sons, and all his possessions under violent circumstances. Ibn Ata was an outspoken man, one who engaged in divisive controversy with other Sufis and entered into heated altercations with the guardians of public order. In fact, his public rebuke in Bagdad of the vizier, apparently in defense of ecstatic utterances made publicly by al-Hallaj, so enraged the vizier that he had Ibn Ata beaten to death with such brutality that his teeth were knocked out.

Ibn Ata is said to have compiled a book on Qur an interpretation, Kitab fi fahm al-Qur an, which was transmitted by Abu Umar Ali b. Muhammad al-Anmati and, though lost today, may have served as the basis for the many statements that Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami incorporated into his Qur an commentaries. In the present volume, these statements, drawn from al-Sulami's Haqa iq al-tafsir as edited by P. Nwyia (Trois oeuvres inedites de mystiques musulmans [Beirut, 1972], 23-182), are collated with the many parallel citations included in Ruzbihan al-Baqli's Ara is al-bayan and translated in their entirety into a highly accurate German by Richard Gramlich.

In his substantial introduction to the translation, Gramlich attempts to arrange the very fragmented and disjointed statements of Ibn Ata in six major chapters, each dealing with a principal theme or...