Rabia of Basra

Eighth-century Iraqi Sufi mystic and poet whose teaching of mahabba — pure, disinterested love of God 'for God's sake alone, not for fear of hell or hope of heaven' — became one of the foundational threads of Islamic mysticism and influenced every later Sufi master. Born around 717 CE in Basra (modern-day Iraq), she was orphaned young, sold into slavery, and (according to traditional accounts) freed by her master after he witnessed her in nightlong prayer surrounded by light. She lived the rest of her life in voluntary poverty, refusing all marriage offers (including from the great Hasan al-Basri), eating little, sleeping less, and pouring her life into love of God. She died around 801 CE in Basra. Her poetic prayers and sayings, preserved in collections by later Sufi biographers (notably Farid al-Din Attar in the Memorial of the Friends of God), have been translated and re-translated across twelve centuries — and remain among the most-quoted texts on the love of God in any tradition.