Ruzbihan Baqli - Literary Works

Literary Works

Ruzbihan Baqli was interested in writing about his spiritual experiences and poetry, recording them in a very dense, rhetorical prose style. He composed mostly in Arabic and Persian. His writings are unique because, while they do not include many dates or chronology, he talks about his personal life and his family, while not mentioning other outside events. Ruzbihan Baqli was known for his fondness and defense of many early Sufis’ ecstatic sayings (shathiyat) and therefore was dubbed “Doctor Ecstaticus.” He completed his book Commentary on Ecstatic Sayings or Sarh al-shathiyyat in 1174. He also wrote The Spirits’ Font in 1184. The Unveiling of Secrets or Kashf al-asrar was completed in 1189 after taking eight years to compose. It is both an autobiography and a diary of visions and Sufi teachings. Many of his works emphasize the Sufi theories of love and also defend early Sufi saints in their ecstatic utterances. The Sufi saint Hallaj was a primary example in Ruzbihan Baqli’s text.

While direct literary references to Ruzbihan Baqli in later Sufism were not too common, perhaps because of the difficulty of the texts, he was known for his love of beauty: fine fragrances, a beautiful face, and sweet voices. His texts were studied, however, by Jāmi of the fifteenth century and a Mughul prince of the seventeenth century.