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Abdāl (Arabic: أبدال) lit: substitutes, but which can also mean "generous" [karīm] and "noble" [sharīf]) is a term used in Islamic metaphysics and Islamic mysticism, both Sunni and Shiite,[1] to refer to a particularly important group of God's saints.[1] In the tradition of Sunni Islam in particular, the concept attained an especially important position in the writings of the Sunni mystics and theologians, whence it appears in the works of Sunni authorities as diverse as Abu Talib al-Makki (d. 956), Ali Hujwiri (d. 1072), Ibn Asakir (d. 1076), Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (d. 1088), Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406).[1]
It is a rank of forty saints, but more often the larger group of 356 saints in Sufi hagiography. In this theology it is said that they are only known to and appointed by Allah, and it is through their operations that the world continues to exist.[2] The term over time has come to include a greater hierarchy of saints, all of different rank and prestige.
- ^ a b c La-Shay', Hussein and Negahban, Farzin, "Abdāl", in: Encyclopaedia Islamica, Editors-in-Chief: Wilferd Madelung and, Farhad Daftary.
- ^ Metcalf, Barbara Daly (1996). Making Muslim space in North America and Europe. University of California Press. p. 178. ISBN 0-520-20404-2.
The centrality of a Sufi saint's power over the earth and nature is explicitly personified in Sufi theosophy by the mystical rank of abdal, part of the esoteric set of beliefs regarding the ranked community of saints. According to this set of beliefs, there are at any one time forty living saints in the world who are abdals. These saints, I was told, make the grass grow, give food to birds, and ensure the fertility of the earth.