Abt Mansur Al Hallaj

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Mansur Al Hallaj

Mansur al-Hallaj was born in the southern Iranian community of Tus in the

province of Fars around 858. His full name was Abu Al-Mughith Al-Husayn ibn

Mansur Al-Hallaj. He was a Sufi and one of Islam's most controversial writers

and teachers.

Al-Hallaj was fascinated with the ascetic way of life at a very young age. He

memorized the Qur'an during his teens, and began to retreat from the world to

gather with other like minded individuals to study Islamic mysticism.

 

He later married, and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and stayed there for a year.

He began to travel the world abroad, preaching, teaching and writing along the

way about the way to an intimate relationship with God. By the time he went on

his second pilgrimage to Mecca, several apprentices accompanied him, and after

returning to his family for a short period of time, traveled to India and

Turkistan to spread the Islamic teachings. After this, he made a third

pilgrimage to Mecca, and returned to Baghdad.

 

The situation in which al-Hallaj taught and wrote was shaped by social,

economic, political, and religious stress, which eventually led to his arrest.

Sufism was new at the time, and it had provoked extensive opposition from the

Muslim orthodoxy. Sufi masters considered his sharing the beauty of mystical

experience with the masses undisciplined at best, disobedient at worst. He was

an outspoken moral-political reformist. Before long political leaders began

making a case against him.

He used to become so enraptured in ecstasy by the presence of the Divine that he

was prone to a loss of personal identity, During his arrest he experienced one

of these breaks and uttered: " Ana al-haqq, " or " I am the Truth " (or God). The

statement was highly inappropriate in Islam, Those three little words would mark

the beginning of the end for al-Hallaj. Still, his trial was lengthy and marked

with uncertainty.

He spent 11 years in confinement in Baghdad, and was finally brutally tortured

and crucified. There were many witnesses that stated that al-Hallaj was

strangely serene while being tortured, and sincerely forgave his persecutors. He

is referred to as " Love's Prophet. "

Today al-Hallaj is one of the most influential Sufi writers and an important

character in Islamic history

He died March 26, 922.