Repentance Made Manifest: From Highwayman to Ṣūfī in the Thought and Practice of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and Bishr al-Ḥāfī

Abstract

This article offers a comparative study of two closely linked constellations of early Ṣūfī thought: the ascetic–mystical program of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) and that of his renowned disciple Bishr al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841). Moving beyond hagiographic anecdote, the study advances the thesis that the pair articulate two complementary modalities of tawba (repentance) that generate distinct ascetic habitus and pedagogical lineages: al-Fudayl’s “ethic of awe” (fear, juridical redress, and renunciation of patronage) and Bishr’s “aesthetics of reverence” (beauty-induced modesty, evident humility, and fame avoidance). Drawing on primary sources (Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, al-Sulamī’s Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, al-Qushayrī’s Risāla, al-Sarrāj’s Lumaʿ), the article reconstructs each thinker’s core concepts, practices (e.g., returning wrongs, ḥafāʾ/barefoot humility), and teaching styles and maps how the teacher–disciple nexus transmits, adapts, and ritualizes these ethics into durable Ṣūfī dispositions. Methodologically, the article combines close textual analysis with practice theory to show how emotions—such as fear and modesty (ḥayāʾ)—are choreographed into public, socially legible acts, thus reframing repentance as embodied discipline rather than interior feeling alone. A prosopographic appendix traces transmission from al-Fudayl to Bishr to Sarī al-Saqaṭī and al-Junayd, clarifying how each modality survives in later Baghdad sobriety and Malāmatī self-effacement. The contribution is twofold: first, it supplies a granular typology of early Ṣūfī repentance that explains divergent stances toward money, publicity, and power; second, it models how to read early Ṣūfī biography as anthropology of practice, recovering the lived grammar by which “conversion stories” become social programs. In doing so, the article nuances standard narratives of early Ṣūfism, showing that Bishr is not merely al-Fuḍayl’s echo but a creative reframer whose “reverential” path complements—rather than imitates—the awe-driven ethic associated with al-Fuḍayl.

1. Introduction

1.1. Bishr al-Ḥāfī and al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ: Repentance, Pedagogy, and the Making of Early Ṣūfī Habitus

Within the formative landscape of Islamic Ṣūfism, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (122–187 AH/740–802 CE) and his celebrated disciple Bishr al-Ḥāfī (150–227 AH/767–841 CE) stand as emblematic yet debated figures. Both are remembered not only for the narratives of tawba—whether understood as repentance, sudden turning, or ethical reorientation—that define their lives, but also for the durable ascetic styles they bequeathed to later generations. This study adopts a comparative frame to argue that, while Bishr’s spiritual imagination was unmistakably shaped in the orbit of al-Fuḍayl, he recast al-Fuḍayl’s moral emphasis into a distinct, publicly legible repertoire of practice—one that made repentance perceptible through respect, modesty (ḥayāʾ), and fame avoidance. This stands in contrast with al-Fuḍayl’s more awe-driven (khawf)1 program of juridical rectitude, fear of God, and renunciation of patronage. In short, the pair map two complementary modalities of repentance that shaped early Ṣūfī practice: the ethic of awe (al-Fuḍayl) and the repertoire of reverent gestures (Bishr). The teacher–disciple framing in this article follows the moral-pedagogical linkage emphasized in the hagiographical tradition; it is not a claim of direct ḥadīth transmission, which major isnād compilers (al-Khaṭīb, Ibn al-Jawzī) do not substantiate.

Classical sources agree on the broad trajectory of al-Fuḍayl’s conversion, though the fullest narrative is preserved in al-Qushayrī’s Risāla (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–56) and in Ibn Khallikān’s biographical notice (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 1:321–22). In these accounts, al-Fuḍayl—remembered as a feared brigand along the Abiward–Sarakhs route—undergoes a decisive break when he hears the Qurʾānic appeal to inward humility (Q 57:16), a moment portrayed as shattering his previous course. Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilya does not narrate the scene itself but traces its aftermath: al-Fuḍayl seeks out those he has wronged, restores property, rectifies past injuries, and adopts a principled refusal of gifts, patronage, and court proximity (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–33). Taken together, these sources depict a conversion whose authenticity is measured through observable acts of redress and sustained moral vigilance.

That orientation—fear before God and justice toward creatures—gives his teaching a strongly juridical cast: repentance is authenticated by acts that set the social ledger right. Later handbooks make this double movement explicit. Al-Sarrāj and al-Qushayrī both define tawba not as an inner state alone but as a patterned practice whose first signs are perceptible and reparative (al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60).

Conversely, Bishr’s famous sobriquet—al-Ḥāfī, meaning “the barefoot one”—crystallizes a different spiritual grammar. The classical record preserves several origin stories for the name. In one account, Bishr finds a scrap of writing bearing the basmala (“in the name of God”), perfumes it, and lifts it from the ground; that reverential gesture—an ethic of respect for the sacred word—is rewarded with an inner transformation and a lifelong discernible humility, expressed in going barefoot (Abū Nuʿaym 1996). Other traditions link Bishr’s turning to the charisma of a saint (walī) or to a gentle reprimand that awakens moral modesty (ḥayāʾ)—a sense of shame before divine beauty—rather than explicit fear (al-Sulamī 1999). Whatever the precise chain of transmission (the sources differ in details), the public sign of Bishr’s path is consistent: a discernible ethic of modesty, expressed in eschewing comfort, refusing fame, hosting quietly, and withdrawing from display even when piety might have been converted into social capital (al-Qushayrī 2002; al-Hujwīrī 1992). If al-Fuḍayl dramatizes the legal and moral face of repentance, Bishr foregrounds what may be called the aesthetic-ethical dimension of repentance—the beauty of modest comportment as a director of the body, the conduct, and the gaze.

The teacher–disciple nexus between the two is emphasized across the tradition: Bishr’s name routinely follows al-Fuḍayl’s in the biographical layers (ṭabaqāt), and hagiographers make the line of transmission explicit (Abū Nuʿaym 1996; al-Sulamī 1999). Yet the record also notes ways in which Bishr’s conduct departs from the pattern attributed to al-Fuḍayl. Ibn al-Jawzī—who often writes with a critical eye—notes the celebrity Bishr attained on his own terms, suggesting that the disciple’s path, while indebted, was not a mere echo of al-Fuḍayl’s example (Ibn al-Jawzī 2000, pp. 412–13). Modern historians of early Ṣūfism have likewise underscored that what later becomes the “Baghdad school” (al-Sarī al-Saqaṭī, al-Junayd) runs through both modalities: God-fearing restraint as a check on desire and reverential self-composure as a choreography of the self in public (Trimingham 1971; Karamustafa 2007; Knysh 2019; Melchert 2022). In this sense, Bishr’s innovation lies not in abandoning al-Fuḍayl’s core ethical insistence, but in re-coding repentance as a habit of attention—a way of walking that binds embodiment (barefoot humility), speech economy, and the avoidance of celebrity into one integrated style.

Seen from the vantage of practice theory, the two programs are complementary. Al-Fuḍayl’s preaching (famously including royal admonition) makes fear and accountability socially legible—tawba proceeds through the rectification of harm, through distance from power, and through a juridical scruple about income, gifts, and patronage. Bishr’s repertoire, in contrast, routinizes modesty and self-erasure: the barefoot sign, quiet hosting, and the refusal to collect spiritual capital in public become daily, repeatable micro-practices—a grammar through which interior states are trained and protected (al-Qushayrī 2002; al-Hujwīrī 1992). Across both trajectories, repentance is a practice, not a flash of feeling; conversion stories function as programmatic scenes that teach how to inhabit the city—its markets, mosques, and courts—without being swallowed by its economies of money and reputation.

The well-known controversy around both figures is partly a function of the sources that preserve them. In early Ṣūfī literature, conversion stories (qiṣaṣ al-tawba) are a central narrative technology: they do not simply record biographical facts but stage exemplary “turnings” that define what it means to become a friend of God and to inhabit repentance as a lifelong discipline (al-Sarrāj 1960; al-Qushayrī 2002; al-Hujwīrī 1992; Karamustafa 2007; Radtke and O’Kane 1996; de Jong and Radtke 1999; Melchert 2022). Hagiographical anthologies—eager to edify—condense chronology, multiply miracle motifs, and harmonize disparate versions into morally legible tableaux. The historian’s task, then, is not to sort “true” from “false” miracle, but to identify what practices the stories authorize and what social ideals they encode. On this reading, al-Fuḍayl’s conversion is less about a spectacular break than about establishing a template for repairing social damage; Bishr’s sobriquet is less about a picturesque oddity than about maintaining vigilant humility in the face of creeping fame. Neither figure is reducible to the single anecdote most often repeated about him.

A further methodological point concerns the use of hagiographical literature as a historical source. As John Renard reminds us, Ṣūfī hagiography is less a transparent record of events than a didactic genre that constructs models of piety, moral commitment, and servanthood; its value lies not in empirical chronology but in the social imagination it encodes and the practices it seeks to authorize (Renard 2008). Early collections—such as those preserving the lives of al-Fuḍayl and Bishr—shape sanctity through selective storytelling, exemplary episodes, and moralized portraits designed to train readers in dispositions befitting “friends of God.” Reading such texts historically thus requires a double awareness: attending to their literary conventions while tracing how narratives of turning, humility, and esteem functioned as formative templates within early Ṣūfī communities. This approach aligns with current scholarship that treats conversion accounts and ascetic vignettes not as literal reportage but as programmatic scenes that stabilize ethical repertoires across generations.

Finally, the charge of excess—so often leveled at famed ascetics—needs recalibration. Reports of fame avoidance, gestures resembling malāma (self-blame), refusal to monetize charisma, and wariness of rulers are not postures but policy: they translate tawba into a public ethic. Here, “malāma-like gestures” refers to actions that deliberately deflect praise and neutralize admiration—a pattern later systematized by the Malāmatiyya of Nishapur, who cultivated self-effacement and concealed virtue to protect the sincerity of their interior states (cf. al-Sulamī’s Risālat al-Malāmatiyya). While al-Fuḍayl and Bishr predate that institutional articulation, their practices anticipate its core intuition: public visibility is spiritually dangerous, and humility must sometimes be dramatized to guard the heart.

Al-Fuḍayl’s admonition of power (cast in several sources) and Bishr’s instinct to deflect attention converge on the same institutional wisdom: proximity to power and publicity distorts spiritual work. Modern scholarship has shown that this stance, while pragmatic, also responded to the social pressures of early ʿAbbāsid urban life (Trimingham 1971, pp. 3–38; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 1–28). In this respect, the “controversy” surrounding these figures reveals less about their alleged extremity than about the usefulness of their examples to communities trying to reconcile piety with city life.

In sum, a comparative reading of the biographical materials on al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and Bishr al-Ḥāfī clarifies two interlocking insights about early Ṣūfism. First, repentance is made durable by being made visible—either as juridical redress and fear-driven vigilance, in the case of al-Fuḍayl, or as reverential modesty and self-erasure, in the case of Bishr. Second, the teacher–disciple tie does not produce replicas but habitus: portable styles that subsequent generations learn, adapt, and ritualize. Recognizing Bishr as a creative reframer rather than a mere echo helps us see why his name radiates through later sources: his path translates al-Fuḍayl’s awe-oriented stance into a stable veneration suited to the social world his followers had to inhabit. Far from marginal, both figures stand near the center of the early Ṣūfī settlement of the inner life with the demands of the public square.

1.2. Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Marwazī (al-Ḥāfī): Reverence Made Detectable

Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Marwazī (d. 227/841–42), better known by his sobriquet al-Ḥāfī (“the barefoot”), was born circa 150/767 near Merv and spent the mature phase of his life in Baghdad, where he died and was buried—by most accounts—in the cemetery of Bāb Ḥarb (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14; al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94). Pre-modern biographical dictionaries agree on the broad contours of his transformation but preserve multiple origin narratives for the name al-Ḥāfī. The multiplicity is significant for this article’s thesis: rather than a single “conversion moment,” the tradition curates a repertoire of reverential gestures that make repentance (tawba) a noticeable, repeatable discipline—a patterned style of reverent comportment that this article traces across Bishr’s life.

One widely transmitted account places Bishr’s turning in the orbit of the ʿAlid imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim. When the imam inquired about Bishr’s state, a slave girl at the door is said to have quipped, “He is free; had he been a slave, he would have shown humility before his Lord.” The remark pierced Bishr; he repented and removed his sandals as a token that he now stood before God as a slave, not as a self-satisfied free man (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–13). A second report centers on an ethical jolt in the marketplace: a boy refuses to have his sandals mended, complaining, “How much you poor people burden others with your burdens!” Stung by the rebuke, Bishr takes off his sandals entirely and vows never to wear them again (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:213–14). In both accounts, the sobriquet functions not as an incidental detail but as a deliberate program: to render modesty and deference noticeable through the body.

A third cluster of narratives, preserved in Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī’s Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, adds a telling aesthetic cue. Bishr comes upon a scrap of paper bearing the basmala on the ground. He perfumes it and elevates it from the dust; the next night he is addressed (in a dream scene typical of early hagiography): “For honoring My Name, I shall honor your name in this world and the next.” Bishr casts off his sandals thereafter as a sign of devotion (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, pp. 336–40). Regardless of which origin one privileges, the emphasis falls on a cultivated attentiveness—to God’s name, to social others, and to the self’s desire for comfort—and on the public sign that trains the self, namely, going barefoot.

These variants matter because they translate interior affect into embodied practice. In the comparative terms developed by this study, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ—whose example the tradition often places before Bishr—foregrounds an ethic of awe (khawf): the measure of repentance is juridical redress and distance from patronage/power. Bishr’s path, in distinction, is organized around an aesthetics of religious zeal: ḥafāʾ (barefootedness), fame avoidance, quiet hosting, and self-erasure even when piety could be used as capital.

In the sources, Bishr’s evident humility is not a quaint idiosyncrasy but a portable practice that protects the self from two urban seductions of the 3rd/9th century (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 157–60; al-Hujwīrī 1992, pp. 123–26).

Also striking is the role of women and kin in the Bishr corpus. Ibn Khallikān mentions pious, ascetic sisters whose way of life corroborated Bishr’s own and extended the household’s ethos of restraint (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:213–14). This domestic constellation is not incidental: it situates Bishr’s repentance in a social ecology, where family practice sustains the public sign. In other words, tawba persists as habit when it is shared, repeated, and ritualized—in clothing choices, in diet and hospitality, and in avoidance of assemblies that tend toward show. As al-Qushayrī later systematizes it, what distinguishes the early Sufis is not merely a doctrine but a style—a way of being with others that renders inner states credible (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 157–60).

Equally important is the teacher–disciple relationship. The sources routinely align Bishr with al-Fuḍayl—as pupil, transmitter, and in some reports, inheritor (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–45; al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94). Yet medieval authors also insist that Bishr did not merely echo al-Fuḍayl. Ibn al-Jawzī notes the breadth of Bishr’s reputation and the distinctness of his path—so much so that, in certain respects, Bishr’s public brilliance even surpassed that attributed to al-Fuḍayl. Read carefully, that claim points less to rivalry than to differentiated vocation: al-Fuḍayl’s ethic confronts courts and ledgers; Bishr’s reframes the minutiae of daily comportment—footwear, speech economy, door etiquette, and the management of attention—as the front line of piety.

This emphasis on restrained humility helps explain why Bishr’s name continues to resonate in later Baghdad circles. Prosopographically, the lineage that runs from al-Fuḍayl to Bishr to Sarī al-Saqaṭī and al-Junayd marks a key transition in early Ṣūfism: early reflective piety (tafakkur) is gradually integrated into an urban form of measured self-possession, where inward concentration is paired with outward composure (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 94–98; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28). Bishr’s consistent avoidance of acclaim—gestures that resemble the later ethic of self-blame (malāma)—even while attracting crowds, is not a contradiction. Rather, early handbooks treat this dynamic as a protective stance: a refusal of visibility regarded as the “safer” path for ascetics negotiating the pressures of life in the Abbasid city (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 158–60; Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25).

Finally, placing Bishr’s barefoot practice within the moral economy of the early ʿAbbāsid city clarifies its prudential wisdom. To go barefoot is to renounce comfort in a way that is socially legible yet deliberately low status: it marks the body without turning the wearer into a spectacle. Rather than inviting admiration, it lowers one’s social profile and constantly reminds the body of its dependence. In this sense, the sobriquet al-Ḥāfī is less a nickname than a rule—a proxemic, tactile reminder that repentance is kept by keeping its signs. Early authors were aware of the danger of ostentation, but they treated such external markers as acceptable when they functioned as self-disciplining checks rather than as spiritual displays. Read alongside al-Fuḍayl’s ethic, Bishr’s path thus reveals what this article terms a mode of reverence: a choreography of humility meant to protect the heart from the two currencies—gold and glory—that most easily erode repentance in public life.

1.3. Al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ: Broad Outlines of a Life and the Ethic of Awe

Among the formative figures of early Islamic asceticism, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) stands out not only for the drama of his conversion but also for the durable moral program his life came to exemplify. Pre-modern biographical collections give his full name as al-Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ b. Masʿūd al-Tamīmī al-Yarbuʿī, kunya (his honorific “teknonym,” a customary Arabic epithet formed with Abū or Umm) Abū ʿAlī. He is variously said to have been born in Khurasan or Samarkand in the first half of the second/eighth century and to have died in Mecca, where he had withdrawn to the sanctuary (Ḥaram) for the last phase of his life (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:373–76). Before repentance, the sources remember him as a professional highwayman, heading a band that preyed on caravans in the Abiward–Sarakhs corridor and on the road to Iṣfahān—a figure both feared for his boldness and, in some accounts, proud of his exploits (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:373; Abū Nuʿaym 1996).

The narrative core of al-Fuḍayl’s turning (tawba) is widely attested across early sources. al-Dhahabī (2001, 8:373), and Abū Nuʿaym (1996) each preserve versions of the moment when he abandons wrongdoing after hearing the Qurʾānic summons to inward humility (Q 57:16). The āya, which calls believers to let their hearts yield before God, functions across these accounts as the catalyst for a moral receptivity that redirects him from transgression toward restitution. Rather than rehearsing a single plotline, the sources converge on the same trajectory: an inward yielding followed by public repair. The prominence of restitution in al-Fuḍayl’s profile is supported by motif-counting across major hagiographical sources (Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, Wafayāt al-Aʿyān), in which returning wrongs and refusing gifts recur far more frequently than miracle motifs. al-Dhahabī underscores the latent unease that made al-Fuḍayl “ready for a great repentance,” while Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilya foregrounds the reparative program that follows—seeking out victims, restoring property, making public restitution, and adopting a scrupulous stance toward income and gifts. Together, these brief notices portray repentance not as an isolated episode but as the inauguration of a sustained ethic of rectification.

What matters for the purposes of this article is not to harmonize every narrative detail but to register how the tradition codes his turn as the seed of a stable ethic—what I call the “ethic of awe,” meaning a modality of repentance structured by fear of God (khawf) and a heightened sense of accountability for social harm. In this framework, tawba is verified not by interior emotion alone but by obvious, juridical redress and by distance from power and patronage. Later handbooks make this double movement explicit. Al-Sarrāj defines tawba as both inward return and outward repair, while al-Qushayrī lists the first signs of the penitent as restitution, abstention from doubtful earnings, and self-correction (al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60). In short, the exemplum of al-Fuḍayl establishes a juridical–social template for repentance: wrongs are righted, proximity to rulers is shunned, and the self is kept under the awe that guards sincerity.

Two further features of the biographical record on al-Fuḍayl illuminate the thesis that his mode of repentance differs from—but also prepares the ground for—the path of his celebrated disciple Bishr al-Ḥāfī. First, the sources repeatedly stage al-Fuḍayl in asymmetric encounters with political power. The set-piece conversation with the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, transmitted through the adab and hagiographic literature, has al-Fuḍayl admonishing the ruler to fear God and to remember mortality; whether or not we can fix the exact historical circumstances, the vignette functions programmatically: the penitent’s awe is so stable that it supplies a public ethic—truth-telling to power, refusal of gifts, and a principled distance from court (Abū Nuʿaym 1996; al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:374–75). Second, his teaching casts money and reputation as the twin dissolvents of sincerity. The advice literature often ascribes to al-Fuḍayl maxims of fame avoidance (“If you can be unknown, do so”) and a suspicion of remuneration that ties spiritual work to worldly reward (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 159–60). These dicta do not merely ornament a biography; they prescribe repeatable practices—what Pierre Bourdieu would describe as a durable embodied disposition—by which awe is kept, and tawba (repentance, the “turning back” to God) is made durable.

Placed alongside Bishr al-Ḥāfī, these features clarify a complementary contrast central to this article. Bishr, whose barefoot sobriquet crystallizes a discernible modesty, routinizes tawba not primarily as juridical redress but as an aesthetics of dedication—ḥafāʾ (going barefoot), fame avoidance, and quiet hosting—a choreography of self-erasure that protects the heart from the urban seductions of money and glory (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94). Al-Fuḍayl’s posture, on the other hand, grows out of the shock of fear and yields a legal–moral program: he returns wrongs, refuses gifts, admonishes rulers, and withdraws from patronage. Both trajectories seek to guard sincerity under ʿAbbāsid urban pressure, but they do so through different configurations of emotion and practice—one centered on awe expressed in restitution, the other on religious observance expressed in embodied modesty.

Beyond conversion and maxims, the institutional footprint of al-Fuḍayl lies in transmission. Even when chains are compressed—as hagiography often is—the classical sources consistently present al-Fuḍayl, Bishr, Sarī al-Saqaṭī, and al-Junayd in a pedagogical succession (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–98). This is more than a pious list of names: it marks one of the main channels by which Khurāsānī renunciant piety passes into the Baghdad “school” that later authors take as paradigmatic Sufism. Through this chain, fear-driven vigilance and reparative justice in al-Fuḍayl’s program are carried into a Baghdadi ideal that combines intense inwardness with measured public comportment, while Bishr’s emphasis on modest comportment bends that ideal toward humility-as-method (Knysh 2019, pp. 43–65; Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118). In both trajectories, repentance becomes reproducible because it is made apparent—either as acts that heal the social ledger or as everyday gestures that de-glamorize the self.

Finally, a word about controversy. Rather than concealing al-Fuḍayl’s violent past, the classical sources place it in full view to underscore the magnitude of his transformation. At the same time, several authors—al-Dhahabī among them—note that even prior to his turn, he carried a troubled interior, a heart not wholly inert (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:373). That detail matters: it renders the repentance intelligible and imitable. The aim of the biography is not spectacle but instruction. If awe can be well-ordered into practice—returning wrongs, resisting the lure of courtly power, and refusing display—then tawba can be sustained. This normative thrust shaped those who traced their formation to him and helps explain why his name anchors so many later ṭabaqāt entries: he becomes a benchmark against which other trajectories—such as Bishr’s reverential mode—could be measured, adapted, and carried forward.

1.4. Two Modes of Repentance: Al-Fuḍayl’s Vigilance and Bishr’s Humility

After his repentance, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) fashioned a way of life that later sources consistently describe as total renunciation. Biographical notices emphasize his refusal to traffic in dirhams and dinars, his avoidance of patronage, and his resolve to keep only the day’s subsistence (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–36; al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:373–76). The program is summed up in aphorisms attributed to him: “God suffices as Beloved; the Qurʾān as companion; death as preacher; the Qurʾān as deterrent”—that recast zuhd not as a rhetorical posture but as a repeatable practice: cling to the Word, remember the grave, and forgo the economies that feed the ego (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 156–60). He maintained this regimen until his death in Mecca, having retired to the ḥaram in what the sources present as a final investment in awe (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:375).

It is important to underline what al-Fuḍayl’s asceticism is not. While hagiographic anthologies do preserve miracle motifs for many saints, the biographical record on al-Fuḍayl is striking for its moral rather than thaumaturgical focus. The stories that anchor his authority tend to dramatize juridical redress (returning wrongs, seeking victims), distance from rulers, refusal of gifts, and forthright counsel to those in power rather than wonder-tales (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:330–36; al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70). Read as a program, his repentance (tawba) is verified in public: it becomes legible through acts that repair the social ledger and through a stable, fear-driven vigilance (khawf) that keeps the self from soft bargains with wealth or acclaim. Later handbooks standardize this twofold movement—inward return and outward repair—as the canonical face of early Ṣūfī repentance (al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60).

Though not “Ṣūfī” in an institutional sense, al-Fuḍayl is counted among the great early ascetics whose teaching shaped Ṣūfī attitudes to money, publicity, and power (Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28). His influence is routinely extended to later exemplars—Ibrāhīm b. Adham, Sufyān al-Thawrī, and especially Bishr al-Ḥāfī—not because they were his “disciples” in a formal order, but because their habitus crystallized from the same anxieties that haunt the early ʿAbbāsid city: gold and glory (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–98; Knysh 2019, pp. 43–65). The refusal to monetize charisma, the wariness of the court, and the preference for obscurity over fame form a recognizable moral grammar that many urban pietists learned, imitated, and taught.

Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Marwazī (d. 227/841–42), celebrated as al-Ḥāfī (“the barefoot”), emerges in the sources as both debtor to al-Fuḍayl and reframer of his ethic. The classical biographers preserve several origin stories for Bishr’s sobriquet. In one, when asked about him, a slave girl remarks, “He is a free man; had he been a slave, he would have shown humility before his Lord.” Struck to the heart, Bishr repents and removes his sandals as an ongoing sign of devoutness (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–13). In another, a boy refuses to have his sandals mended, complaining that “you poor burden others with your burdens”; Bishr, stung by the rebuke, takes his sandals off and vows never to wear them again (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:213–14). A third cluster—transmitted by Abū Nuʿaym—has Bishr perfuming and elevating a scrap of paper bearing the basmala; a rewarding dream follows, and barefoot humility becomes the bodily sign of his path (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–40). The multiplicity is the point: the tradition curates a repertoire of reverential gestures that render repentance conspicuous and repeatable.

Here, the contrast with al-Fuḍayl sharpens the article’s main claim. In his case, repentance settles into a pattern shaped by fear of God: wrongs are returned, gifts and patronage are refused, and proximity to rulers is treated as spiritually dangerous. In Bishr’s case, repentance takes a different form: modesty is made distinguishable through going barefoot, avoiding fame, hosting quietly, and declining to turn piety into social advantage (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 157–60; al-Hujwīrī 1992, pp. 123–26). The two trajectories are not rivals but complementary strands that early Sufism holds together and that later Baghdad “sobriety” (Sarī al-Saqaṭī, al-Junayd) integrates into a single ideal of intense inwardness with measured public poise (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 94–98; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28).

The asceticism of both figures, then, holds together material restraint and spiritual practice, but with different emphases. Al-Fuḍayl’s example leans toward strict refusals—limits on wealth, on visibility, and on proximity to power—whereas Bishr’s example highlights the cultivation of modest conduct through small, steady practices (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 158–60). Seen together, they outline a spectrum within early Sufism in which repentance can be sustained either through guarded withdrawal or through ongoing modest self-regulation.

A number of reports confirm that Bishr devoted himself to worship after his turn, moved across the cities of learning—Kūfa, Baṣra, and the Ḥijāz—and then withdrew from public contention (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14; Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–40). One strand—likely an admonitory topos—states that he eventually buried the ḥadīths he had memorized, a gesture interpreted by some later writers as an attempt to avoid the prestige associated with transmission in a culture where isnād conferred authority (cf. al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 158–60). What the report dramatizes is a deeper tension within early Ṣūfism: the very tools that generate religious authority—memorization, transmission, and isnād—also risk attracting the admiration that ascetic self-effacement seeks to avoid. Bishr’s response is not a rejection of knowledge but a recalibration of how it should circulate: knowledge is practiced, not displayed; preserved in conduct rather than leveraged for status. Whether literal or figurative, the report coheres with the fame-avoidant logic already apparent in his barefoot sign: Bishr acts to reduce the surfaces on which fame can adhere.

Against the notion that early Ṣūfīs trafficked chiefly in ritual or marvel, both figures demonstrate how conversion stories become social programs. For al-Fuḍayl, repentance hardens into public acts that can be taught and inspected (restoring property; refusing gifts). For Bishr, repentance is routinized in micro-gestures—ḥafāʾ, speech economy, and door etiquette—that train attention and de-glamorize the self. This is why both names recur in later biographical compilations (ṭabaqāt): not because they founded “orders,” but because they modeled portable ascetic styles that disciples could adopt in the crowded city (Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28; Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25; Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118). In a milieu saturated by money and reputation, their differing emphases—on fear of God and on distinct modesty—proved mutually corrective and durable.

If modern readers are tempted to rank one figure above the other—al-Fuḍayl as the “real” moralist and Bishr as a merely picturesque ascetic—the classical record suggests a different, more integrated reading. Both men contribute to the same early negotiation between the demands of the inner life and the pressures of a densely populated, status-conscious public sphere.

In al-Fuḍayl’s case, repentance is safeguarded by hard limits: his sayings and stories insist that sincerity cannot coexist with dubious wealth, dependence on rulers, or the prestige that comes from court proximity. Fear of God here has concrete consequences: it draws clear boundaries around money and power so that repentance is not eroded by compromise.

In Bishr’s case, the emphasis falls on small, repeatable acts that train the self: going barefoot, keeping speech sparse, avoiding doorways that attract attention, and declining overt displays of piety. These practices “stage” humility in everyday details, not to win admiration, but to shrink the ego’s opportunities to reassert itself under virtuous pretexts.

Read together, the two figures show that repentance becomes durable when it is not left as a feeling but is translated into distinct forms—whether in acts that repair social harm and keep one clear of corrupting patronage (as in al-Fuḍayl) or in daily gestures that lower one’s profile and blunt the appeal of acclaim (as in Bishr). This double lesson—guarding sincerity through external limits on power and wealth and through restrained modesty in public—constitutes the legacy that later Sufi discourse would refine, name, and pass on as part of its core repertoire.

1.5. Moments of Turning: From Vigilance to Humility in Early Ṣūfī Practice

Moments of spiritual transformation occupy a privileged place in Islamic biography, not merely as edifying tales but as programmatic scenes that teach how the self can move from immersion in the world to detachment for the sake of nearness to God. Read in this light, the famous repentance narratives of Bishr al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841–42) and al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) differ in trigger and tone yet converge in telos: purification, detachment, and humility before the Real. This section expands those moments—not to repeat hagiographic commonplaces, but to show how the aesthetic and the awe-inspiring can each be choreographed into a durable ascetic habitus.

Classical sources describe Bishr as a prosperous young Baghdadi whose house hosted singing and convivial gatherings; he was not conspicuously pious, yet the record suggests that his heart remained impressionable to piety (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–40; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14). Abū Nuʿaym’s most-cited vignette narrates that Bishr encountered, in the dust of the road, a scrap bearing the basmala—the opening formula “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” He perfumed it and elevated it to a clean place; that night he dreamed of a voice promising, “You honored My Name; I will honor your name in this world and the next” (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–37). Psychologically and spiritually, this “silent symbol” worked first on sight and then on heart: the paper is not just paper; it is a material prompt that draws forth a felt religious zeal (Trimingham 1971, p. 46). In this reading, Bishr’s turn begins through the door of beauty (jamāl) rather than the door of fear (khawf). The impulse is not recoil but attraction: to honor the Name is to be drawn into honoring the Lord.

Crucially, the tradition does not frame Bishr’s turn as an emotion alone but as a shift enacted in the body. Earlier sources—including Abū Nuʿaym—note that Bishr’s youth was marked by unruly conduct and dissolute company, which makes the subsequent change all the more pointed (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–38). In the scene of his turning, Bishr converts the moment into a rule: he removes his sandals and adopts barefoot walking as a permanent sign by which to keep repentance (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:337–38; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:213). Later Ṣūfī handbooks gloss this practice as the station of modesty (ḥayāʾ)—a rank some early authorities describe as surpassing fear, since one who is truly modest before God refrains from disobedience even when forgiven (Arberry 1992, pp. 34–45; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 158–60). What emerges is a practice rooted not in spectacle but in steady, outward restraint: barefootedness, quiet speech, and the refusal of display become small, publicly legible gestures that lower the ego’s profile and train attention within the social world.

In a different key, the sources frame al-Fuḍayl’s turn as an encounter marked by awe. Before repentance, he appears in the biographical record as a roadside brigand along the Abiward–Sarakhs route, yet writers also remark on a persistent inner unease that anticipates change (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:373; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 1:321–22). His transformation, triggered by hearing a Qurʾānic call to inward humility (Q 57:16), is presented not as a gradual shift but as a moment of arrest: he halts what he is doing, spends the night in contrition, and resolves to set wrongs right (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 1:321–22; Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–33). In the sources, this functions as an ego-break—the realization that the divine address extends to him personally. Unlike Bishr, whose turn emerges through an aesthetic jolt, al-Fuḍayl’s derives from a destabilizing summons that reorders his moral horizon.

What follows for al-Fuḍayl is equally telling: repentance is verified in juridical acts. He is said to have sought out victims, returned goods, and restored trust—a reparative sequence repeated across the hagiographic record (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–36). Later handbooks make this twofold grammar canonical: tawba is an inward return and an outward repair; its first signs are reparative—the ledger of harm must be healed (al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60). He then withdrew to Mecca, where the tradition anchors his final years as living in the ḥaram under awe (al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:375–76). If Bishr’s turn exemplifies modesty as method, al-Fuḍayl’s exemplifies accountability as proof: fear of God expressed as distance from power, refusal of patronage, and scruple about money.

A comparative lens brings the distinct emphases of the two figures into focus. In Bishr’s case, repentance is sustained through marked modesty—ḥafāʾ (going barefoot), avoidance of acclaim, and careful speech—small practices that quiet the self and draw it toward humility (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14; Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–40; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 158–60). Al-Fuḍayl, in a divergent mode, secures repentance through noticeable redress—returning wrongs, distancing himself from patronage, and offering uncompromising counsel to rulers—acts that keep the self alert to the moral weight of fear (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–36; al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70). Both paths aim at sincerity through detachment, yet they begin from different moral sensibilities and inscribe different traces on the social world.

These differences matter because they outlast their founders. Early Sufi biographical sources consistently place al-Fuḍayl, Bishr, Sarī al-Saqaṭī, and al-Junayd in a pedagogical succession, indicating a continuity of formation rather than a rigid chain of doctrine (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–98; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28). What travels across this succession is not a single formula but a repertoire of ascetic sensibilities that are gradually adapted to the social and moral demands of Baghdad. Al-Fuḍayl’s emphasis on vigilance and rectification and Bishr’s emphasis on modest comportment both contribute to the composite style later described as “Baghdad sobriety”—an urban ethic that joins inward concentration with measured public presence. The transmission is performative as much as intellectual. Disciples acquire a manner of walking, speaking, receiving or refusing gifts, and managing the social gaze; they learn how to remain marked without courting acclaim. Thus, when Ibn al-Jawzī remarks that Bishr’s public stature exceeded that attributed to al-Fuḍayl in certain respects, he is not staging a rivalry but noting how ascetic orientations could be recalibrated for new urban pressures and audiences (Ibn al-Jawzī 2000, 2:412–13).

Two final clarifications help keep the analysis in focus. First, the contrast between al-Fuḍayl and Bishr is heuristic rather than hierarchical. Classical Ṣūfī teaching, as Arberry notes, regularly treats fear and hope, awe and love, as paired orientations, with different early authorities stressing one pole in order to correct particular weaknesses of the self (Arberry 1992, pp. 34–45). In that light, Bishr’s path accentuates ḥayāʾ (moral modesty) without excluding khawf, while al-Fuḍayl’s accentuates khawf without negating the beauty of submission; the apparent dichotomy marks emphasis, not opposition.

Second, because hagiographical texts compress time and reconcile divergent details, the historian’s task is less to adjudicate which origin story is “true” than to ask what forms of life these stories commend. Read this way, the material on both figures serves a shared pedagogical purpose: it turns repentance into something that can be learned and reproduced—whether through patterns of reparative action and guarded distance from power (al-Fuḍayl) or through small, organized practices of observable modesty (Bishr).

In sum, the transformation accounts of Bishr al-Ḥāfī and al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ present two distinct points of entry into a shared ascetic horizon. Bishr’s turn highlights how modest, repeatable gestures can stabilize repentance, while al-Fuḍayl’s underscores the role of moral shock and reparative action. Both trajectories ultimately converge in the same aims—detachment, humility, and a self-possessed nearness to God. Because each path expresses its commitments through practices that are publicly observable, they equipped early Ṣūfism with durable patterns through which interior resolve could be maintained amid the social pressures of urban life.

1.6. Comparisons and Approaches: Al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and Bishr al-Ḥāfī

A comparative reading of the biographical material on al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and Bishr reveals two ascetic programs that are historically entangled yet stylistically distinct. Rather than reducing their biographies to parallel “conversion tales,” it is more accurate to trace how each man’s repentance (tawba) solidifies into a publicly legible set of practices—a repeatable repertoire of conduct and evaluation that disciples could learn, adapt, and transmit in Baghdad’s third/ninth-century urban milieu. Read in this way, the source record (Abū Nuʿaym; al-Sulamī; al-Qushayrī; Ibn Khallikān) does not simply preserve edifying anecdotes; it encodes social programs by which inner states are rendered credible in public space (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–40; al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–98; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 1:321–24; 2:212–14).

The triggers of turning differ in tone. The sources on al-Fuḍayl stage a decisive encounter with awe before revelation: the Qurʾānic address “Has not the time come…?” (Q 57:16) is received as a direct, ego-breaking claim that precipitates radical severance from past wrongdoing and a sequence of reparative acts—seeking out victims, restoring property, and renouncing gifts and patronage (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–36; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 1:321–22). Bishr’s turning, by contrast, is keyed to devoutness before a materially slight but symbolically dense cue—the basmala scrap he perfumes and elevates—so that repentance begins through the register of jamāl, the appeal of beauty, and moves toward ḥayāʾ, a restrained moral modesty. The well-known barefoot practice (ḥafāʾ) functions as a bodily rule by which that initial impulse is sustained (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–38; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14). In both cases, interior affect becomes a stable program only when it is translated into perceptible, repeatable practice.

The public proofs diverge accordingly. Al-Fuḍayl’s repentance stabilizes as a legal–moral grammar—restitution, scruple about income, and distance from rulers—that reads sincerity in acts that heal the social ledger (al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60). Bishr’s repentance stabilizes as an aesthetic of dedication—measurable humility (going barefoot), speech economy, fame avoidance, and a preference for quiet hosting over display (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 157–60; al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94). These programs answer the same urban pressures—gold and glory—but by different means: one clears the ledger; the other lowers the profile (Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25; Knysh 2019, pp. 43–65).

A similar contrast appears in their modes of teaching. In the adab and hagiographic sources, al-Fuḍayl often appears in scenes of asymmetric admonition—brief, uncompromising counsel to rulers, maxims on fear and accountability, and a principled suspicion of piety tied to compensation (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:332–36; al-Dhahabī 2001, 8:374–75; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 159–60). Bishr, by contrast, instructs primarily through quiet example: household asceticism (some accounts include his pious sisters), avoidance of celebrity, and the steady cultivation of humility in daily comportment; his influence flows as much from bearing as from explicit instruction (Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:213–14; al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 92–94).

What later circles inherit from both men is not simply doctrine but a style of presence—a way of walking, speaking, declining or accepting gifts, and managing the social gaze. Later writers—especially al-Dhahabī and Ibn al-Jawzī—reinterpret both figures through the lens of Baghdad sobriety, emphasizing different aspects of their reputations than earlier Khurāsānī sources.

Earlier scholarship has traced how the reputations of both al-Fuḍayl and Bishr were shaped across successive textual layers. Chabbi (1978) portrays al-Fuḍayl as a precursor to Ḥanbalī moral rigor, while Tor (2015) emphasizes his role in the transition from caliphal to prophetic Sunna. Cooperson (1997) examines the divergent biographical trajectories of Bishr and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, showing how each figure’s memory was adapted for later audiences. Jarrar’s (1994) study remains indispensable for Bishr, not least because it questions whether barefootedness (ḥafāʾ) belonged to the earliest strata of his dossier. These studies situate both figures within a dynamic historiography in which their moral profiles were not static but continually reinterpreted through changing Sufi and legal sensibilities.

Early Ṣūfī compilers consistently place al-Fuḍayl, Bishr, Sarī al-Saqaṭī, and al-Junayd in a pedagogical sequence, highlighting how their differing emphases were absorbed into what later writers call Baghdad sobriety: inward concentration paired with measured public poise (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 94–98; de Jong and Radtke 1999, pp. 32–40; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28; Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118).

The following table (see Table 1 Common Motifs) condenses the motifs most consistently reported across classical sources. It is illustrative, not exhaustive; its purpose is to make explicit the patterning that the prose analysis develops.

Table 1. Common Motifs.

Motif	Al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ	Bishr al-Ḥāfī	Principal Witnesses
Trigger of tawba	Awe before Q 57:16; ego-break and radical severance	Piety before basmala scrap; beauty-pull and modesty	(Abū Nuʿaym 1996; Ibn Khallikān 1968)
First visible proof	Restitution; refusal of gifts; distance from rulers	Ḥafāʾ (barefoot); speech economy; fame avoidance	(Abū Nuʿaym 1996; al-Qushayrī 2002)
Money and patronage	Scruple; day-to-day subsistence; anti-patronage ethic	Renunciation; “lower the profile” of the self	(al-Qushayrī 2002; al-Sulamī 1999; Trimingham 1971)
Relation to power	Truth-telling to power; avoidance of court	Avoidance; self-erasure in public	(Abū Nuʿaym 1996; Trimingham 1971)
Teaching mode	Public admonition; maxims of fear and accountability	Quiet exemplarity; household ethos	(Ibn Khallikān 1968; al-Sulamī 1999)
Reputation	“Ascetic of awe,” juridical emphasis	“Ascetic of reverence,” embodied modesty	Synthesized from above

Seen through this lens, the old temptation to rank one figure as “stricter” or “truer” than the other becomes less helpful than recognizing a dialectic within early Ṣūfism. The literature habitually pairs fear and hope, awe and love, allowing different early authorities to emphasize one pole as a corrective to the self’s drift (Arberry 1992, pp. 34–45). Al-Fuḍayl’s insistence on accountability checks the self’s tendency to sentimentalize repentance as mere feeling; Bishr’s insistence on publicly legible modesty checks the self’s tendency to convert piety into capital. Both are concerned with credibility: conversion must be maintained by practices that the community can see and test.

The comparative approach adopted here—close reading aligned with systematic motif-coding—also clarifies how conversion tales function as instituting narratives. Once we attend to what the stories authorize, rather than to which version “really happened,” their coherence sharpens: al-Fuḍayl’s path authorizes a legal–moral regimen of repair, distance, and scruple; Bishr’s authorizes a bodily regimen of modesty, low speech, and deflection of praise. Both regimens prove adaptable and durable in the Baghdad setting, precisely because they supply repeatable rules for life in the city. In this respect, the comparison confirms a broader methodological point underscored by historians of early Ṣūfism: the tradition is best read across texts, practices, and lineages, not collapsed into single slogans or spectacular moments (de Jong and Radtke 1999, pp. 32–40; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28; Knysh 2019, pp. 43–65; Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118).

Finally, the juxtaposition helps nuance received characterizations. Bishr’s barefoot humility is not a quaint eccentricity but a discipline of attention; al-Fuḍayl’s admonitions are not merely dramatic confrontations but the public edge of a program that begins with restoring harm. Both figures—frequently remembered together in the ṭabaqāt—converge on the same telos: detachment, humility, and proximity to God. Their difference lies in how they make that telos teachable: awe translated into social repair, religious zeal translated into social gentling. Taken together, they help explain how early Ṣūfism fashioned a credible ethics of repentance for the crowded stage of the ʿAbbāsid city.

1.7. What Distinguishes Bishr from al-Fuḍayl?

Viewed side by side, Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Marwazī (al-Ḥāfī) and al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ instantiate two complementary ways of making repentance (tawba) durable in the social world of the early ʿAbbāsid city. The sources render Bishr’s path a reverential mode of conduct—a style that translates interior love and modesty (ḥayāʾ) into outward humility and fame avoidance. His emblematic choice to go barefoot (ḥafāʾ) functions not as a quaint eccentricity but as a reproducible bodily rule, a prophylaxis against the slow seductions of money and reputation. The archive consistently links this style to cues of beauty rather than fear—perfuming and elevating the basmala scrap, quiet hosting, low speech—so that the self is gently detuned from display and kept in a register of reverential attention (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:336–40; Ibn Khallikān 1968, 2:212–14; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 157–60). In this sense, Bishr’s Ṣūfism is apolitical without being evasive: it is a pedagogy of presence that declines the public arena of contest and teaches, instead, a household asceticism capable of long endurance.

A different configuration appears in the material on al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ. His decisive turn is consistently linked to hearing a Qurʾānic call to inward humility (Q 57:16), received as an ego-breaking address that precipitates a sharp break with past wrongdoing and a sequence of juridical repairs: seeking out victims, returning property, and keeping distance from rulers and patronage. The maxim-rich reports present a moral program defined by scruple about income, refusal of gifts, forthright counsel to those in power, and public admonition when necessary (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–36; al-Sarrāj 1960, pp. 66–70; al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60). Where Bishr guards sincerity by lowering his public profile, al-Fuḍayl guards it by clearing the moral ledger and avoiding compromises with power and wealth. His Sufism is not “institutional” in any later sense, yet the sources continually position him as a type-figure for fear-informed rectitude in an urban economy saturated by gold and glory (Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28).

The later tradition makes clear that the ascetic orientations associated with Bishr and al-Fuḍayl contributed in different ways to the formation of early Ṣūfī pedagogy. Through Sarī al-Saqaṭī, the modest, low-profile comportment associated with Bishr shapes the spiritual training of al-Junayd; the resulting posture—often termed “Baghdad sobriety”—joins inward intensity to measured public presence, where gentleness and reason reinforce one another (al-Sulamī 1999, pp. 94–98; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28). In a related but distinct strand, the methodological stress on self-examination (muḥāsaba) characteristic of al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī echoes al-Fuḍayl’s emphasis on fear-checked accountability and the work of rectifying harm (Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118). Seen this way, it is reductive to rank one as “more Sufi” than the other. Each articulates a different emphasis within the same ethical horizon: al-Fuḍayl foregrounds legal–moral repair, while Bishr emphasizes embodied modesty. Together, these orientations provide the repertoire through which repentance becomes publicly legible and historically transmissible.

The educational and spiritual implications that emerge from these materials can be summarized in several points. First, genuine transformation requires ongoing history: the initial impulse—whether sparked by a heard verse or a reverential gesture—must be sustained through patterned practices. Bishr’s vow of ḥafāʾ and al-Fuḍayl’s commitment to restitution exemplify how interior resolve is anchored through noticeable, repeatable acts (Abū Nuʿaym 1996, 8:329–40). Second, asceticism admits multiple expressions. Bishr’s austerity is marked by quiet simplicity—minimal speech, avoidance of display, and a lowered public profile—whereas al-Fuḍayl’s bears the rigor of rectifying harm and maintaining principled distance from rulers and patronage (al-Qushayrī 2002, pp. 154–60; Trimingham 1971, pp. 17–25). Third, the moral force of both paths is fundamentally public. Bishr joins knowledge with restraint to cultivate social humility; al-Fuḍayl demonstrates ethical repair and moral advancement through undoing past injury.

Finally, their lives suggest a balance that avoids opposing “action to heart” or “knowledge to piety.” In practice, the two orientations complete one another: Bishr’s gentle restraint prevents moral vigilance from hardening into severity, while al-Fuḍayl’s seriousness guards modesty from dissolving into sentiment. Considered together, they offer a coherent pedagogy of repentance for the crowded environment of the ʿAbbāsid city—one that endured because it bound inner work to outward practice across texts, households, and teaching lineages (de Jong and Radtke 1999, pp. 32–40; Karamustafa 2007, pp. 21–28; Knysh 2019, pp. 43–65; Melchert 2022, pp. 91–118).

2. Conclusions

Read together, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and Bishr al-Ḥāfī do not present rival blueprints for sanctity but complementary modalities of repentance that early Ṣūfism learned to keep in productive tension. Al-Fuḍayl’s repentance hardens into an ethic of awe: an ego-breaking encounter with revelation that is verified through juridical redress, scruple about money, refusal of patronage, and principled distance from power. Bishr’s repentance stabilizes as a pattern of reverent practice: a beauty-triggered modesty translated into detectable humility—most famously ḥafāʾ (going barefoot)—a guarded relationship to praise, and a pedagogy of quiet example. Each route guards sincerity against the urban pressures of gold and glory, but they do so by different means—one clears the ledger, the other lowers the profile.

The teacher–disciple tie is therefore formative rather than mimetic. Bishr does not simply echo al-Fuḍayl; he reframes al-Fuḍayl’s insistence on sincerity into a portable repertoire of practice suited to crowded civic life. This is precisely how early Ṣūfī knowledge moved: not as a fixed doctrinal package, but as styles of comportment—ways of walking, speaking, refusing, accepting, and managing attention—that disciples could learn, adapt, and transmit. The sequence of teachers from al-Fuḍayl through Bishr and Sarī al-Saqaṭī to al-Junayd confirms that both orientations eventually shaped what later sources call Baghdad sobriety: interior intensity coupled with public poise.

At stake, then, is a methodological point as much as a historical one. If conversion scenes once looked like private, unrepeatable moments, they now appear as instituting narratives that authorize repeatable practices. The enduring lesson of these two dossiers is that repentance becomes durable precisely by being made observable—either as acts that repair harm (al-Fuḍayl) or as gestures that deflate the ego (Bishr). The convergence that matters is not a late reconciliation in sentiment, but a shared social grammar by which love of God, detachment from the world, and modest comportment for truth can be credibly lived. In that sense, both figures belong at the center of the early Ṣūfī settlement between the inner life and the public square—two paths into the same house, whose doors are named awe and humbleness.