Raba'a Al Adawiyya Al Qaisiyya, also known as, Raba'a Al Adawiyya, is the most prominent female symbol of Sufism. She was the one who first set forth the doctrine of Divine Love, and a very early Sufi poet. Raba'a was born between 713 and 717 CE (100 and 108 Hijri year) in Basra, Iraq. Her name was attributed to the fact that she was the fourth daughter of her family (Rabia = fourth). She was linked to a number of myths such as being born as a slave, which is inaccurate. Her family was very poor yet respected in the society of Basra. The other myth is about her father, saying that Prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and told him, "Your newly born daughter is a favorite of the Lord, and shall lead many Muslims to the right path," and asked her father to approach the Emir of Basra and present him with a letter in which this message should be written: 'You offer Durood to the Holy Prophet one hundred times every night and four hundred times every Thursday night. However, since you failed to observe the rule last Thursday, as a penalty you must pay the bearer four hundred dinars." The Emir was excited about Raba'a's father's dream, gave him the 400 dinars joyously, and then asked the father to come to him whenever he needed anything. Legend has it that she was parted from her sisters after their father's death, and was captured by robbers and sold her in the market as a slave to a rich merchant. "Lord! You know well that my keen desire is to carry out your commandments and to serve Thee with all my heart, O light of my eyes. If I were free I would pass the whole day and night in prayers. But what should I do when you have made me a slave of a human being?" her new master heard her at one night, to decide then that he shouldn't take such a saint as a slave, offering her freedom at the very next day. After leaving her master's house she went to the desert to become an ascetic, rejecting all marriage proposals, since she wanted to devote herself to the love of Allah. One of her prayers says: "O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty." She died in the mid of her 80s in Jerusalem in 185 AH, and is thought to have been buried in the Chapel of the Ascension, leaving a life full of myths, but with one truth, that she loved Allah the most and became the symbol of Divine unconditional love.
