Bayazid Bastami

Background

He was born in Bastam, Greater Iran. Bayazid was born to Tayfur.

Career

He is also known as Sultan-ul-Arifeen. The name Bastami means "from Bastam". All of them were ascetics.

Not much is known of his childhood, but Bayazid spent most of his time in isolation in his house and the mosque.

Although he remained in isolation, he did not isolate himself from the Sufi realm. Bayazid also led a life of asceticism and renounced all worldly pleasures in order to be one with Allah The Exalted.

Bastami"s predecessor Dhul-Nun al-Misri (d Civil Engineering 859) was a murid "initiate" as well. First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Misri had formulated the doctrine of ma"rifa (gnosis), presenting a system which helped the murid and the sheikh (guide) to communicate.

Bayazid Bastami took this a step further and emphasized the importance of religious ecstasy in Islam, referred to in his words as drunkenness (Shukr or wajd), a means of self-annihilation in the Divine Presence of the Creator.

When Bayazid died he was over seventy years old. Before he died, someone asked him his age. He said: "I am four years old.

Foreign seventy years I was veiled.

I got rid of my veils only four years ago.”

Bayazid died in 874 Civil Engineering and is buried either in Bistam. There is also a shrine in Kirikhan, Turkey with the name of Bayazid Bastami (an attribute not real).

A Sufi shrine in Chittagong, dating back to 850 AD, is dedicated to the Bayazid.

Achievements

• Ultimately, this led Bayazid to a state of "self union" which, according to many Sufi orders, is the only state a person could be in order to attain unity with God.

Interests

• Mysticism, philosophy.