Baṣran Origins of Classical Sufism

History is largely about rooting out anachronisms. One that bedevils the history of Sufism is an unsurprising tendency to project later forms backward. Our idea of who was a Sufi in the ninth century tends to come from the Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfīya of the Naysābūran al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and a few other books, some dependent on his. Sulamī begins his first generation with notices of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. Mecca, 187/803), Ibrāhīm ibn Adham (d. al-Ǧazīra, 163/779–80?), Ḏū l-Nūn (d. Ǧīza, 246/ 861?), Bišr al-Ḥāfī (d. Baghdad, 227/841?), Sarī al-Saqaṭī (d. Baghdad, 253/867?), and al-Muḥāsibī (d. Baghdad?, 243/857–58) – the usual big names for the late eighth century and, mainly, early ninth. Massignon ’s lineage of Sufism (leading up to al-Ḥallāǧ) stays almost entirely within this line, and indeed I have no serious quarrel with it as a lineage of classical Ǧunaydī Sufism.