As nearly as can be determined, the major literary activity of Abū ʾ1- Hasan ʿA1ī b. Muḥammad al-Daylamī belongs to the latter quarter of the tenth century A.D. His Kitāb ʿatf al-alif al-maʾ lūf ʿalā al-lām al-maʿṭūf is one of the earliest extant treatises on mystical love in Arabic literature. The work represents a Sunni spirituality grounded in the teachings of al- DaylamT's master Ibn Khafif of Shiraz (d. 371/982), but it reveals what may be the remnants of Shiite influence in certain of the author's expressions.In some of its theoretical passages the work is indebted to the doctrine of the extremist mystic al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, who was executed for his controversial teachings in 309/922. Although al- Daylamī's text propounds a mysticism that includes Hallajian elements and makes room for a certain notion of union of the mystical lover with God, it seems to repudiate outright al-Hallaj's ecstatic claims to identity with the divine essence. The book gives a well-rounded picture of the religious, philosophical, and literary trends of the author's time as these are reflected in theoretical discussions about love, both sacred and profane, and in the author's selection of anecdotes, poetry, and hagiographi- cal literature relevant to the topic. In addition, through its many valuable citations of authorities from prior generations, the text helps explain how the ideas it deals with developed in early Islamic society.

Although now surviving in only one known manuscript, the work appears to have exercised a profound and continued influence, directly and indirectly, on the later mystical tradition in Shiraz. This influence is most clearly evident in the writings of Rūzbihān Baqlī, who died in 606/1209, or some two hundred years after al-Daylamī. Perhaps al-Daylamī's work was also of some significance for the subsequent literary flowering of Persian mysticism, a matter continuing research on Rūzbihān Baqlīmay help to elucidate.

THE AUTHOR

Life and Times

Biographer of his teacher Ibn Khafîf and perpetuator of the memory of many scholars and mystics whose names would otherwise have remained unknown, al-Daylamī himself, though repeatedly cited by later biographers of the city of Shiraz, ironically receives no biographical notice in any of the published biographical works we have consulted.