EARLY SUFIS: IBRAHIM B. ADHAM(deceased 160/777)



3. Ibrahim b. Adham (deceased 160/777)
Ibrahim b. Adham, whom Junaid of Baghdad called the key to Sufism, also argued for asceticism which, according to him, related to world alienation, celibacy and poverty. To him, a true saint is one who desires nothing of this world, nothing of the next, and devotes himself exclusively to God.9 In the same tension, he told a questioner who had asked him about his occupation that he had left the world to the world seekers of the world and the hereafter for the seekers of the hereafter, and had chosen for himself the memory of God in this world and the blessed vision in the next.10 He advocated celibacy and poverty as the requirements for true asceticism.
According to him, the person who accepts poverty cannot think of marriage, because it becomes impossible for him to fulfill the needs of his wife. When a Sufi marries, he enters a boat, as it were, but when he has a child, his boat sinks and his asceticism disappears.11 A certain man was saddened by his poverty. Ibrahim b. Adham noted that he had paid nothing for this poverty of his. The man was surprised and asked: is poverty something to buy? Ibrahim said: Yes, I chose it of my own free will and bought it for the price of worldly sovereignty and I am ready to change it with a hundred worlds.12
In Ibrahim b. We meet Adham in the custom of blaming (malamah) for self-discipline. He was once asked if he was ever happy in his life by achieving the desire of his heart. He answered: Yes, twice. He told of two different events when people who didn't know him mocked and joked at his expense
He referred to the principle of tawakkul (trust in God), but in his case it was a moral principle as expressed in the Quran that does not exclude one's own means of existence from one's own efforts

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