Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi

Abu al-Najib 'Abd al-Qahir al-Suhrawardi (born c. 490 AH / 1097 CE in Suhraward, a town near Zanjan in northwestern Persia; died c. 563 AH / 1168 CE in Baghdad) was a Sunni scholar of Shafi'i law and a Sufi teacher whose lineage of mystical instruction (silsila) is traditionally traced back to the early Baghdad master al-Junayd. He is best remembered as an early systematizer of organized Sufism and is regarded as a forerunner of the Suhrawardiyya, the path later carried widely by his nephew and student Shihab al-Din 'Umar al-Suhrawardi.

Sources report that he studied the religious sciences in Baghdad and taught Shafi'i jurisprudence (fiqh) at the prestigious Nizamiyya college there. He took the Sufi way (tariqa) from his uncle, the qadi (judge) Wajih al-Din 'Umar, and from Ahmad al-Ghazali, the brother of the famous theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He established a Sufi lodge (ribat or khanaqah) on the banks of the Tigris, where he gathered disciples (muridin, "seekers").

His enduring work is Adab al-muridin ("The Etiquette of Seekers"), a practical manual for the spiritual life that helped standardize Sufi training; a later scholar, Mulla 'Ali al-Qari, wrote a commentary on it. He should not be confused with the slightly later philosopher Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi, "the Master of Illumination," who is a different figure. Several of his early dates are traditional estimates rather than firmly attested.