Abu al-Hasan al-Hujwiri

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Uthman al-Jullabi al-Hujwiri (c. 1009 – c. 1072) was a Persian-speaking Sufi scholar and writer. "Sufi" denotes a practitioner of Islam's contemplative, mystical path (tasawwuf); al-Hujwiri belonged to its Sunni mainstream and followed the Hanafi school of law (one of Sunni Islam's four legal traditions). He was born in or near Ghazna, in the Ghaznavid realm (today Afghanistan), in a quarter linked to the names Hujwir and Jullab, from which his nisbas derive.

By his own account in his book, he travelled for many years across the central Islamic lands, spending time in Baghdad, Nishapur, and Damascus, where he met leading Sufi teachers. Tradition connects him through his master al-Khuttali to the earlier teaching lineage of al-Junayd of Baghdad, though such chains are hard to verify in detail. He eventually settled in Lahore (then under Ghaznavid rule, now in Pakistan), where he taught and died.

His fame rests on Kashf al-mahjub ("Unveiling of the Veiled"), written in Persian and widely regarded as the earliest surviving systematic treatise on Sufism in that language. It surveys Sufi doctrines, terminology, and the lives of earlier mystics, with passages drawn from his own experience.

In later South Asian devotion he became hugely venerated as "Data Ganj Bakhsh," and his shrine in Lahore (Data Darbar) is a major pilgrimage site. That cult is a posthumous tradition, distinct from the historically attested facts of his life.