Najm al-Din Razi

Who was Najm al-Din Razi?

Abū Bakr 'Abdollāh b. Moḥammad b. Šahāvar b. Anūšervān al-Rāzī commonly know by the laqab, or sobriquet, of Najm al-Dīn Dāya, meaning "wetnurse". Hamid Algar, translator of the Persian Merṣād to English, states the application of "wetnurse" to the author of the Merṣād derives from the idea of the initiate on the Path being a newborn infant who needs suckling to survive was a 13th century Sufi Persian from Khwarezmia. Dāya followed the Sufi order, Kubrawiyya, established by one of his greatest influences, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā. Dāya traveled to Kārazm and soon became a morīd of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā. Kubrā then appointed Shaikh Majd al-Dīn Bagdādī as the spiritual trainer who also became Dāya's biggest influence. Dāya constantly refers to al-Dīn Bagdādī as "our shaikh."

When his master, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā, was murdered in 618/1221, Dāya fled to Hamadan, then to Ardabil, and then to Anatolia where he finally settled with a fellow contemporary master Rumi.

There he put the teachings of his master Najmeddin Kubra into a writing in Persian called Merṣād al-ʻebād men al-mabdāʼ elāʼl-maʻād which is shortly known as Merṣād al-ʻebād, and has gained prominence as a major reference text on Sufism and Islamic theology. The critical edition of Merṣād al-ʻebād by Mohammad-Amin Riahi was published in 1973 in Tehran and since then has been continued to be in print. This is a closely annotated scholarly edition, along with a comprehensive introduction on the life and works of Najmeddin Razi, which has been the major reference for later studies on Najmeddin Razi and Sufism. Merṣād al-ʻebād was translated by Hamid Algar into English as The Path of God's Bondsmen: From Origin to Return.