the noted figures, the shaykh of the Yūnusiyya—a band of rowdy men addicted to ecstatic outbursts, sleight-of-hand(1), and frivolity of mind.

He enjoyed mystical disclosures and states, yet he possessed little learning. Ecstatic sayings poured from him, along with doggerel verse composed as though it were spoken by Lordship itself; some of it verges on sheer falsehood—Allah alone knows his inner reality. Therefore a Muslim must not be deluded by any disclosure, state, or claim to foretell the unseen. Ibn Ṣāʿid(2) and his fellow soothsayers worked wonders, and among the monks are those who have exhausted themselves through hunger, seclusion, and vigil without any sound foundation or monotheism. Their souls thereby cleared of dross, they obtained certain unveilings and bragged about them. Yet no one merits emulation except the elect: the people of purity, the masters of sainthood whose standing is tied to knowledge and to the Sunnah. We ask Allah for the faith of the God-fearing and the devotion of the sincere. Regarding many shaykhs we hold judgement in abeyance until their true condition is proven to us, and upon Allah we rely.

Shaykh Yūnus died in al-Qunayyah in 619 AH. Al-Qunayyah(3) is a village in the district of Dārā, near Mardin.

120 – al-Fārisī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad *
The eminent ascetic, Fakhr al-Dīn, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad ibn