The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (116 page)

(973–1049 (AH 362–442)).
Muslim scholar of wide-ranging interests, not least in other religions. His study culminated in
Kit
b al-Hind
(The Book of India). On this basis, he developed work of his own on a wide scale, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in astronomy.

 
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(d. 875 (AH 261)).
A Persian
S
f
, who was given to a life of asceticism and solitude. His only desire in life was to attain a direct experience of divine reality. He wrote no work, but his ecstatic utterances have been preserved in writing by such contemporaries as
Dhu’l-n
n
and
al-Junaid
. His particular method of attainment was one of subtraction, or stripping away, of the attributes of personality until not even personality is left—as when a snake finally sloughs its skin; Al-Bist
m
is much quoted by the S
f
s, and had a far-reaching influence on Sufism in the direction of a pantheistic doctrine.