Saints in Islam

Walī (Arabic: ولي‎‎, plural ʾawliyāʾ أولياء) is an Arabic word of which the literal meanings include "custodian", "protector", "helper", and "friend." In the vernacular, it is most commonly used by Muslims to indicate an Islamic saint, otherwise referred to by the more literal "friend of God." In the traditional Islamic understanding of saints, the saint is portrayed as someone "marked by [special] divine favor ... [and] holiness", and who is specifically "chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles." The codified articulation of the doctrine of saints was put forth by Islamic scholars very early on in Muslim history, with the early Muslim thinkers interpreting particular verses of the Quran and various hadith to constitute "documentary evidence" of their existence.

As the Islamic mystical trend of Sufism was beginning to rapidly spread at around the same time as the first Muslim hagiographies were written, many of the figures who later came to be regarded as the major saints in orthodox Sunni Islam were the early Sufi mystics, like Hasan of Basra (d. 728), Farqad Sabakhi (d. 729), Dawud Tai (d. 777-81) Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (d. 801), Maruf Karkhi (d. 815), and Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910). From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, "the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism ... into orders or brotherhoods." In general Islamic piety of the period, the saint was understood to be "a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection ... [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples." In many prominent Sunni Islamic creeds of the time, such as the famous Creed of Tahawi (ca. 900) and the Creed of Nasafi (ca. 1000), a belief in the existence and miracles of saints is presented as "a requirement" for being an orthodox Muslim believer.

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