Junaid Baghdadi, a prominent Persian mystic of the 9th century, hailed from Baghdad, Iraq, around 830 CE. Little is known about his early life, but he emerged as a leading figure in the Sufi tradition, renowned for his piety and mystical insights. Studying under esteemed Sufi masters like Sari al-Saqati and Ma’ruf al-Karkhi, Junaid emphasized spiritual purification and inner transformation on the path to divine realization. He articulated key Sufi concepts such as “fana fi Allah” (annihilation in God) and “baqa bi-Allah” (subsistence with God), which became central tenets of Sufi mysticism. Junaid’s teachings profoundly influenced subsequent generations of Sufis, earning him the title “Sultan of the Sufis.” Though details of his life are limited, Junaid Baghdadi’s spiritual legacy continues to inspire seekers of truth and enlightenment within the Sufi tradition and beyond, reflecting his enduring impact on Islamic mysticism.
Junaid Baghdadi Quotes
01. “A thousand years’ obedience cannot annul a moment’s disobedience of God.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
02. “Your heart is the temple of God; let none be allowed to dwell there besides Him.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
03. “The saint has no fear because fear is the expectation either of some future calamity or of the eventual loss of some object of desires, whereas, the saint is the son of his time: he has no future that he should fear anything; and as he has no fear so he has no hope, since hope is the expectation either of gaining an object of desire or of being relieved of a misfortune, and this belongs to the future; nor does he grieve, because grief arises from the rigor of time, and how should he feel grief who is in the radiance of satisfaction (Rida) and the garden of concord (Muwafaqat).”
— Junaid Baghdadi
04. “Gnosis is the realization of thy ignorance when His knowledge comes, He continues to say: He (God) is at once the subject and object of gnosis.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
05. “One moment’s forgetfulness of the Lord ruins a thousand years’ worship.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
06. “Gnosis (Marifat) is the hovering of the heart between declaring God too great to be comprehended and declaring Him too mighty to be perceived. It consists of knowing that whatever may be imagined in the heart, God is the opposite of it.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
07. “God is affirmed more by Not-being than by Being.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
08. “The Lord created His grace before He created the world.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
09. “Fana is the assimilation of the individual will in the Will of God. The true state of ‘Fana’ is experienced by the grace of God. The mystic completely passes away from his self when God wants him to be obliterated.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
10. “Sufism is not achieved by much praying and fasting, but it is the security of the heart and the generosity of the soul.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
11. “Renunciation is this, that the heart is empty of that which the hand is empty of. Renunciation is emptying the hand of possessions and the heart of attachments.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
12. “Describing the last stage of Tawhid, he says: It is a stage where the devotee has achieved the true realization of the Oneness of God in true proximity to him. He is lost to sense and action because God fulfills in him what He hath willed of him.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
13. “One day I was delivering a sermon when one of the audiences said that he could not follow the discourse. I told him to place seventy years of his worship underfoot and bow down in humility and then he would follow it.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
14. “Certainty is the cessation of doubt in the witnessing of the unseen. Certainty is the constancy of knowledge in the heart; it does not vanish or change.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
15. “Tasawwuf is to be chosen for purity. Whoever is thus chosen from all except God is a Sufi.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
16. “Divine love means that the lover takes on the Beloved’s attributes in place of his own.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
17. “The noblest saying consuming unification is that of Abu Bakr: ‘Glory to God, who has not vouchsafed to His creatures any means of attaining unto knowledge of Him except through impotence to attain unto knowledge of Him’, says Junaid.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
18. “Submissiveness is extending one’s protective care to all beings and being forbearing toward them.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
19. “Tasawwuf is to purify the heart from the recurrence of inborn weakness, to take leave of one’s natural characteristics, to extinguish the attributes of humanity, to alienate sensual temptations, to dwell with the spiritual attributes, to mount aloft by means of the Divine sciences, and to practice that which is eternally the best, to bestow sincere counsel on the whole people, to faithfully observe the Truth and to follow the Prophet in respect of the law (shariah).”
— Junaid Baghdadi
20. “Marifat (gnosis) consists of knowing that whatever may be imagined in thy heart, God is the opposite of it.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
21. “I am a slave and have no liberty. I shall go when God will order me to go, be it Paradise or Hell.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
22. “Whosoever repeats the Name of the Lord merges into the Name and Name merges into the Lord.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
23. “The journey from the corporeal world to the Hereafter is easy for the believer, but relinquishing creation for the sake of Allah is difficult. And the journey from the self to Allah is intensely difficult, but patience with God is still more difficult. Patience is drinking down bitterness without a frowning look.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
24. “Sufi is like the earth, which is trodden by the pious and the wicked, like the cloud which cast a shadow over everything and like the rain which waters everything. Sufi is like the earth on which every foul thing is thrown and from which fair things come forth.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
25. “Baqa is not different from ‘Fana’ in the real sense. According to him, it is only ‘Fana’ which assumes the form of ‘Baqa’. The state of annihilation of the self means the persistence of the real self in God and departure of the lower self implies the appearance of the True Self.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
26. “He who fears God never smiles.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
27. “Satisfaction (Rida) is the removal of one’s own choice. Dejectedness is the result of abandoning satisfaction with Divine destiny.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
28. “Once Junaid said to a disciple who bore a grudge with him: Did you not know that God’s saints possess mysterious power? You cannot endure their blows.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
29. “Sufism means that God makes you die to yourself and makes you alive in Him.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
30. “He who depends on his effort in remembering God does not reap the full reward of worship.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
31. “Whatever I gained spiritually was through three practices, viz, renouncing the world, fasting, and waking up the whole nights.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
32. “When asked to say about the sign of the gnostic, he replied: One state does not hold the gnostic back from another state, and one station does not veil him from changing stations.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
33. “God gives the gnostic the ardent desire to behold His Essence, then knowledge becomes vision and vision revelation, and revelation contemplation, and contemplation existence-with and in God. Words are hushed to silence, life becomes death, explanations come to an end, signs are effaced. Mortality (Fana) is ended, and immortality (Baqa) is made perfect. Weariness and care cease, the elements perish and there remain what will not cease, as time that is timeless ceases not.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
34. “The essence of truthfulness means that you tell the truth in situations in which only a lie would save you.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
35. “The virtue of large-heartedness and magnanimity is the most significant value of life to be achieved by the mystics.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
36. “Servitude is abandoning all activity other than the work that is the root of repose.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
37. “One day during illness he cried: ‘Lord! Cure me of this ailment.’ In response, the Divine voice said: ‘If you are not content with the ailment that We have conferred on you, you are out of our court.'”
— Junaid Baghdadi
38. “If a river of fire flows between me and my Lord, in my yearning to meet Him I would jump into it and cross it.”
— Junaid Baghdadi
39. “Sufism is that you be solely with God with no attachments. He also said: ‘Sufism means that God causes you to die to yourself and gives your life in Him.'”
— Junaid Baghdadi
