ḤALLᾹJ, AL- ("the cotton carder"), al-Husayn ibn Manṣūr (AH 244–309/857–922 CE), was known among Muslims as "the martyr of mystical love." Although he has been maligned in some circles for his "heretical" teachings and his alleged claim to divinity, his place in the world of Islamic poetry is undisputed: There, the name al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr, or simply Manṣūr, stands as one of the major symbols of mystical union and of suffering in love.

Born in southern Iran, he spent some of his youth with Sahl al-Tustarī, the mystic to whom Sufism owes the first systematic theory of nūr Muḥammad ("the light of Muḥam-mad"), which forms an important aspect of al-Ḥallāj's later thought. From Basra, al-Ḥallāj proceeded to Baghdad, the center of mystical learning during the late ninth...