Rabia lived during the same period as the poet
Rudaki (died 940/41), and is the first known Persian woman poet. She felt strongly about
Sufism, and composed poetry in Persian and Arabic. The 14th-century poet and
anthologist Jajarmi states that Rabia wrote a Persian poem which used Arabic for the
shahada and
lahwalah, which according to the Iranologist Francois de Blois demonstrates her enthusiasm for bilingual tricks. Rabia appears in the
Lubab ul-Albab, a compilation of Persian poets made by the 12th and 13th-century writer
Awfi (died 1242). The compilation says the following about her: "The daughter of Ka'b, although she was a woman, was superior to men in accomplishments. She possessed great intelligence and sharp temperament. She used to continuously play the game of love and admired beautiful youths." Rabia is amongst the thirty-five female Sufis mentioned in the 15th-century Persian work
Nafahat al-Uns, a biographical compilation made by
Jami (died 1492). Referring her as the "daughter of Ka'b", Jami narrates the story through the prominent Sufi master and poet,
Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (died 1049), reporting that she fell in love with a slave. (died 1460), where Rabia Balkhi's shrine is located A romanticized version of this story appears in the
Ilahi-nama of the Sufi poet
Attar of Nishapur (died 1221), under a story named
Hikayat Amir-i Balkh wa ashiq shudan dukhtar-i o ("the story of the chieftain of Balkh and his daughter's falling in love"). The story narrates Rabia's love affair with Bektash, a slave of her brother Haris, and concludes with the death of both Rabia and Bektash. Attar does not use the name "Rabia" either when referring to her, and instead calls her ''Zainu'l Arab'' ("the ornament of the Arabs"). He wrote that it was very difficult for him to describe her face due to her attractiveness. Francois de Blois dismisses Attar's story, considering it to have "no value as a biographical source" for Rabia. The modern historian Sunil Sharma notes that Rabia initially started out as non-
mystic figure, being portrayed by Awfi as a "boy-chasing intelligent woman", and was only later portrayed as a mystic poet by authors such as Attar and Jami. Dabashi notes that Rabia later became a "semi-legendary figure who putatively wrote her last poems with her blood on the prison walls of the jail in which she had been incarcerated because of her love for a slave named Bektash." Her love story with Bektash encouraged the 19th-century writer
Reza-Qoli Khan Hedayat (died 1871) to write the romantic epic of
Golestan-e Eram or
Bektash-nama, which tells the story of the two pairs. Rabia's shrine is located in the mausoleum of the 15th-century
Naqshbandi Sufi
Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa (died 1460) in the city of Balkh, now present-day
Afghanistan. The shrine was renovated between 2012 and 2016. She is celebrated in the
Balochistan province of
Pakistan, Afghanistan and
Iran through various schools, hospitals, and roads being named after her. She is seen by women as the embodiment of the voice they have been deprived of. An important part of the
cinema of Afghanistan was the 1974 film
Rabia of Balkh, which according to Krista Geneviéve Lynes had an important role in the "figuration of a proto-feminist political agency, one that in many respects resembles the ethnical call for justice in
Sophocles's Antigone." == Notes ==