The Syrian Abdāl : The Development of Muslim Eremitic Asceticism on the Black Mountain in the Early Abbasid Period

This article reconstructs an understudied tradition of early Muslim eremitic asceticism centred on Syria’s mountainous frontier, particularly the Black Mountain (Jabal al-Lukkām) and Mount Lebanon, from the eighth through tenth centuries. Drawing primarily on Sufi biographical literature, it argues that Muslim renunciants deliberately cultivated practices of seclusion, self-mortification and radical dietary discipline in proximity to long-established Christian ascetic communities. Figures such as Ibrāhīm ibn Adham, Yūsuf ibn Asbāṭ, ʿAbdallāh ibn Khubayq al-Anṭākī and Aḥmad ibn ʿĀṣim al-Anṭākī exemplify a form of Muslim eremitism shaped by frontier conditions, competition with Christian holy men, and emerging Sufi ethical psychology. The article further traces how hermits of the Syrian mountains were mythologised as saintly figures known as “abdāl”, as these mountains were situated within Islamic sacred geography.