Hals and maqams in Abu Abd Ar-Rahman as-Sulami's Tabaqat as-Sufiyya

Hals and Maqams in Abu Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulami's Tabaqat as-Sufiyya Abu Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulami (d. 412/1021) is accepted as one of the leading figures of the formation period of Sufism with his works which stand as the source for the Sunni Sufism. Sulami's work called Tabaqat as-Sufiyya which is focused on throughout this work is the first tabaqat reaching the present day. After Sulami mentioned biographies of Sufies briefly, he demonstrated that the Sufis has legitimate ground by exemplifying through hadiths which they narrated and then he conveyed their words and legends. Within the two parts named as 'State' and 'Maqams' in this work, terminology was traced by classifying the statements and quotations in Tabaqat as-Sufiyya in a concept based notion. By who and how the related concepts were used constituted the basic question of the research. From this point forth, while the concepts were being analysed, if there is/the current, verse of Koran-hadith-işari interpretations were specified in Tabaqat in accordance with the topic; initial use of terminology, semantic extension and distinctions, and the incorporation between terms were detected as much as possible. Through the statements of the doctrine with reference to the related term, pieces of work which were written during the same period as the people in Tabaqat and partly the contemporaries of Sulami were utilized. The identification of the change of the concepts which were subject to the research in a piece of work such as Tabaqat within II-V./VIII-XI. centuries provided people with an opportunity to evaluate Sufis comments in a holistic way.