Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya

Born poor in Basra, sold into slavery as a child and freed, she turned the whole young tradition on its axis with a single insistence: God is not to be worshipped out of fear of the fire or hope of the garden, but for God's own sake. The most famous story about her — walking with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other, to burn paradise and quench hell so that people might love God without a bribe — is attributed, first recorded centuries later, and is the truest thing about her anyway.

She invents disinterested love as a discipline, and every later Sufi builds on it. Set her beside the Jewish argument over serving lishmah — for its own sake — and two traditions are found solving the same problem, in the same century, one province apart.