Aḥmad Samʿānī

Abu ʾl-Qāsim Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Samʿānī (1094 – 11 June 1140), known in Persian as Aḥmad Samʿānī, was an Arab scholar, preacher and poet. He was the author of Rawḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ asmāʾ al-malik al-fattāḥ, a Persian prose commentary on the names of God in Islam that extends for some six hundred pages.

According to the genealogies, the Samʿān were a branch of the Arab tribe of Tamīm. Aḥmad's family was from Merv. His father, Abu ʾl-Muẓaffar Manṣūr (1035–1096), was a noted Shāfiʿī scholar who wrote about tafsīr, ḥadīth and fiqh. In 1135, Aḥmad and his nephew ʿAbd al-Karīm, son of his elder brother Abū Bakr Muḥammad, went to Nīshāpūr to study ḥadīth. In his nephew's biographical dictionary, al-Ansāb, Aḥmad's elegant preaching and poetry are praised, but his writings are not mentioned.

Rawḥ al-arwāḥ ("Comfort of Spirits") is a work of the highest literary quality. Intended for recitation, it ranks with the best prose works of the period, such as those of al-Ghazālī. It is the earliest Persian commentary on the subject of the divine names. It covers 101 names in 74 chapters. The names, however, are dealt with briefly, being in fact only starting points for discussions of salvation and love. Love is the central theme of the work. God is to be obeyed out of love not fear, and suffering exists to increase mankind's desire for God, whose mercy and compassion Samʿānī stresses over his wrath.

Rawḥ al-arwāḥ was once a little-known work, but since Najīb Hirawī published an edition in 1989, it has come to be regarded as a classic of Ṣūfī literature.