Mansur al-Hallaj

Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj was born around 858 in Fars, in southern Iran. He trained with Sufi masters, travelled widely, including to Mecca and India, and preached openly in Baghdad. His ecstatic saying 'Ana al-Haqq,' 'I am the Truth' (al-Haqq being a name of God), was taken by opponents as a claim to divinity.

After a long imprisonment and trial with political as well as religious dimensions, he was executed in Baghdad in March 922. Later Sufis remembered him as a martyr of divine love; others regarded him as a heretic.

His Kitab al-Tawasin contains a famous passage on Iblis, who in the Quran refuses God's command to bow to Adam. Al-Hallaj presents that refusal as a kind of tragic loyalty: Iblis will bow to no one but God, even at the cost of damnation. The theme of the devil as a frustrated lover of God was taken up by later Persian Sufi writers. It remains a minority, mystical reading, not mainstream Islamic doctrine.