This book examines the way in which early Muslims begin to understand normative Islamic practice through the role of Muslim scholars who define, preserve, and pass on Islamic traditions. This later becomes the foundation of Sunni identity and Sufi piety. In the figure of ‘Abdallah b. al-Mubarak (118-181/736-797), we find a paragon of the fields of hadith, zuhd, and jihad, as attested to by the large number of references to him in the classical Islamic texts.