‘Aṭṭār’s Taẕkirat al-awlīyā’ (composed first quarter 7th/13th century) is both a memorial to God's friends and a remembrance of previous texts. Scholars have recognized a wide range of works in Arabic and Persian that provided the substance of ‘Aṭṭār’s collection of the lives and sayings of Sufis and other pious exemplars. Identifying these sources, however, raises other, more crucial issues: How did ‘Aṭṭār frame, arrange, and revise this disparate material and to what purpose? Helmut Ritter makes a few general observations:

These passing comments take on greater significance in light of recent trends in literary criticism, such as the study of intertextuality and imitation, that are concerned less with the identity of the source than with what is done with it. Of particular relevance here is the concept of “rewriting” proposed by the late André Lefevere. He argues that rewriters—translators, editors, biographers, and compilers—create images of their sources that often reach a larger audience and exercise a greater power than the source itself. Rewriters are responsible for popularizing, propagating, and interpreting the written tradition, assuring its on-going relevance and significance. Few texts illustrate the creative potential of rewriting better than the Taẕkirat al-awlīyā’. As Ritter's remarks indicate, ‘Aṭṭār employs various techniques—imitation, free quotation, translation—in compiling and revising his sources. Analyzing ‘Aṭṭṭṭār's methods of rewriting in detail will help show how he made the spiritual saga of early Islam available in a new language and how he exploited the imaginative appeal of biographical form to win the attention and sympathy of a broad, popular audience.

To simplify the problem of identifying sources, we can turn to the brief “memorial” of the ascetic and scholar formally known as Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Sahl al-Iṣbahānī (d. 280/893). The first problem in translation arises with the name itself. ‘Aṭṭār not only omits the kunya Abū al-Ḥasan, but also gives a thoroughly Persianized version of the name: ‘Alī-yi Sahl-i Iṣfahānī. The Arabic ibn is replaced by the Persian eẓāfa-yi nasabī, the definite article is dropped from the nisba, and the Arabicized “Iṣbahānī” reappears in its native Persian garb, “Iṣfahānī.”