Love of beauty has long been recognised as a major theme in Sufi literature. Among numerous Sufis who spoke on beauty, Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 1209) stands out for the sheer amount and sophistication of his discussion on beauty, expressed in prose and verse, in Arabic and Persian. His analysis of beauty may appear reminiscent of Plotinus’s thought, though it is virtually impossible to prove the latter’s influence on Rūzbihān. Instead of attempting to prove or disprove ‘influence’, the present study compares Plotinus and Rūzbihān — with occasional reference to the Arabic Plotinus corpus — on key questions on beauty, including its origin, its role in cosmogony, why human beings find beauty to be attractive and pleasurable, proper attitude to bodily beauty, difference between beauty and goodness, and why beauty mattered to Rūzbihān and Plotinus. A three-directional comparison of Plotinus, Rūzbihān, and the Arabic Plotinus on questions on beauty reveals unexpected affinities and divergences of thought among them.

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