The first of the 'sober Sufis' who insisted that the experience of Allah lay in enhanced self-possession and that the wild exuberance of the Sufis was merely a stage that the true mystic should transcend. Junaid Baghdadi, a celebrated saint, a religious teacher and an ascetic, thought that the intoxication experienced by al-Bastami was merely a phase, which the mystic must transcend in order to achieve an enhanced sense of self and a more complete self-possession. Abul Qasim bin Muhammad Junaid was born and brought up at Baghdad and was the greatest exponent of the `sober' school of Sufism. The ecstatic mystic Mansur al-Hallaj was his disciple. Junaid Baghdadi performed thirty pilgrimages to Makkah on foot.