Sufism
From Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sufism, mystical
Islamic
belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and
knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety
of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of humanity and of
God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom
in the world.
Islamic mysticism
is called taṣawwuf (literally, “to dress in
wool”) in Arabic,
but it has been called Sufism in Western languages since the early 19th
century. An abstract word, Sufism derives from the Arabic term for a mystic, ṣūfī, which is in turn derived from ṣūf, “wool,” plausibly a reference to the woollen garment of early Islamic ascetics. The Sufis are
also generally known as “the poor,” fuqarāʾ,
plural of the Arabic faqīr, in Persian darvīsh, whence the English words fakir
and dervish.
Though the roots of Islamic
mysticism formerly were supposed to have stemmed from various non-Islamic
sources in ancient Europe
and even India,
it now seems established that the movement grew out of early Islamic asceticism
that developed as a counterweight to the increasing worldiness
of the expanding Muslim community; only later were foreign elements that were
compatible with mystical theology and practices adopted and made to conform to
Islam.
By educating the masses and
deepening the spiritual concerns of the Muslims, Sufism has played an important
role in the formation of Muslim society. Opposed to the dry casuistry of the
lawyer-divines, the mystics nevertheless scrupulously observed the commands of
the divine law. The Sufis have been further responsible for a large-scale
missionary activity all over the world, which still continues. Sufis have
elaborated the image of the Prophet Muhammad—the
founder of Islam—and have thus largely influenced Muslim piety by their
Muhammad-mysticism. Without the Sufi vocabulary, Persian
and other literatures related to it, such as Turkish,
Urdu,
Sindhi, Pashto, and Punjabi, would lack their special charms. Through the
poetry of these literatures, mystical ideas spread widely among the Muslims. In
some countries Sufi leaders were also active politically.
History
Islamic mysticism had several
stages of growth, including (1) the appearance of early asceticism,
(2) the development of a classical mysticism of divine love, and (3) the rise
and proliferation of fraternal orders of mystics. Despite these general stages,
however, the history of Islamic mysticism is largely a history of individual
mystic experience.
The first stage of Sufism
appeared in pious circles as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad
period (661–749). From their practice of constantly meditating on the words in
the Qurʾān (the Islamic holy book) about
Doomsday, the ascetics became known as “those who always weep” and those who
considered this world “a hut of sorrows.” They were distinguished by their
scrupulous fulfillment of the injunctions of the Qurʾān
and tradition, by many acts of piety, and especially by a predilection for
night prayers.
Classical Mysticism
The introduction of the
element of love, which changed asceticism into mysticism, is ascribed to Rābiʿah al-ʿAdawīyah
(died 801), a woman from Basra who first formulated the Sufi ideal of a love of
Allah
(God) that was disinterested, without hope for paradise and without fear of hell.
In the decades after Rābiʿah, mystical
trends grew everywhere in the Islamic world,
partly through an exchange of ideas with Christian
hermits. A number of mystics in the early generations had concentrated their
efforts upon tawakkul, absolute trust in God, which became a central
concept of Sufism. An Iraqi school of mysticism became noted for its strict
self-control and psychological insight. The Iraqi school was initiated by al-Muḥāsibī (died 857)—who believed that
purging the soul in preparation for companionship with God was the only value
of asceticism. Its teachings of classical sobriety and wisdom were perfected by
Junayd of Baghdad (died 910),
to whom all later chains of the transmission of doctrine and legitimacy go
back. In an Egyptian school of Sufism, the Nubian Dhū
al-Nūn (died 859) reputedly introduced the
technical term maʿ rifah (“interior knowledge”),
as contrasted to learnedness; in his hymnical prayers
he joined all nature in the praise of God—an idea based on the Qurʾān and later elaborated in Persian and
Turkish poetry. In the Iranian school, Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī
(died 874) is usually considered to have been representative of the important
doctrine of annihilation of the self, fanāʾ;
the strange symbolism
of his sayings prefigures part of the terminology of later mystical poets. At
the same time the concept of divine love became more central, especially among
the Iraqi Sufis. Its main representatives are Nūrī,
who offered his life for his brethren, and Sumnūn
“the Lover.”
The first of the theosophical
speculations based on mystical insights about human nature and the essence of
the Prophet Muhammad
were produced by such Sufis as Sahl al-Tustarī (died c. 896). Some Hellenistic ideas were
later adopted by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (died 898). Sahl
was the master of al-Ḥusayn ibn
Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, who has become famous for his
phrase anā al-ḥaqq,
“I am the Creative Truth” (often rendered “I am God”), which was later
interpreted in a pantheistic
sense but is, in fact, only a condensation of his theory of huwa
huwa (“He he”): God loved
himself in his essence, and created Adam
“in his image.” Ḥallāj was executed in 922
in
In these early centuries Sufi
thought was transmitted in small circles. Some of the shaykhs,
Sufi mystical leaders or guides of such circles, were also artisans. In the
10th century, it was deemed necessary to write handbooks about the tenets of
Sufism in order to soothe the growing suspicions of the orthodox; the
compendiums composed in Arabic by Abū Ṭālib Makkī, Sarrāj, and Kalābādhī
in the late 10th century, and by Qushayrī and,
in Persian, by Hujvīrī in the 11th century
reveal how these authors tried to defend Sufism and to prove its orthodox
character. It should be noted that the mystics belonged to all schools of
Islamic law and theology of the times.
The last great figure in the
line of classical Sufism is Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (died 1111), who wrote, among
numerous other works, the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of the Religious
Sciences”), a comprehensive work that established moderate mysticism against
the growing theosophical trends—which tended to equate God and the world—and
thus shaped the thought of millions of Muslims. His younger brother, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī,
wrote one of the subtlest treatises (Sawāniḥ;
“Occurrences” [i.e., stray thoughts]) on mystical love, a subject that then
became the main subject of Persian
poetry.
Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/571823/Sufism