- Key People:
- al-Mahdī
- Rūmī
- Baba Mondi
- al-Ḥallāj
- al-Muḥāsibī
- Related Topics:
- ḥāl
- samāʿ
- waḥdat ash-shuhūd
- waḥdat al-wujūd
- tawakkul
- On the Web:
- Academia - Sufism (PDF) (May 13, 2025)
Though a Hadith (a recorded saying of the Prophet Muhammad) claims that “he who knows God becomes silent,” the Sufis have produced a literature of impressive extent and could defend their writing activities with another Hadith: “He who knows God talks much.” The first systematic books explaining the tenets of Sufism date from the 10th century; but earlier, Muḥāsibī had already written about spiritual education, Ḥallāj had composed meditations in highly concentrated language, and many Sufis had used poetry for conveying their experiences of the ineffable mystery or had instructed their disciples in letters of cryptographic density. The accounts of Sufism by Sarrāj and his followers, as well as the ṭabaqāt (biographical works) by Sulamī, Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, and others, together with some biographies of individual masters, are the sources for knowledge of early Sufism.
Early mystical commentaries on the Qurʾān are only partly extant, often preserved in fragmentary quotations in later sources. With the formation of mystical orders, books about the behaviour of the Sufi in various situations became important, although this topic had already been touched on in such classical works as Ādāb al-murīdīn (“The Adepts’ Etiquette”) by Abū Najīb al-Suhrawardī (died 1168), the founder of the Suhrawardīyyah order and uncle of the author of the oft-translated ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (“The Well-Known Sorts of Knowledge”). The theosophists had to condense their systems in readable form; Ibn al-ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”) is the textbook of waḥdat al-wujūd (God and creation as two aspects of one reality). His smaller work on the peculiar character of the prophets—Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”)—became even more popular.
Later mystics commented extensively upon the classical sources and, sometimes, translated them into their mother tongues. A literary type that has flourished especially in India since the 13th century is the malfūẓāt, a collection of sayings of the mystical leader, which are psychologically interesting and allow glimpses into the political and social situation of the Muslim community. Collections of letters of the shaykhs are similarly revealing. Sufi literature abounds in hagiography consisting of one of three types: biographies of all known saints from the Prophet Muhammad to the day of the author, biographies of saints of a specific order, and biographies of those who lived in a certain town or province. Much information on the development of Sufi thought and practice is available if sources are critically sifted.
The greatest contribution of Sufism to Islamic literature, however, is poetry—beginning with charming, short Arabic love poems (sometimes sung for a mystical concert, samāʿ) that express the yearning of the soul for union with the beloved. The love-relation prevailing in most Persian poetry is that between a man and a beautiful youth; less often, as in the writings of Ibn al-ʿArabī and Ibn al-Fāriḍ, eternal beauty is symbolized through female beauty; in Indo-Muslim popular mystical songs the soul is the loving wife, God the longed-for husband. Long mystic–didactic poems (mas̄nawīs) were written to introduce the reader to the problems of unity and love by means of allegories and parables. After Sanāʾī’s (died 1131?) Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah wa sharīʿat ạt-ṭariqah (“The Garden of Truth and the Law of Practice”), came ʿAṭṭar’s Manṭeq al-ṭeyr (“The Conference of the Birds”) and Rūmī’s Mas̄navī-ye maʿnavī (“Spiritual Couplets”). These three works are the sources that have furnished poets for centuries with mystical ideas and images. Typical of Sufi poetry is the hymn in praise of God, expressed in chains of repetitions.
The mystics also contributed largely to the development of national and regional literatures, for they had to convey their message to the masses in their own languages: in Turkey as well as in the Punjabi-, the Sindhi-, and the Urdu-speaking areas of South Asia, the first true religious poetry was written by Sufis, who blended classical Islamic motifs with inherited popular legends and used popular rather than Persian metres. Sufi poetry expressing divine love and mystical union through the metaphors of profane love and union often resembled ordinary worldly love poetry, and nonmystical poetry made use of the Sufi vocabulary, thus producing an ambiguity that is felt to be one of the most attractive and characteristic features of Persian, Turkish, and Urdu literatures. Sufi ideas thus permeated the hearts of all those who hearkened to poetry. An example is al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, the 10th-century martyr-mystic, who is as popular in modern progressive Urdu poetry as he was with the “God-intoxicated” Sufis; he has been converted into a symbol of suffering for one’s ideals.
Sufi thought and practice
Important aspects
The mystics drew their vocabulary largely from the Qurʾān, which for Muslims contains all divine wisdom and has to be interpreted with ever-increasing insight. In the Qurʾān, mystics found the threat of the Last Judgment, but they also found the statement that God “loves them and they love him,” which became the basis for love-mysticism. Strict obedience to the religious law and imitation of the Prophet were basic for the mystics. By rigid introspection and mental struggle, the mystic tried to purify his baser self from even the smallest signs of selfishness, thus attaining ikhlāṣ, absolute purity of intention and act. Tawakkul (trust in God) was sometimes practiced to such an extent that every thought of tomorrow was considered irreligious. “Little sleep, little talk, little food” were fundamental; fasting became one of the most important preparations for the spiritual life.
The central concern of the Sufis, as of every Muslim, was tawḥīd, the witness that “there is no deity but God.” This truth had to be realized in the existence of each individual, and so the expressions differ: early Sufism postulated the approach to God through love and voluntary suffering until a unity of will was reached; Junayd spoke of “recognizing God as He was before creation”; God is seen as the One and only actor; He alone “has the right to say ‘I’.” Later, tawḥīd came to mean the knowledge that there is nothing existent but God, or the ability to see God and creation as two aspects of one reality, reflecting each other and depending upon each other (waḥdat al-wujūd).
The mystics realized that beyond the knowledge of outward sciences intuitive knowledge was required in order to receive that illumination to which reason has no access. Dhawq, direct “tasting” of experience, was essential for them. But the inspirations and “unveilings” that God grants such mystics by special grace must never contradict the Qurʾān and tradition and are valid only for the person concerned. Even the Malāmatīs, who attracted public contempt upon themselves by outwardly acting against the law, in private life strictly followed the divine commands. Mystics who expressed in their poetry their disinterest in, and even contempt of, the traditional formal religions never forgot that Islam is the highest manifestation of divine wisdom.
The idea of the manifestation of divine wisdom was also connected with the person of the Prophet Muhammad. Though early Sufism had concentrated upon the relation between God and the soul, from 900 onward a strong Muhammad-mysticism developed. In the very early years, the alleged divine address to the Prophet—“If thou hadst not been I had not created the worlds”—was common among Sufis. Muhammad was said to be “Prophet when Adam was still between water and clay.” Muhammad is also described as light from light, and from his light all the prophets are created, constituting the different aspects of this light. In its fullness such light radiated from the historical Muhammad and is partaken of by his posterity and by the saints; for Muhammad has the aspect of sanctity in addition to that of prophecy. An apocryphal tradition makes even God attest: “I am Aḥmad (= Muhammad) without ‘m’ (i.e., Aḥad, ‘One’).”
A mystic may also be known as walī. By derivation the word walī (“saint”) means “one in close relation” or “friend.” The awlīyāʾ (plural of walī) are “friends of God who have no fear nor are they sad.” Later the term walī came to denote the Muslim mystics who had reached a certain stage of proximity to God, or those who had reached the highest mystical stages. They have their “seal” (i.e., the last and most perfect personality in the historical process; with this person, the evolution has found its end—as in Muhammad’s case), just as the prophets have. Female saints are found all over the Islamic world.
The invisible hierarchy of saints consists of the 40 abdāl (“substitutes”; for when any of them dies another is elected by God from the rank and file of the saints), seven awtād (“stakes,” or “props,” of faith), three nuqabāʾ (“leader”; “one who introduces people to his master”), headed by the quṭb (“axis, pole”), or ghawth (“help”)—titles claimed by many Sufi leaders. Saint worship is contrary to Islam, which does not admit of any mediating role for human beings between humanity and God; but the cult of living and even more of dead saints—visiting their tombs to take vows there—responded to the feeling of the masses, and thus a number of pre-Islamic customs were absorbed into Islam under the cover of mysticism. The advanced mystic was often granted the capacity of working miracles called karāmāt (charismata or “graces”), although not muʿjizāt (“that which men are unable to imitate”), like the miracles of the prophets. Among them are “cardiognosia” (knowledge of the heart), providing food from the unseen, presence in two places at the same time, and help for the disciples, be they near or far. In short, a saint is one “whose prayers are heard” and who has taṣarruf, the power of materializing in this world possibilities that still rest in the spiritual world. Many great saints, however, considered miracle working as a dangerous trap on the path that might distract the Sufi from his real goal.
