The Canon · No. 048
Sufism
Tasawwuf; Islamic mysticism
c.8th c. CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · Worldwide, especially West Africa, Turkey, South Asia, Central Asia
V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE
How many
Not a sect and not separately counted. Perhaps a few hundred million participate in Sufi orders or devotional practice; Sufi orders were the main vehicle of Islam's spread into sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Who began it
No founder. Early ascetics such as Hasan al-Basri (642–728) and Rabia al-Adawiyya (c.714–801), a former slave who taught disinterested love of God — worshipping God neither from fear of hell nor hope of heaven, but for God alone.
What it is for
Ihsan — to worship God as though you see him, knowing that if you do not see him, he sees you. Sufism is the interior dimension of Islam: not different doctrine, but the pursuit of direct experience of what the doctrine states.
What it worships
Allah, approached as beloved. The imagery of wine, intoxication and the lover's longing is standard and is metaphorical, which has not stopped literalist critics from objecting for a thousand years.
What it holds
Purification of the nafs, the lower self, through stages (maqamat) and states (ahwal). Fana, annihilation of the ego in God, and baqa, subsistence in God afterwards. Ibn Arabi's wahdat al-wujud, the unity of being, holds that only God truly exists and all else is his self-disclosure — a position that has been argued over ever since as either the summit of Islamic metaphysics or a slide into pantheism.
What it does
Dhikr — remembrance, the rhythmic repetition of God's names, aloud or silently, alone or in assembly. Sama, spiritual listening, with music and poetry, which the Mevlevi order turned into the whirling ceremony. The relationship of murshid and murid, master and disciple, with an initiatory chain (silsila) traced back to the Prophet. Retreat, fasting, night vigil. Visiting the tombs of saints (ziyara), a practice Salafi movements condemn as a violation of tawhid, which is the sharpest fault line in modern Sunni Islam.
After death
Standard Islamic eschatology, but with the emphasis moved: the goal is union with God now, and paradise is regarded by many Sufi writers as a lesser prize than the vision of God himself. Rabia's reported prayer — that God burn her in hell if she worships him for paradise — is the classic statement.
Its texts
Rumi (1207–1273), Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams — Rumi is regularly reported as the best-selling poet in the United States, usually in translations that quietly remove the Islam. Ibn Arabi, Meccan Revelations and Bezels of Wisdom. al-Ghazali, Revival of the Religious Sciences. Attar's Conference of the Birds. Hafez, Saadi, Yunus Emre.
Its branches
Qadiriyya, Chishtiyya, Naqshbandiyya, Shadhiliyya, Mevleviyya, Tijaniyya, Bektashi and dozens more; both Sunni and Shia forms exist.
Of note
Sufism is not a denomination you leave Sunnism or Shiism to join. Most Sufis have been ordinary Sunni Muslims practising an additional interior discipline, and the framing of Sufism as separate from Islam is largely a Western and a Salafi one, arrived at from opposite directions.
Its timeline
- c.700–900 CE Early ascetic movement; Rabia; Bayazid Bastami's ecstatic utterances.
- 922 CE al-Hallaj executed in Baghdad, reportedly for declaring ana al-Haqq, I am the Truth — one of God's names. The limit case of what ecstatic speech can cost.
- 1058–1111 CE al-Ghazali makes Sufism respectable to the legal establishment; this is the reason it became mainstream rather than marginal.
- c.1100–1300 CE The great orders form: Qadiriyya, Suhrawardiyya, Chishtiyya, Shadhiliyya, Mevleviyya, Naqshbandiyya.
- 1165–1240 CE Ibn Arabi, the Greatest Master.
- 1207–1273 CE Rumi in Konya; the Mevlevi order founded by his followers after his death.
- c.1200–1800 CE Sufi orders carry Islam into West Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and the Balkans, largely by trade and example rather than conquest.
- 1744 onward Wahhabi and later Salafi movements attack shrine visitation and Sufi practice as idolatry.
- 1925 CE Turkey bans the Sufi orders; the Mevlevi ceremony survives officially as a cultural performance.
- 2017 CE The Bir al-Abed mosque attack in Sinai kills over 300 Sufi worshippers — the deadliest terrorist attack in Egyptian history, and a reminder that the Sufi-Salafi conflict is not academic.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.