Carl W.

Ernst, "Tasawwuf [Sufism]," article for

, ed. Richard Martin (Macmillan Reference U.S.A., 2003)

Tasawwuf, an Arabic term for the process of realizing ethical and spiritual ideals; meaning

literally “becoming a Sufi,” tasawwuf is generally translated as Sufism.

The etymologies for the term Sufi are various. The primary obvious meaning of the

term comes from suf, “wool,” the traditional ascetic garment of prophets and saints in the

Near East. The term has also been connected to safa’, “purity,” or safwa, “the chosen ones,”

emphasizing the psychological dimension of purifying the heart and the role of divine grace

in choosing the saintly. Another etymology links Sufi with suffa or bench, referring to a

group of poor Muslims contemporaneous with the Prophet Muhammad, known as the

People of the Bench, signifying a community of shared poverty. The ideal qualities evoked

by these derivations are the key to the concept of tasawwuf as formulated by authors of the

tenth century, such as Sulami (d. 1021). While acknowledging that that the term Sufi was not

current at the time of the Prophet, Sufi theorists maintained that this specialization in

spirituality arose in parallel with other disciplines such as Islamic law and Qur’anic exegesis.

But the heart of Sufism, they maintained, lay in the ideal qualities of the Prophet Muhammad

and his association with his followers. Definitions of Sufism described ethical and spiritual

goals and functioned as teaching tools to open up the possibilities of the soul. In practice,

the term Sufi was often reserved for ideal usage, and many other terms described particular

spiritual qualities and functions, such as poverty (faqir, darvish), knowledge (`alim, `arif),

mastery (shaykh, pir), etc.

of the eighteenth century. Prior to that time, European travelers had brought back accounts

of exotic religious behavior by Oriental dervishes and fakirs, who were considered important

only when their social organization posed a problem for European colonialism. The

discovery of Persian Sufi poetry, filled with references to love and wine, allowed Europeans

to imagine Sufis as freethinking mystics who had little to do with Islam. The “-ism”

formation of the word (originally “Sufi-ism”) reveals that “Sufism” was a part of the

Enlightenment catalog of ideologies and belief systems, and frequently it was equated with

private mysticism, pantheism, and the doctrine that humanity can become divine. Scholars

such as Sir William Jones (d. 1794) and Sir John Malcolm (d. 1833) advanced the thesis that

Sufism derived from Hindu yoga, Greek philosophy, or Buddhism. This concept of the non-

Islamic character of Sufism has been widely accepted in Euro-American scholarship ever

since, despite (or perhaps because of) its disconnection with the Islamic tradition, in which

tasawwuf and its social implementations have played a central role. Thus, in terms of its

origin, the introduction of the term Sufism into European languages may be regarded as a

classic example of Orientalist misinformation, insofar as Sufism was regarded primarily as a

radical intellectual doctrine at variance with what was thought of as the sterile monotheism

of Islam. Nevertheless, as a word firmly ingrained in the vocabulary of modernity, Sufism

can usefully serve as an outsider’s term for a wide range of social, cultural, political, and

religious phenomena associated with Sufis, including popular practices and movements that

might be in tension with normative definitions of Sufism.

Origins and early history.

The Qur’an itself may be taken as a major source of Sufism. The experience of

revelation that descended upon the Prophet Muhammad left its mark in numerous passages
testifying to the creative power of God and the cosmic horizons of spiritual experience. God

in the Qur’an is described both in terms of overwhelming transcendence and immanent

presence. In particular, the ascension (mi`raj) of the Prophet Muhammad to Paradise, as

elaborated upon from brief references in the Qur’an (17:1-2, 53:1-18), provided a template

for the movement of the soul toward an encounter with the Creator. While it was commonly

accepted that the Prophet’s ascension was accomplished in the body, for Sufis this opened

up the possibility of an internal spiritual ascension. The notion of special knowledge

available to particularly favored servants of God, particularly as illustrated in the story of

Moses and al-Khidr (Qur’an 18:60-82), provided a model for the relationship between inner

knowledge of the soul and outward knowledge of the law. Another major theme adopted by

Sufis was the primordial covenant (7:172) between God and humanity, which established the

relationship with God that the Sufi disciplines sought to preserve and restore. A broad range

of Qur’anic terms for the different faculties of the soul and the emotions furnished a basis

for a highly complex mystical psychology.

The earliest figures claimed by the Sufi movement include the Prophet Muhammad

and his chief companions; their oaths of allegiance to Muhammad became the model for the

master-disciple relationship in Sufism. Muhammad’s meditation in a cave on Mount Hira

outside Mecca was seen as the basis for Sufi practices of seclusion and retreat. In an

extension of the authority of the Prophet as enshrined in hadith accounts, Sufis regarded the

model of the Prophet as the basis for spiritual experience as well as legal and ethical norms.

While there is debate about the authenticity of much of the classical hadith corpus, many

hadith sayings favored by Sufis describe the cosmic authority of Muhammad as the first

being created by God, and in many other ways these sayings establish the possibility of

imitating divine qualities. Veneration of the Prophet Muhammad, both for his own qualities
and in his role as intercessor for all humanity, became the keynote of Sufi piety as it diffused

through Muslim society on a popular basis.

Among the early successors to the Prophet, the later Sufi movement singled out as

forerunners ascetics like al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), who was renowned for preaching the

vanity of this world and warning of punishment in the next (see Zuhd). By the end of the

eighth century, small groups of like-minded individuals, particularly in northeastern Iran and

in Iraq, had begun to formulate a vocabulary of interior spiritual experience, based in good

part on the Qur’an and the emerging Islamic religious sciences. Intensive and protracted

prayer (including not only the five obligatory ritual prayers daily, but also five supererogatory

ones) and meditation on the meanings of the Qur’an were notable features of early Sufi

practice. The sometimes stark asceticism of early Sufis, with its rejection of the corrupt

world, came to be tempered by the quest to find God through love. This emphasis on an

intimate and even passionate relationship with God is associated particularly with the

outstanding early woman Sufi, Rabi`a of Basra (d. 801). Other early Sufis contributed to the

development of an extensive psychological analysis of spiritual states, as a natural result of

prolonged meditative retreats. Socially speaking, many of the early Sufis came from lower

class artisan and craftsman origins. Their piety often included deliberate critique of the

excesses of wealth and power generated by the rapid conquests of the early Arab empire.

Major early figures in the Sufi movement included Dhu al-Nun of Egypt (d. 859), the

ecstatic Abu Yazid al-Bistami in Iran (d. 874), the early metaphysician al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi

(d.910) in Nishapur, and the sober psychologist and legal scholar Junayd of Baghdad (d.

910).

Although religious criticism of Sufi practices and doctrines started to occur as early

as the late ninth century, it is particularly in the case of al-Hallaj (executed in 922) that
tensions between Sufism and the legal establishment became apparent. Although the trial of

al-Hallaj was a confusing mix of politics and crypto-Shi`ism, in hagiographical sources it

became mythologized as a confrontation between radical mysticism and conservative Islamic

law. Sufi writers adapted to this crisis by insisting upon adherence to the norms and

disciplines of Islamic religious scholarship, while the same time cultivating an esoteric

language and style appropriate to the discussion of subtle interior experiences. Early Sufi

writers such as Sarraj (d. 988), Ansari (d. 1089), and Qushayri (d. 1072) emphasized Sufism

as the “knowledge of realities,” inseparable from yet far beyond the knowledge of Islamic

law and scripture. Many of these writers also declared their loyalties to established legal

schools or the Ash`ari school of theology.

The institutional spread of Sufism was accomplished through the “ways” or Sufi

orders (see Tariqa), which increasingly from the eleventh century offered the prospect of

spiritual community organized around charismatic teachers whose authority derived from a

lineage going back to the Prophet Muhammad himself. Under the patronage of dynasties like

the Seljuks, who also supported religious academies (see Madrasa) in their quest for

legitimacy, Sufi lodges eventually spread throughout the Middle East, South and Central

Asia, North Africa and Spain, and South Eastern Europe. While dedicated membership in

Sufi orders remained confined to an elite, mass participation in the reverence for saints at

their tombs has been a typical feature in Muslim societies until today.

Major figures and doctrines

The central role of Sufism in premodern Muslim societies is perhaps best typified by

the intellectual career of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Having become the foremost

theologian at the Nizamiyya academy in Baghdad at a very youthful age, he underwent a