** Sufism The Essentials Mark J. Sedgwick 2003, 104 pages full

https://www.scribd.com/read/382876759/Sufism-The-Essentials

Sufism  The Essentials 

 

Mark J. Sedgwick 

The American University in Cairo Press Cairo • New York
Copyright © 2000, 2003

 104 pages

===

Translation of the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata Allah are based on those of Victor Danner in The Book of Wisdom, by kind permission of the Paulist Press. Originals © Paulist Press, 1988. 

===

For more than a millennium, Sufism has been the core of the spiritual experience of countless Muslims. As the chief mystical tradition of Islam, it has helped to shape the history of Islamic societies.

Although it is the Sufi face of Islam that has often appealed to Westerners, Sufis and Sufism remain mysterious to many in the West, and are still widely misunderstood. In this new, redesigned paperback edition of this bestselling book, a scholar with long experience of Sufism in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe succinctly presents the essentials of Sufism and shows how Sufis live and worship, and why.

As well as what Sufism is and where it comes from, the book discusses Sufi orders not only in the Islamic world but also in the West. The political, social, and economic significance of Sufism is outlined, and the question of how and why Sufism has become one of the more controversial aspects of contemporary Islamic religious life is addressed.

----

This book assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. It is a penetrating and concise introduction for everyone interested in Islam and Islamic societies.

===

Mark J. Sedgwick

Mark Sedgwick was born in London, and grew up in England, Spain, and France. His interest in history and the world beyond the West was first awakened by his grandfather, who celebrated his 21st birthday in Egypt during the 1919 Revolution, saw some of the Turkish War of Independence, and then moved on to Imperial India. 

Mark studied history at Oxford University, did a PhD on Sufism at the University of Bergen in Norway, and taught for 20 years at the American University in Cairo. He now teaches at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is professor of Arab and Islamic Studies.

===

Contents

Introduction

1 What is Sufism and where does it come from? 

 The origins of Sufism 

 Sufism as a practical program 

 Orthodoxy, exotericism, and esotericism 

 The first shaykh Two great Sufi theorists

2 How to be a Sufi 

 Sufism and social class 

 Sufism and gender 

 The shaykh as exemplar Range of participation 

 Essential practices 

 The majdhub

3 The orders The archetypal Friend of God 

 The role of Sufism in the spread of Islam

 The organization of an order 

 Some of the great orders and their shaykhs 

 Sufism in the West today

4 Friends, warriors, and merchants

 

 Sufism and jihad 

 Sufism and commerce 

 Sufism and sociability

5 Whose orthodoxy? 

 From Ibn Taymiya to the Wahhabis 

 Sufi ‘renewers’ of Islam 

 The impact of modernity 

 Sufism in partial eclipse

 
Some of the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata Allah
Glossary
Bibliography

===

Goodreads

====

Stian

86 reviews · 128 followers

Follow

March 19, 2016

"People praise you for what they suppose is in you, 

but you must blame your soul for what you know is in it."

Sufism is the esoteric, inner, and mystical dimension of Islam. Based on "special devotion," devout Sufis will characterize themselves as "travellers on the path back to the maker." Many Sufis maintain that all the companions of the Prophet were Sufis, and that the first Sufi of all was Muhammad himself.

So, what's it all about? Muslims in general are supposed to follow the example of the Prophet, and Sufis are no exception. To do this, they must overcome their inner ego, their lower self, called the nafs. This is the "greater Jihad." The nafs is like a powerful and wild horse that must be controlled in order to truly find the path to God.

In order to control the nafs, Sufis follow a Shaykh, a teacher and spiritual guide for the Sufi. The Sufi loves his (or her, as anyone can be a Sufi) Shaykh, because he embodies the example of the Prophet. Indeed, many Sufi orders (and there are many of them across the globe) have been criticized for their devotion to the Shaykh. Some orders have even pronounced their Shaykh as Muhammad reborn -- although these claims have usually just been met with hostility.

Some prominent Sufis have also espused ideas similar to pantheism, and sometimes even polytheism (a grave sin in Islam). Some have talked about the Unity of Being -- Wahdat al-Wujud. You'd think Sufis who came out with these ideas would be attacked and downplayed, but contrary to today's Western perceptions, Islam has historically been a rather (relatively) inclusive and tolerant religion. Two prominent and very respected Sufis, surely known to Western ears also, is al-Ghazali and, most prominently, Rumi, who was not only a great poet, but also a great Shaykh.

Although Sufism has played a vital role in the spread of Islam and in defining and answering many problems pertaining to philosophy and theology in the course of history, it plays a lesser role today -- many Sufis are Sufis out of habit, having 'inherited' the belief. In many parts of the world today, Sufism is largely a social and communal thing, with varying religious importance ranging from the not-so-pious to the extremely pious. Sedgwick gives one example fo the communal and social aspect of Sufism:

"In the Sudan, for example, where land is plentiful if poor, it has been common for many centuries for a shaykh to establish on virgin land a khalwa (as the Sudanese call it) consisting of a few houses and a mosque. The Shaykh's followers then work the surrounding land, keeping some of the produce themselves and using some to support the community, which often comes to include children from the locality, sent to attend school at the khalwa."

Such 'communities' are not rare. In Senegal, the Mouride order has a city of its own, called Touba. There are many agricultural settlements in Somalia, and also orders across the Sahara. In some places, however, this is totally unkown, as in Egypt and Syria.

The modern state of Sufism is interesting, as Sedgwick writes

"In Egypt, then, the educated urban elites usually know almost nothing of Sufism, but have a very clear view of what it is: dirty, primitive, irrational, and nothing to do with Islam. In other countries, the picture is somewhat different. In contemporary Malaysia, for example, 'Sufism' is commonly taught in schools and universities, but it has been redefined as something which would best be translated into European languages as "ethics." Only in a very few countries such as the Sudan does Sufism retain its original prestige."

Regardless, Sufism is still around, and though Sufis are numerically significantly fewer now than before (mainly due to its clash with modernity), the indiviual who chooses to follow Sufism will find the same spiritual and esoteric dimension as those in the past before him.

2016

 

owned-books

 

philosophy-and-religion

6 likes

====

Niels Baars

3 reviews

Follow

April 19, 2023

Solid introduction to the topic of Sufism.

on-the-middle-east

1 like

====

Profile Image for Rasha.

Rasha

38 reviews · 1 follower

Follow

May 17, 2019

A good read for those who know little about Sufism and it’s relation to Islam .

If you know enough this would be back to basics/refresher kind of book .

It gives a good and probably quite accurate description and insight to Sufi life.

====

salma

37 reviews · 2 followers

July 14, 2021

A white motherfucker who thinks he knows something about Eastern cultures, Islam, and Sufism and accordingly thinks he’s entitled to write a book about it

====

0] Introduction 

 

 

In the West, there is a real and growing interest in Sufism, one of the world’s most widespread and important religious paths. The 

beauty of the poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the most popular Sufi author in translation, is clear to all, but the real nature of Sufism is not 

well known. Many of the best-selling Western texts on Sufism present a version of Sufism which is very different from that found in the 

Muslim world for at least the last millennium. These works often portray Sufism as something separate from Islam, which is simply not 

the case. While this author is not qualified to judge the spiritual worth of such “alternative” versions of Sufism, it is clear to anyone who 

knows Sufism from the Islamic world that they are a particular offshoot of Sufism, not Sufism itself. 

Even without this problem, those who read Rumi so enthusiastically are not well positioned to reach an understanding of what Su- 

fism is, though Rumi may guide them to understandings a Sufi would endorse. Rumi was not just a poet: he was a great shaykh, one of 

the dozen or so best-known Sufi masters whose names were perpetuated in the Sufi orders to which they gave rise, orders that still 

exist today. Rumi’s prime objective, like that of any Sufi shaykh, was the spiritual development of his own followers: their education in 

the outward, exoteric practice of Islam, but particularly their training in its inner, esoteric practices. Rumi’s poems were ancillary to his 

main task: personally guiding people on the path which leads, in this world, to the One God before whom Sufis, Muslims, and many 

others believe they will stand on the Day of Judgment. His poems were originally addressed to an audience very different from a con- 

temporary Western one: not only were Rumi’s followers steeped in the teachings of Islam, exoteric and esoteric, but they were also em- 

barked on a spiritual journey made possible by practices such as prayer and fasting, Rumi’s guidance, and, for a Sufi most importantly 

of all, God himself. 

This book cannot hope to put its readers into exactly the same position as that of Rumi’s intended audience. More than words 

would be required for that. It aims, however, to give a basic understanding of the nature and history of Sufism, as it first appeared in the 

Islamic world and as it is today in the Islamic world and in many other countries, including Western ones. It concentrates on the earlier 

stages of the Sufi path, partly because these are the stages which the majority of Sufis who have ever lived have traveled. The higher 

reaches of the path have been trodden by relatively few. Some of those who have reached these higher levels have attempted to convey 

their experiences, sometimes in poetry and sometimes in symbolic or metaphysical abstraction, but such higher spiritual experiences 

are barely comprehensible to those who have not themselves approached them. This author does not consider himself qualified to 

write on them, and expects that most of his readers will be in the same position. 

For most of Islamic history Sufism was of the greatest importance in the religious and social lives of most Muslims, and in eco- 

nomics and politics as well. Although it is today in partial eclipse in the Islamic world, it is still very much alive, and of small but grow- 

ing importance in the West. It remains important today not only for many Muslims, but also for those non-Muslims who wish to under- 

stand Islam or Islamic societies. The face of Islam and of Muslims that is most familiar to Westerners today is not one that can easily 

be sympathized with. Strife, violence, and intolerance are what come first to the minds of many in response to the word ‘Islam.’ Those 

representatives of Islam whose activities result in the attentions of the world media are indeed often publicly committed to the use of 

violence to achieve their aims and are rarely noted for their tolerance. While seeing the West as their enemy, they complain of being 

treated as an enemy by the West—not a combination likely to win them much sympathy or support there. Fundamentalism, activist 

Islam, protestant Islam—whatever one wishes to call it—has roots in the traumatic experience of colonialism and the economic suffer- 

ings of many Muslim peoples, and in the collision between modernity and tradition. It also has important roots in the religion of Islam, 

but it does not represent that religion. Statistically, vastly more Muslims have been Sufis than Fundamentalists, and Sufism is (in the 

view of many, including the author) far more representative of Islam than is Fundamentalism. An understanding of Sufism is one of the 

best available routes into an understanding of Islam itself: not of the political ramifications of Islam, but of Islam as a lived religion—of 

the reality which lies at the heart of Islamic societies past and present, and so even (though arguably in dangerously distorted form) of 

the images of Islam so well known from our television screens. 

 

1] What is Sufism and where does it come from? 

 

The origins of Sufism 

 

Nobody is entirely sure why Sufis are called Sufis. The etymology of the Arabic word sûfî is unclear. It may come from sûf, wool; there is 

a theory that a group of especially devoted followers of the Prophet Muhammad wore woollen cloaks, which were in those days cheaper 

and less comfortable than those in general use. Alternatively, the word may come from suffa, a raised platform or step, and refer to a 

group of particularly devoted Muslims who used to assemble on a platform outside the house of the Prophet. There are several other 

theories, none of them much more convincing than these two, and none of them particularly helpful, either. What all these explanations 

have in common, though, is a reference to special devotion and to the Prophet. 

Many Sufis themselves, when asked to define a Sufi, will use a phrase such as “a traveler on the path back to his Maker”—defining 

Sufism in terms of its objective. Such definitions may be inspirational, but are not very useful to the historian or the sociologist. To 

confuse matters further, there are today Sufis who do not even describe themselves as Sufis—they may describe themselves merely as 

pious or as followers of Shaykh So-and-So. 

Certain non-Sufi Muslims are quite clear about what a Sufi is: a Sufi is a Muslim who has departed or been led astray from the path 

of Islam and is following practices borrowed from other religions. Views such as these, and the difficulties they have caused for Sufis, 

are discussed in Chapter Five, but are mentioned here because they have also been held by Western scholars, some of whom see Su- 

fism as syncretism, an amalgam of elements of different religions. There are certainly syncretistic elements in the beliefs and practice of 

some Sufis, especially uneducated ones from poor and isolated communities, but then the religion of the poor and uneducated always 

differs from that of the educated and religious professionals, not only in Islam. A scholar in Damascus who has spent his life studying 

the central texts of Islam under a series of other scholars knows very well what is in them and what is not; a peasant farmer’s beliefs 

and practices are derived less directly, and misunderstandings may more easily occur. In countries such as India, where Muslims live 

side-by-side with non-Muslims, the potential for transfer from one culture to another is high; similar transfer can also be observed in 

the other direction, for example, from Muslims to Arab Christians. Instances of syncretic transfer into the Sufism of the uneducated are 

to be expected, then, but it is easy (and wrong) to exaggerate the number of these instances of extraneous elements. Western scholar— 

administrators in Malaya, for example, observed in the nineteenth century that Sufis often visited graves and concluded that they had 

inserted Hindu grave-worship into Islam; in fact, Muslims of all varieties visit tombs in all parts of the Islamic world, including places 

such as Morocco, where Hinduism is not known. 

All in all, that some elements of some Sufis’ Sufism come from outside Islam does not tell us much about the origins of Sufism. 

The view of Sufism as the product of syncretism does, however, throw some interesting light on Western scholarship: it is clear that 

this view originally derived partly from nineteenth-century racial theories. A once popular view saw the Aryan races as being gifted with 

imagination and creativity, and the Semitic races—principally the Jews and Arabs—as doomed to sterile legalism. For followers of this 

theory, Islam, like Judaism, was the legalistic product of the inferior Semitic mind; Sufism, more spiritual, could only have come from 

somewhere else—from the Aryan minds of the Persians, from outside Islam. The contrast between Sufism and Islam was taken so far 

that when a character in Kipling’s Kim is described as a Sufi, this is glossed as ‘a free-thinker,’ which, as we will see, is not at all an 

accurate description. 

As the view of Sufism as coming from outside Islam because Arabs could not possibly have invented it faded, the different preoccu- 

pations of a different century replaced it with another view. In the twentieth century a view of Sufism as the Islam of the people arose, of 

Sufism as vital and emotional and generally fun, as opposed to the dry Islam of the educated elites. Again, syncretism—but this time 

not from racially desirable Aryans, but rather from politically desirable oppressed classes. In fact, Sufis can come from any class, as is 

discussed in Chapter Two. 

Sufism is sometimes wrongly seen as something akin to a philosophy and as rejecting the strict rules of Islam. Sufis are sometimes 

thought to be especially addicted to two forbidden fruits, wine and young boys—a view resulting largely from taking literally the images 

used in certain Sufi poetry, where intoxication and (male) lovers are often referred to. In these poems, intoxication in fact refers not to 

alcohol but to God, and the beloved represents the divine—the use of the male gender to refer to presumably female lovers is a long- 

established, if somewhat strange, tradition of Arabic poetry. If such misreading were not possible, the metaphors of the poetry in ques- 

tion would lose much of their force. There have been Sufi orders such as the Malamatiya, whose name derives from the Arabic word for 

‘blame,’ whose followers deliberately broke Islamic law in order to attract blame and thus avoid the risk and difficulties of public adula- 

tion of their piety and sanctity. Such orders are, however, very unusual. The vast majority of Sufis follow the Shari‘a (the rules of Islam) 

scrupulously, perhaps more scrupulously than most non-Sufis. 

The case for syncretism or philosophy as the origins of Sufism, then, is far from proven. The difficulty with establishing alternative 

origins is that there is no mention of Sufism in the earliest historical records of Islam. To some, the significance of this is clear: Sufism 

must be a later invention. Sufis themselves disagree. In a well-known phrase, many Sufis will tell you that at the beginning Sufism was a 

practice or reality without a name, and that now it is a name without a reality. The ‘now’ can be today or centuries ago. Muslims, like 

many others, see history as a decline from a golden age—the golden age being in this case not Greece or Rome, but the time of the 

Prophet. There are various recorded sayings of the Prophet (hadith) which endorse such a view, speaking of the inevitable decline of 

faith and standards over the centuries which were to come after him. The companions of the Prophet, according to some, were in fact 

all Sufis, and as a result there was no need for any special label to describe them. It was only as time passed and the Muslims fell away 

from their original perfection that the group of those who remained immersed in the depth and breadth of primeval Islam needed a 

label—Sufis—to distinguish them from the rest, who increasingly followed a more superficial religious practice. This is a standard Sufi 

explanation of the origins of Sufism, and while it is impossible to prove scientifically, neither can it be disproved. 

 

Sufism as a practical program 

A more fruitful approach than attempting to understand Sufism in terms of its origins is to examine its objectives. In the last resort, 

these do not differ significantly from the objectives of Islam as a whole; what is distinctively Sufi is different emphases and special 

techniques. Chief among the objectives of Islam are submission to the will of God and to God’s instructions, and preparation for the 

Final Day. This is a view with which no Muslim, Sufi or not, would disagree. 

Submission is much stressed in Islam: indeed, the word islâm literally means ‘submission,’ and a muslim is one who has sub- 

mitted. But while the emphasis in some religions is more on explanation than action—for instance, Protestant Christians tend to extract 

guidelines from general principles and apply them, as they wish, to their own actions—Islam generally emphasizes action far more than 

explanation. Rather than deriving action from principle, Muslims often deduce principles from instructions for action. In theory at least, 

a Muslim does something or refrains from doing it not because that seems sensible or right, but because that is what God has in- 

structed. Although one may speculate about the hikma—the reason or wisdom behind an instruction—it is the instruction that counts, 

not the hikma. This does not mean that Islam looks only at actions, however. It is often said that we will be judged by our intentions— 

an interesting variation on the Christian proverb that the road to hell is paved with good intentions—and intentions are generally 

stressed throughout Islam: many ritual acts, for example, have no meaning or effect if performed without the requisite intention. 

Sufism, then, aims at the submission of the Sufi to the will of God and at preparation for the expected meeting with Him, as does 

Islam as a whole. An essential element in this preparation is the control of the nafs or lower self. All Muslims agree on the need to sub- 

due the nafs, but the emphasis given to the struggle with the nafs is distinctively Sufi. A hadith much beloved of Sufis talks of two types 

of struggle (jihad): the lesser jihad, against the enemies of Islam on the battlefield, and the greater jihad, against the nafs. This order is 

particularly significant when one remembers that the circumstances of the birth of Islam were such that the Prophet and his compan- 

ions spent much time on the battlefield. This hadith is less frequently referred to in fundamentalist or political activist circles. 

Nafs literally means ‘self and can also be translated as ‘ego’—in the sense of ‘egotistical,’ not in the Freudian sense. It is the animal 

nature in man, that which drives us to eat, reproduce, lose our tempers, and fight. The objective is to control it more than to eliminate it 

altogether. In the image of one Sufi shaykh, the nafs is a like a powerful horse: if you can control the horse you can go many places, but 

if the horse is in control, you can achieve little. Sufis regard the nafs as a cunning but simple enemy, ever in waiting and easily influ- 

enced by Satan, but it is also an enemy which may sometimes be deceived without too much difficulty. The interior dialogue we all 

know as a struggle with temptation is seen by Sufis as a dialogue with the nafs, sometimes portrayed as a dialogue with Satan himself. 

All the arguments one might think of to justify eating forbidden fruit are the arguments of the nafs and should be ignored. 

Sufism is best understood as a practical program for learning to control the nafs. Once the nafs has been subdued and a space made 

for God in the heart, God may be expected to fill that place with Himself, and ultimately the Sufi may come to know God while still on 

earth. This is described as ‘irfan, which may be translated as knowledge or gnosis. The path to ‘irfan is a long one, of course, and most 

Sufis never reach its end. Any progress along that path, however, is worthwhile, and the ultimate goal may usefully inspire even those 

who will never actually reach it. The techniques used by Sufis to move along that path and to subdue the nafs are considered in Chapter 

Two. 

 

Orthodoxy, exotericism, and esotericism 

Sufis distinguish for many purposes between the external and the interior, the exoteric and the esoteric. A verse of the Quran, for exam- 

ple, may have an esoteric or symbolic significance in addition to its plain meaning, its exoteric significance. This distinction is also ap- 

plied to the fiqh, which is the exoteric rule of Islam. Esoteric and exoteric must be in balance: the right ideas are irrelevant if not con- 

cretized in action, and actions on their own serve little purpose. There is thus a greater tendency among Sufis to take a somewhat prag- 

matic view of the Law (the fiqh), to take into account the implications of an action in the struggle against the nafs—to avoid making a 

false idol out of the Law, remembering what it is for. This tendency is, importantly, to be found mostly among the shaykhs who lead 

Sufis, rather than in the Sufis who follow shaykhs; given the known cunning of the nafs, it would be a most dangerous proceeding for 

an individual to decide on his own to take a relaxed view of a certain injunction or prohibition. If one’s shaykh tells one that in the mod- 

ern globalized world economy there is little to be gained by worrying overmuch about paying interest on a house loan, that is another 

matter. From this greater-than-usual emphasis on the esoteric derives much of what is distinctive about the Sufi interpretation of Islam. 

The existence of such an interpretation of Islam might imply the existence of an opposed non-Sufi or even ‘orthodox’ interpretation. 

In fact, however, the Sufi interpretation of Islam is one view among many, along with modernist, liberal, and fundamentalist views, to 

name but a few. None of these are more or less authoritative than any others, partly because in Sunni Islam there is no single source of 

authoritative interpretation. 

Most Muslims are Sunni Muslims, and it is with them that this book is primarily concerned. The largest non-Sunni minority within 

Islam, the Shia (nowadays most frequently found in Iran and Iraq) have a somewhat more authoritarian structure than most others, and 

offshoots of Shia Islam, such as the Druze or the Ismailis, do indeed have sources of infallible interpretation. Sunni Muslims, however, 

at the very most consider certain people better qualified than others to interpret Islam, whether because of greater learning, sanctity, or 

whatever. No one, however, is so well qualified that their interpretation is binding. 

This situation might be expected to result in anarchy, but has not. This is because there is general agreement on the legitimate 

sources of Islam: the word of God recorded in the Quran and the hadith, the divinely-inspired instructions and comments of His 

Prophet, recorded in voluminous collections and studied by scholars and the pious ever since. There is also a general respect for the 

past consensus of the community of Muslims, in practice usually the consensus of the scholars among it. The Quran, for example, for- 

bids the drinking of wine. The consensus of the community has been that whisky is much the same thing as wine; no one, therefore, 

can honestly maintain that the drinking of whisky is permitted. There has, however, been disagreement about coffee, tobacco, and 

hashish. The final consensus was that coffee was allowed. There has been periodic disagreement about the status of tobacco, and so in 

the absence of a consensus it remains possible to hold either view; much the same is true of hashish, though smaller numbers main- 

tain that it is licit than defend tobacco. 

Disagreement among Sunni Muslims is generally limited either to details such as these or to very broad questions of interpretation 

and significance, such as whether it is more important to ensure that a ruler is righteous or to avoid civil strife. Whatever views they 

may hold on particular matters, most Muslims who have ever lived were and are in agreement about most of Islam, and this large area 

of general agreement may be regarded as the ‘core’ of Islam, or even as ‘Islam.’ Descriptions such as ‘Sufi Islam’ or ‘fundamentalist 

Islam,’ then, refer to tendencies within Islam, and also tendencies within the groups in question. One might say, for example, that fun- 

damentalists regard the struggle against illegitimate authority as a religious duty, while Sufis emphasize the struggle against the nafs or 

lower self. There are of course occasional Sufis who hold fundamentalist views on certain questions, liberals who hold occasional Sufi 

views, and so on. Since this is a book about Sufism, in areas where differences of opinion exist, ‘Islam’ will in general refer to a Sufi 

view of Islam. 

The Sufi emphasis on the esoteric is one reason why Sufis are sometimes seen as quietist, withdrawing from the world. Another rea- 

son is the general Sufi reluctance to become involved in political activity; a favorite Sufi saying speaks of the desirability of neither 

knowing nor being known to the authorities. Involvement with the world, however, varies from order to order. Some orders have 

dressed their followers in old and patched clothes, while others have told people to dress well; some emphasize poverty, and some in- 

volve their followers in trade networks. The voluntary poverty of the followers of some orders gives rise to two terms often used to de- 

scribe Sufis: dervish (properly darawish) and fakir (properly faqir). The former of these words is of Persian origin, used also in Turkish 

and Arabic and hence in European languages, while the latter is Arabic. Both merely mean ‘poor,’ whether poor in a material sense or 

poor in spirit. 

For most Sufis, the objective is to be withdrawn from the world while living in it, to participate in life while not being the slave of 

material concerns and desires (again, we return to the nafs, which is of the world and loves the world). Suspicion of those who take up 

with the powerful of the world is almost universal among Sufis. 

 

The first shaykh 

For Sufis, the first shaykh was Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah (571–632), known to Muslims as Rasul Allah, the Emissary of God, and usu- 

ally referred to in Western languages as the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet is not actually called a shaykh or a Sufi, if only because 

there is no higher title than that of Rasul and because the Prophet’s role was much larger than that of being the first Sufi, but no exami- 

nation of Sufism can start with anyone else. 

The Prophet was born in Mecca, on the western side of the Arabian peninsula, in the year 571. Although of an important family, he 

was orphaned and brought up by his uncle, and went through an early period of poverty before beginning to make a good living as a 

long-distance trader. Mecca was at the time an important urban center, intimately connected with the nomadic tribes that surrounded 

it, but an urban society. It was also a place of pilgrimage. A variety of deities were worshiped at its central temple, the Kaaba, a small 

structure said to have been built in remote antiquity by the prophet Abraham. It is hard to form an exact picture of the society into 

which the Prophet was born, since the details about which we know the most are activities which Islam later put an end to, such as for- 

tune telling, gambling, and the killing of unwanted female children. Certain varieties of manly virtue were evidently much admired— 

amorous conquests, drinking, fighting, and long trips through the desert on a beloved steed. The harsh mountainous landscape around 

Mecca suggests that life was hard, but more refined achievements were also respected, especially the art of the poet. The poetry which 

survives is in some ways reminiscent of some Roman poets. 

The Prophet was not at ease in the society which surrounded him and periodically withdrew into the desert to meditate. It was while 

in retreat in a remote cave in the year 611 that the forty-year-old Muhammad received his first revelation from God, beginning with the 

words “Recite in the name of your Lord!” This was the first of a series of communications which were collected, some years after the 

Prophet’s death, to form the text of the Quran. Some of these communications are directed to the Prophet, some to his followers, and 

some to everyone; the totality of these communications is directed to all mankind. 

The Prophet slowly gathered around him a number of Meccans, following him in the worship of the One God and rejecting poly- 

theism and the corruption of the society which surrounded them. After some ten years, in 622, the opposition of those Meccans who 

did not follow him forced the Prophet and his companions to leave Mecca. The early Muslims then established themselves instead 

some three hundred kilometers to the north, in the lush oasis city of Yathrib, later renamed al-madina al-munawwara, the ‘Illuminated 

City,’ Medina. This emigration is known in Arabic as the hijra, and the Muslim or hijri calendar starts in the year of the hijra. 

It was in Medina that the following of the Prophet expanded and the Muslim community established itself; it was from Medina that 

the Prophet raised the armies which after several years of battles and skirmishes finally conquered Mecca and cleansed the Kaaba of 

idols in 630; it was in Medina that the Prophet died and was buried two years later, at the age of 61. 

The Quran is the central text of Sufism, as of Islam. It is not, for Muslims, a work of the Prophet, but of God Himself, expressed in 

the language and terminology of the place and time, but coming from outside time and space. As the recipient of the revelations which 

became the Quran, the Prophet was little more than a messenger, though of a particularly elevated variety—hence the title rasul. The 

work of the Prophet himself was the establishment of the religion of Islam and of the community of Muslims. Islam was largely estab- 

lished by the personal example of the Prophet, and how a Muslim should live is thus defined as how the Prophet did live. Contem- 

poraries’ reports of what the Prophet said on particular subjects or did under particular circumstances were therefore collected and 

recorded, and these hadith reports are thus the source of much of the religion and law of Islam. The relationship between the Quran 

and the hadith is that the Quran usually speaks in general terms, of the importance of prayer, for example. Details—such as how to 

pray—are taken from the practice of the Prophet, the Prophetic sunna or tradition, recorded in the hadith. 

The message of Islam which the Prophet taught had a variety of elements and covered most aspects of human activity, though in 

varying detail. It dealt with God’s nature and purposes; with how and why to worship Him; with how to live; and with commercial and 

criminal law. How to live and how to worship are intertwined: certain acts are purely worship, such as the proper way of visiting the 

Kaaba, but few acts include no element of worship. Activities such as eating, going to sleep, or washing all had elements of worship in- 

cluded in them. The numerous accounts of the Prophet teaching and answering questions may shed light on matters such as the prop- 

er rate of tithe on a particular type of agricultural land or what to do if someone starts the Pilgrimage and is then prevented from com- 

pleting it by force majeur. In many reports, however, the Prophet describes the virtues which God loves and the acts that He hates. The 

virtues are sometimes virtuous actions and sometimes states of mind or of the soul. These reports are the basis of all of Islam’s ethical 

teaching. 

The Prophet is by definition the most perfect of men—the beloved of God, the knower of God, the successor to earlier prophets 

such as Abraham and Moses and Jesus, the final prophet who brought and taught the final message, valid and sufficient until the end 

of time. As the perfect man, the Prophet is also the perfect model. All Muslims since have tried to imitate him, in varying degrees. Some 

merely follow the most important of the rules he taught, while one pious man is said never to have eaten watermelon because although 

he knew that the Prophet ate it, he did not know what the Prophet had done with the pips. This story need not be taken entirely literally, 

but it indicates the extent to which imitation of the Prophet can go. 

The Prophet was the first Sufi shaykh in the sense that he led his companions toward God by the most direct path conceivable. That 

personal guidance is not of course available to later Muslims, but a Sufi follows a shaykh who follows the Prophetic sunna; the more 

closely the shaykh follows the sunna, the more similar to the Prophet the shaykh becomes. Even the shaykh who resembles the Prophet 

most is not actually the Prophet, of course. To have the opportunity of following the Prophet himself, in the society which he himself 

established, which has been the prototype of all Islamic societies ever since—no Muslim and no Sufi could ever ask for more. 

 

Two great Sufi theorists 

Although Sufism is a practical program rather than a theory, and although great Sufis are most frequently remembered for their sanctity, 

teaching, or even poetry, Sufism does have its theorists. To compose a definitive list of the great theorists of Sufism would be hard, but 

two men immediately stand out: the Iranian moral philosopher, Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), and a Spanish cosmologist, Muhyi al- 

Din ibn al-‘Arabi (1165–1240). Their writings have been and remain extremely influential, although no Sufi order traces its origins to 

them. Their works (along with the Quran, the Prophetic hadith, and various lives of saints) might occupy a Sufi embarked on the early 

stages of the path back to God or reaching its end. 

Al-Ghazali was born in 1059 in Tus, Khorasan (northern Iran, then still a Sunni area). He initially studied the fiqh, in effect the codi- 

fied portion of Islamic Law and at that time the standard education of a future scholar or administrator. He worked for some years as a 

faqih or jurist, and then in 1095, at the age of thirty-six and while occupying an important teaching position in Baghdad, he turned from 

the exoteric sciences to what he called the “real” sciences, the esoteric sciences of the human soul. He spent the rest of his life simply, 

returning home to Khorasan after travels in Syria and Palestine, and died in 1 111 in the town of his birth. 

He left behind many writings, of which the most important and best known is the voluminous Ihya ‘ulum al-din, the Revival of the 

Religious Sciences. This meticulously organized work is divided into four sections, the first dealing with worship, the second with con- 

duct in other areas of life, and the third and fourth with vice and virtue. Each section is made up of a number of books, dealing with 

questions ranging from types of knowledge to pilgrimage, marriage, pride, hope, and, finally, death. On each subject he deals with, al- 

Ghazali examines how a Muslim should act and think, and then explains why, giving where possible a quotation from the Quran, a 

reference to the Prophet or, when all else fails, his own explanation. 

The influence and popularity of al-Ghazali’s work derive partly from its encyclopedic nature and its clarity, but also because his own 

explanations, although offered only as a poor substitute where what the Quran and the Prophet have to say is not immediately self- 

explanatory, come together to form a coherent exposition of Islam as a system for fighting the nafs and opening a space for God. It is 

this system and the emphasis on explanation that constitute the main difference between his work and the thousands of other works, 

before and after, dealing with similar questions. Other works tend to be more legalistic, either merely stating rules or perhaps dis- 

cussing the relative merits of alternative interpretations in a dry fashion which might be informative, but which is hardly inspirational. 

Centuries later, al-Ghazali’s work continues to convey to almost all who read it a remarkable feeling of conviction, strength, and pur- 

pose. Al-Ghazali’s work is the point where the esoteric emphasis of Sufism meets with and illuminates the exoteric law of Islam. 

Our second great theorist, Ibn al-‘Arabi, was born in Murcia (southern Spain, then part of the Islamic world) in 1165. After studying 

in Seville, he traveled to Mecca in 1202 at the age of thirty-seven, and after periods in Cairo and Konya (Turkey) he settled in Damascus, 

where he died in 1240. 

His two most important works were al-Futuhat al-makkiya, ‘Meccan Illuminations,’ and the shorter Fusus al-hikam, ‘Bezels of Wis- 

dom.’ Neither of these are easy works, as is indicated by the reaction of a Jordanian shaykh when a young man came to ask for his com- 

ments on a proposed reading list during the 1980s. The shaykh crossed Ibn al-‘Arabi off the student’s list, saying “no one understands 

Ibn al-‘Arabi any more.” When the student had left, another follower of the shaykh said, “But you are reading Ibn al-‘Arabi with me!” 

“Yes,” replied the shaykh, “and sometimes I’m not sure that I understand him, either.” 

Difficult as they are, Ibn al-‘Arabi’s works are indisputably of the greatest importance—not for the average Sufi, perhaps, but for 

those Sufis with an interest in the nature of the esoteric world. Ibn al-‘Arabi explains the origins of the material world in the substance 

of the Prophet, who was made of light; he talks of the varieties of heavens and hells, of the numbers and names and ranks of angels; he 

maps the path back to God and speaks of the ultimate union of the mortal with the divine, of wahdat al-wujud, the Unity of Being. This 

concept has been one of the most controversial to arise in the history of Islam, being seen by its detractors as a variety of pantheism or 

even polytheism—a great evil in Islam as in any monotheistic religion—and by its enthusiasts as the key concept which facilitates pas- 

sage through the final veil which separates creation from the Creator. Many have since attempted to explain it, justify it, or even to mod- 

ify it. Since any explanation would take up the whole of a book considerably longer than this one, and since the realities Ibn al-‘Arabi de- 

scribes are anyhow largely incomprehensible to those who have not experienced something like them already, we will merely note the 

importance of this work for a minority of Sufis. Those interested will find suggestions for further reading in the bibliography. 

Al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi are only two of many Sufi writers, but are the most important. Sufis see men such as these not as the 

originators of Sufism but as its transmitters. One can certainly find many similar ideas in earlier periods, in the case of Ibn al-‘Arabi, 

most famously with al-Husayn al-Hallaj (858–922), who described his own experience of the higher end of the Sufi path by saying, “Ana 

al-Haqq”—“I am Truth”—“Truth” as used here being one of the names of God. “If a piece of iron emerges from the fire red hot and 

says ‘I am fire,”’ asked a later commentator, “how should one take that statement?” The authorities of tenth-century Iraq were in no 

doubt and executed al-Hallaj for the grossest blasphemy. 

The historical origins of the ideas of al-Hallaj, Ibn al-‘Arabi, and al-Ghazali are as unclear as the origins of Sufism itself. One can 

work backwards until one finds the first written reference to something, but it is hard to state with certainty that the first written refer- 

ence to something is the first occurrence of something. The reader, then, may make up his own mind, either to regard Sufism as origi- 

nating with Islam itself and being subsequently refined and systematized by its practitioners, or as something resulting from the en- 

deavors of theorists over the four centuries after Islam.

===

2]  How to be a Sufi 

 

 

 

 

Sufism and social class 

 

Anyone can be a Sufi, whether rich or poor. Sufism in the twentieth century is certainly found more frequently in villages than in cities, and university graduates 

are rarely Sufis, but this was not always so. In the eighteenth century, almost any Islamic scholar or dignitary would be a Sufi, and an attack on Sufism was an at- 

tack on the religious elite. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid was not only a Sufi but an enthusiastic patron of Sufism, partly because 

he saw Sufism as a counter-weight to the various new trends which would soon lead to the replacement of the Ottoman empire by a secular Turkish republic in 

the twentieth century, but also for entirely altruistic reasons. In the twentieth century, individual Malay sultans and Islamic dignitaries may be Sufis, but they usu- 

ally keep quiet about it in the face of reformist hostility, discussed in Chapter Five. 

As has been said, Sufism is sometimes seen as ‘popular religion. Certainly, the Sufism of the educated and the uneducated differs as much as everything else 

about them differs, which is rather more in Islamic societies than in contemporary Western societies. A ‘popular’ version of Sufism exists, but Sufism is high cul- 

ture as well as low, represented by volumes of the finest poetry as well as songs composed by the uneducated, by works of philosophical abstraction as sophis- 

ticated as anything the West has produced as well as by half-understood superstitions. The relative absence of Sufism from the life of the rich in many contem- 

porary Islamic countries parallels the relative absence of religion as a whole; for various reasons, the concierge of an apartment block in a rich part of town is far 

more likely to be found praying or reading the Quran than are most of those whom he serves, and a university professor is far more likely to ignore the Ramadan 

fast than a bus driver. 

Educated Sufis in major cities will usually follow different shaykhs from peasants in villages, but sometimes a shaykh may count among his followers both the 

educated and peasants. At times, a scholar may follow a virtual illiterate, if the holiness of the illiterate is clear enough. Beyond this, the more educated and peas- 

ants will intermingle on certain occasions, especially the mawlid festival celebrated each year for the anniversary of certain great saints of the past. 

Mawlids are occasions almost without parallel in the West, save perhaps in the Latin fiesta. The major mawlid of the year celebrates the birth of the Prophet, 

but many saints are also commemorated in the same way. In Cairo, the tombs of the great saints are mostly in the old city, in the old cemeteries, or around the 

Azhar university mosque. The old city is today a very poor area, with once great houses broken up and occupied by a number of poor families. For several days a 

year, a particular quarter of the old city around a mosque will fill with people celebrating the mawlid of the saint buried in the mosque, which often gives its name 

to the quarter in question. Some saints are more popular than others, and sometimes these mawlids are low-key affairs. Some are major events, however, and on 

these occasions tents will be erected by various Sufi orders, and local people may distribute free tea in the streets. Peasant families will come in from the coun- 

tryside several days in advance, camping on blankets in the streets and making tea on spirit burners. On the night of the mawlid itself, people of all classes and 

types will come from all parts of the city. At the tomb of the saint, serious Sufis will celebrate the saint’s life and deeds; at the extremities, people will test their 

luck and skill at fair stalls. In between, people will mill around and enjoy the festive atmosphere. It is said by Sufis that all, whatever their intentions, are the 

guests of the saint; one might add that all are equally welcome, whatever their origins—and indeed to some extent, whatever their religion. The mawlid is an excel- 

lent example of the all-inclusive aspect of Sufism. 

 

Sufism and gender 

Anyone can be a Sufi, man or woman. Almost all Sufi shaykhs are men, however, and many Sufi orders do not admit women, or admit them only to some asso- 

ciate status. To understand this, we must first consider the wider question of gender in Islam. Sufis are Muslims and generally live and operate in Islamic 

societies. 

The whole question of gender in Islam is a vexed one, with Muslim women generally being seen in the West as oppressed and suffering. Some Muslim 

women do undoubtedly suffer, but it is incorrect to see Islam as uniquely or solely oppressive. The worst sufferings of Muslim women do not derive from Islam, 

but from economic circumstances, or from an individual’s cruelty or stupidity, as elsewhere. Suffering may also derive from cultural factors independent of reli- 

gion. The culture of Islamic societies should in theory derive purely from Islam, which provides a total system for every aspect of life, but in practice many other 

factors have influenced the development of these societies, and the practice of a particular society on a particular point may often have little to do with religion, 

and sometimes even directly contradicts religion. 

A rather extreme example of the divergence between Islamic law and the practice of some cultures is the response to premarital sex, which is forbidden by 

Islam. Islamic law specifies the same penalty for unmarried men and unmarried women: severe beating, but only if ordered by a court which has accepted the 

testimony of no less than four witnesses to actual sexual intercourse. In places such as the remote villages of the south of Egypt, however, a woman who is found 

in circumstances far less compromising than those required by Islamic law will be killed by her own relatives without reference to a court, as required by essen- 

tially tribal codes of honor, while the man involved may suffer no penalty at all. Islamic law does not recognize these tribal codes and regards such killings as 

murder, but local custom in practice takes precedence over Islamic law, even though it should not. Islamic law, in fact, gives women rights and protection which 

might not impress a contemporary Western feminist, but might have seemed more acceptable in 1914, in which year, for example, few European women enjoyed 

the unrestricted property rights of their Muslim sisters. That Islamic law offers much of value to women is indicated by the extent to which its provisions in these 

areas are generally ignored when they disagree with local custom. 

At its best, the position of some women in contemporary Islamic societies does not differ much from the position of some women in the West in the 1930s, 

or may even be better. In Cairo, for example, female university graduates from well-off families study, travel, and follow careers much as they do in the developed 

world. They usually find their own husbands, and although home and children are then clearly their responsibility, they often continue to work, and relief from 

domestic duties is provided by servants (in the absence of labor-saving machines). At its worst, among the very poor, the position of women can be hard indeed, 

as can the position of men, of course. The poorly-paid maid of the university graduate who has just left for a medical conference in Germany may be attempting 

to support a sick mother, several children, and an unemployed husband. 

What concerns us here, however, is not so much the position of women in the Islamic world, but in the practice of Islam. Here, gender matters far less. Both 

male and female Muslims expect to stand in naked terror before God on the Day of Judgment. The steps to take in preparation of that day, a day when differences 

of gender will not be on anyone’s mind, are essentially the same, although some details of individual practice vary very slightly—men and women place their 

arms slightly differently when praying, for example, and men have no equivalent of the female exemption from fasting when pregnant. Gender is otherwise irrel- 

evant to individual religious practice. 

Gender differences, however, become apparent when it comes to communal practice. Most obviously, mosques tend to be male preserves. The congregation 

for the Friday Prayer is overwhelmingly male, since women are allowed to pray at home, while men are not. Since a woman may lead only other women in prayer, 

prayers in a mosque are almost invariably led by a man, although any women present may follow the prayer in a separate area. The extent to which such areas are 

provided varies according to circumstances; for obvious reasons, little provision will be made in an army camp, while equal provision will generally be made at 

institutions where numbers of men and women are approximately equal. On weekdays, women are to be found in the areas of office blocks or university cam- 

puses set aside for prayer as much as men are, while mosques in the streets tend to remain dominated by men. Public religious ceremonial, then, is essentially 

male-dominated, as is the leadership of Islam. In this, Islam differs little from religions such as Catholic Christianity. 

In questions of gender, Sufism follows Islam, and Sufis do not differ fundamentally from the societies in which they live. A Sufi man’s first duty is to support 

his family, and a Sufi woman’s first duty is to her home and children, exactly as for any other Muslim. A shaykh will be a man, just as the person leading group 

prayer will be, and when a female is a shaykh (or, properly, shaykha), she will lead only women. Communal practices such as Sufi ceremonies in mosques are led 

by men, as are all other activities in mosques, and women attending them keep separate from the men as they do on all other such occasions. Women, however, 

may follow a shaykh in their private practice, just as a man may, and just as men and women follow Islam in the same way on other occasions. 

Sufism is, however, one of relatively few areas of Islam where women sometimes rise to prominence. One of the greatest literary records of the Sufi experience 

was written in the eighth century by a woman, Rabia al-Adawaya of Basra (Iraq), for example. Shaykhs are often succeeded by their sons on their death (for rea- 

sons discussed in Chapter Three), and in the absence of a suitable son a daughter may occasionally take her father’s place, although it is more frequent for the 

daughter’s husband to become the new shaykh. In Beirut, a branch of the Dandarawi order (discussed in Chapter Five) has since the 1970s been led by a female 

university professor who is not related to any past shaykh and who has provided a sort of crèche on the order’s premises. But this unusual example may tell us 

more about the slow arrival of modernity in the Middle East than it does about Sufism. 

 

The shaykh as exemplar 

Anyone can be a Sufi, whatever their social class or gender, so long as they follow a Sufi shaykh. As has been explained in Chapter One, the first Muslims fol- 

lowed the example and the teaching of the Prophet as well as the word of God revealed as the Quran, and all Muslims since have attempted to follow the example 

of the Prophet, as recorded in a variety of texts and as codified into a variety of rules. The Sufi follows the Prophet like any other Muslim, but he also follows the 

living example of a man who, as much as possible, himself embodies the example of the Prophet. As was remarked above, the more closely someone follows the 

example of the Prophet in every act, word, and thought, the more closely that person comes to resemble the Prophet, and the more perfect an example that per- 

son becomes himself. The shaykh is, for a Sufi, the living exemplar. 

In Catholic terms, a shaykh is perhaps described as a variety of bishop. It is often said that there are no priests in Islam, but in a certain sense it would be 

more accurate to say that all Muslims are priests. In the Catholic church, the performance of rituals is in general reserved for priests; laymen may attend Mass or 

a wedding, but cannot perform either. In Islam, any Muslim can perform any ritual (though in modern times the state tries to reserve the power to marry people 

to itself). In the same way that bishops can do certain things that ordinary priests cannot, however, a shaykh can do certain things that an ordinary Muslim can- 

not: most importantly, he can admit someone into a Sufi order or pass on to someone else the power to admit someone into a Sufi order. There is also a variety 

of apostolic succession in Sufism: any shaykh can tell you his silsila, the chain of shaykhs taking him back to the original human source of it all, the Prophet, who 

provides the ultimate link to God. 

A silsila is the documentation of the authority of a shaykh, and every member of a Sufi order knows part of his shaykh’s silsila and may be able to recite all of it. 

Most silsilas are by now very long—they have to go back more than 1.400 years—but some are shorter. As recently as the nineteenth century, shaykhs have re- 

ceived the command to start a new order from the Prophet in a dream, which results in a relatively short silsila. Transmissions of this sort between people who 

cannot have met in the normal, physical sense are not uncommon—one or two of the links in most silsilas are uwaysi, ‘spiritual’ transmissions of this sort. 

A shaykh, then, is someone with a silsila who accepts those who wish to start on the Sufi path into the order which he heads; he ‘gives’ them the order. Some- 

times he will be notable for his piety and holiness, sometimes for his learning, and sometimes for his ancestry alone. There are tens of thousands of shaykhs in 

the Islamic world at any one time, and not all of them are equally remarkable. How a shaykh becomes a shaykh is discussed in Chapter Three, but generally there 

are two ways. One is that one of the followers of an existing shaykh becomes so pre-eminent in some respect that he is authorized to accept people into the order 

himself, and then attracts large numbers of followers, possibly in a geographical area where his shaykh does not himself already have a following. At some later 

point, usually on the death of his shaykh, he himself may then become shaykh. Alternatively, in the absence of such a candidate after the death of a shaykh, the 

bereaved followers will often choose as their new shaykh a son of the dead shaykh or sometimes the husband of a daughter if there are no suitable sons. In this 

way, dynasties of shaykhs come to be founded, with the order passing from son to son for several generations. Generally, however, the great shaykhs under 

whom orders spread and grow are not sons of shaykhs, but students. 

Some shaykhs have thousands of followers and some dozens. Sometimes the dozen followers may all be very serious followers of Sufism, many of whom 

later found orders of their own. Sometimes a shaykh has thousands of enthusiastic followers who devote themselves to the Way he is showing them, or some- 

times the thousands may have only a vague allegiance to their shaykh. Participation in Sufism varies considerably. 

 

Range of participation 

The greatest Sufis are generally walis, a term which has so far been translated as ‘saint,’ but which differs in important respects. A wali is someone who is close to 

Cod, under God’s special protection, and subject to God’s special favor. No one knows who is really a wali except God Himself and perhaps some other walis. 

There is no equivalent of a canonization process, and the recognition of someone as a wali is a spontaneous popular process, which may sometimes be wrong. 

Ibn al-‘Arabi once prayed to be shown the greatest wali of his age and was guided to a blacksmith’s shop; the unknown man working at the forge turned to Ibn al- 

‘Arabi, smiled, and raised his finger to his lips to indicate the need for silence. 

Not all walis are known as such, but a wali may be recognized by the ability to work miracles or, strictly speaking, karamat (beneficences) which God grants 

him. Many stories of karamat are told of great shaykhs. These stories serve an inspirational purpose, but also confirm the legitimacy of the position of the shaykh 

in question. They vary from the dramatic—even raising people from the dead—to the mundane—throwing an empty bottle onto a railway track in such a way that 

it lands exactly upright on a rail. To some extent, the karama is in the eye of the beholder: some events which might strike a believer as a karama would merely 

strike a bystander as coincidence. In the Sufi view of the world, however, God’s presence is so immediate that strictly speaking there is no such thing as a coinci- 

dence. 

Wali is a spiritual rank, not to be confused with the function of shaykh. Not all walis are shaykhs, and not all shaykhs are walis, though perhaps most are con- 

sidered to be walis by their followers. The rank of wali is in the gift of God, although a Sufi may take various steps to prepare for that rank. It is sometimes said in 

the hagiography of a shaykh that after many years of struggle and spiritual exercise, “his nafs died.” This is one definition of the end of the Sufi path: a separation 

from the flesh while still alive, which will often be rewarded by God with extinction in God, with the experience of Him of which Ibn al-‘Arabi, especially, wrote. 

Put differently, the various veils of creation which separate man from his Creator are pierced, and man beholds God. A man who has thus experienced the divine 

may well become a wali. Since the rank of wali is in the gift of God, an ordinary person may suddenly and unexpectedly be raised to it. 

A wali has baraka, a term which cannot be exactly translated into European languages, but which lies close to grace or blessing, a variety of spiritual power. 

Baraka can hardly be felt, but both feeds and protects those who receive it; it is a concept present throughout Islam, but particularly important for Sufis. Baraka is 

present in food cooked with love and good intentions, but not, probably, in fast-food hamburgers. It is present in a wali, by virtue of his closer than usual connec- 

tion with God: the blessings with which God showers the wali spill over to reach those close to him. It is present in a wali even after his death, and a visit to the 

tomb of a wali may produce baraka in the same way as a visit to a living wali. Baraka can be transmitted by intention (“bless you!”) or acquired by physical prox- 

imity or, particularly, physical contact. Crowds will strive to touch the clothes of a wali, and visitors to a tomb will rub their hands against the metal rail around it. 

It can also be passed down a silsila, from shaykh to shaykh, and be acquired by entering an order. Some Sufis enter (or ‘take’) many orders, although they nor- 

mally follow only one shaykh at a lime. An order may thus be ‘taken’ for real guidance (‘for the path’) or as a sort of honorary degree (‘for the baraka’). 

The end of the Sufi path, then, is mystical union with God, and the greatest Sufis are walis who have experienced this proximity to God. Most Sufis, however, 

do not fall into this category, and most do not encounter dramatic spiritual experiences that can be expressed only in poetry or allegory. Most Sufis are ordinary 

believers with a special thirst for the divine, for something more than the day-to-day practice of Islam can provide. Sufism may provide access to spiritual experi- 

ences which they would not otherwise have and provide a framework for their practice of Islam in a society which many see as only nominally Islamic, but the 

higher reaches of metaphysical abstraction are not very relevant to them. Most Sufis, then, are ordinary, but pious, people. Within this category, the degree of 

commitment also varies considerably, from the intense devotion described below to something more restrained. 

Some Sufis are not even particularly pious. The tradition of belonging to a particular order may become established in a family or locality, and habit may thus 

bring people back to particular rituals or to visit a shaykh on special occasions—to ask for advice on a difficult problem, for intercession, or perhaps for a lucky 

name for a newborn child. Some such people may not even have formally ‘taken’ the order of the shaykh they half-heartedly follow, and some may not even call 

themselves Sufis; they merely ‘know’ that Shaykh So-and-So is someone to whom they can turn when in trouble, or that it is generally good and uplifting occa- 

sionally to spend time in his company and that of his followers. 

The meaning of ‘Sufi,’ then, is very flexible. A Sufi may be a wali or someone on the way to becoming a wali. Often, a Sufi may be little more than a more or 

less pious Muslim. At the other extreme, a Sufi may be an occasional participant in activities he barely understands. 

 

Essential practices 

Sufis follow many practices, first and foremost among which are the standard practices of Islam—the five daily prayers, fasting, and so on. Sufis are usually more 

scrupulous in these standard observances than are many non-Sufis, and may add to them elements of their own. All Muslims, for example, are obliged to per- 

form the ritual prayer at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and after sundown. Prayers which are missed must be made up later, and there are virtually no cir- 

cumstances under which it is legitimate to miss a prayer. Despite this, many Muslims do ignore (and some almost certainly always have ignored) the daily 

prayers, and may perhaps only pray when they go to the mosque on Friday, or only during the month of Ramadan, or only in periods of personal anguish or 

uncertainty. The Sufi who routinely misses the daily prayers is rare indeed, and many Sufis add to the obligatory units of prayer extra prayers which take as long as 

or longer than the obligatory prayer (as of course do many pious Muslims who are not Sufis). 

Fewer Muslims omit the Ramadan fast than ignore the daily prayer, unless they have some recognized excuse, such as being infirm or pregnant. This is partly 

because of the social nature of fasting: not only is it hard to break the fast without people knowing, and hard to find food or drink outside one’s own home during 

the hours of daylight, but the breaking of the fast each evening is a communal and social activity from which few would wish to exclude themselves. Sufis, how- 

ever, are more likely than most to observe additional voluntary fasts, perhaps on Mondays and Thursdays of every week in the two months before Ramadan, per- 

haps for six days during the month after Ramadan while everybody else is relaxing. Once again, so do many pious non-Sufis. 

In addition to the normal practices of any Muslim, which, as we have seen, a Sufi may perform more carefully and more frequently, Sufis have a variety of 

practices of their own. Some orders are especially known for one practice or another, but certain practices are common to the vast majority of orders, and so may 

be said to be truly Sufi. The most important of these are discussed below. Many are not, in the strict sense of the word, ‘religious practices’ at all, but rather as- 

pects of the way a Sufi lives or a Sufi order works which have the same spiritual results as formal practices do. 

 

Love of the Shaykh 

A Sufi follows a shaykh and loves his shaykh. The degree of emphasis on love of the shaykh varies from order to order, and in some cases is more explicit than 

others, but all Sufis love their shaykh to a greater or lesser extent. This is so even if the shaykh in question is dead, as a shaykhs own original shaykh normally is. 

In its fullest form, a Sufi’s love for his shaykh is a form of devotion, similar to a child’s love for its parents: though the term is not used in Islam, a shaykh is 

indeed a variety of spiritual father. When a Sufi is away from his shaykh, he will talk about him with the same delight as anyone displays when talking about some- 

one they love, bringing them and what they have said into any conversation whenever possible, exhibiting for general delight details which to an outsider may 

seem commonplace. The number of photographs of his shaykh on display in a Sufi’s home may outnumber those of his own family, and occupy pride of place 

there; such photographs may also be found in his office and perhaps his car as well. When a Sufi is with his shaykh, all his attention is focused on him, and the 

smallest gesture of favor toward him on the shaykh’s part is a source of immense delight. Many Sufis live far from their shaykhs, visiting them only a few times a 

year, perhaps traveling for many hours to do so, and nowadays in some cases covering half the globe for the purpose. For such Sufis, the week or so a year spent 

with their shaykh is more real and more important than all the rest of the year put together. This love is itself of spiritual benefit. Unlike love between man and 

woman or of a parent for a child it is altruistic, with no element of self-interest or desire to possess. It is a pure giving, a pure sacrifice of the nafs. 

Love of the shaykh is coupled with obedience to and imitation of the shaykh, both of which are made easier by love. Obedience to another is a necessity when 

following a spiritual guide, but is also useful in itself: the nafs likes to obey no one, and so the habit of obedience to another is an effective subduer of the nafs. 

Sometimes a shaykh is obeyed in obviously spiritual matters: pray so many cycles of this formula every night, do not worry too much about something or other. A 

shaykh is also obeyed in other matters. A Sufi will normally ask his shaykhs permission to do a variety of things, most importantly marrying and traveling. Nor- 

mally a shaykh’s permission is felt to confer a type of blessing on such an action, but that permission is not always forthcoming. A Sufi may sometimes be de- 

nied permission to marry or divorce, or to move to another country; a Sufi may even sometimes be told to live in a certain place or do a certain job. A Sufi may 

even be given commands which have no purpose other than to test, and so strengthen, his obedience and thus to subdue the nafs. A Sufi’s obedience to his 

shaykh is an exception to the general rule discussed in Chapter One that there is no one source of authoritative interpretation in Islam; for a Sufi, his shaykhs au- 

thority is total, and his shaykh is almost infallible. 

Imitation of the shaykh has obvious benefits. As has been said, the shaykh is himself following the sunna of the Prophet and imitating the Prophet, and so he 

who imitates the shaykh is thus imitating the Prophet, but with a nearer, more visible model. Imitation of the Prophet is compliance with the will of God, and the 

sequence shaykh → Prophet → God is found not only in imitation, but also in love. In loving his shaykh, a Sufi is ultimately loving God. Imitation also closes off 

a fertile field for the nafs to make trouble. A Muslim may, for example, be wondering whether or not to wear a beard. The Prophet wore a beard, it is sunna to wear 

a beard, but in most Muslim countries today people are generally clean-shaven; wearing a beard may not only be against an individual’s inclinations, but might 

even draw the hostile attention of the police, who associate beards with subversive Islamist fundamentalists. The nafs may therefore find many good reasons to 

ignore this sunna and remain beardless. Alternatively, there is a more subtle danger: the decision to wear a beard despite all may swell the nafs with pride at obsta- 

cles overcome. For a Sufi, none of these problems are present: the shaykh wears a beard, so the follower will wear a beard also. 

The Sufi may imitate his shaykh in wearing a beard or in getting up at dawn to pray the morning prayer on time (rather than praying it late, as many do); he 

may also imitate his choice of footwear or the dishes he eats. To an outsider, this can often seem very strange, even excessive. Great love often produces effects 

which seem excessive to the outsider, and the reverence shown to certain shaykhs by certain followers has sometimes been felt to be beyond that which any man 

should show another. Not every shaykh is treated thus by every follower, but while most Sufis will kiss the hand of their shaykh, some will also kiss his feet; some 

will not turn their backs until they have left his presence, walking backwards as if from a medieval king. There is indeed something of the medieval court about 

the house of many shaykhs: twenty to a hundred or more men sitting around waiting for the shaykh to appear, filling their time with stories of what he has just 

said or done, or with rumors of what he might be about to do. The shaykh appears, and everyone rises. The shaykh is going into the town—five happy persons 

are selected to accompany him. He is going to pray in the mosque—all may accompany him. He has gone—the initial disappointment of the follower who has 

missed the chance to accompany him is tempered by the reflection that this must be how it was meant to be, and reduced by the anticipated joy of seeing him 

again in the evening. 

A Sufi’s love for his shaykh is perhaps the most important thing in his life. At the least, it is what binds him to his order, to the practice of Sufism. In Sufi sto- 

ries love for the shaykh is often represented as being instantaneous: I saw him, and I knew I loved him. It may precede or follow an individual joining an order, 

but it is almost always present. Such love is also an important factor in many older stories, of the first Muslims’ meetings with the Prophet. 

An individual, in fact, does not really join an order: he joins himself to a shaykh and to the shaykhs silsila. This takes place in a ceremony which is more or less 

elaborate, depending on the order, and which is in many cases known as baya (the same word that was used for the oath of absolute loyalty given to the Caliph of 

Islam, a swearing of fealty and obedience unto death which has its parallel in medieval Western kingship). Such a giving of allegiance is not undertaken lightly, 

though often—when someone has felt immediate great love for his shaykh—it is done more than willingly. In some orders, a shaykh will only accept baya after a 

period of trial. The obvious trial is the tests which the aspirant follower must surmount, but the period of trial is also a trial in itself, in that the aspirant may have 

the opportunity to get to know his future shaykh: to love him or to decide that he is not the right shaykh. 

The Sufi’s love of and total obedience to his shaykh carries with it certain obvious dangers. It has happened that shaykhs have shown themselves unworthy of 

the love bestowed on them, particularly in the case of the love of female followers, which can acquire inappropriate carnal elements. Such scandals are, however, 

extremely rare—surprisingly rare, perhaps, given the nature and extent of the power a shaykh wields. This may be because it is hard for a charlatan to become a 

shaykh. It may also be because the roles of the shaykh and the follower are bounded by well-known limits, and an order normally operates in public; there is an 

important difference of opportunity here between a Sufi order and a Western cult. 

If scandals resulting from a shaykh’s abuse of his followers’ love and obedience are exceedingly rare, scandals resulting from a followers’ misunderstandings 

are more frequent, though still unusual. A Sufi’s love of his shaykh may be so great that he begins to conceive of, and perhaps speak of. his shaykh as being 

some other figure from Islamic eschatology: the expected Mahdi, the divinely-guided one who will come at the end of time, or even the Prophet himself. Shaykhs 

do what they can to quieten the fantasies of their followers, but sometimes with little success. The one point on which a shaykh will often be disbelieved by his 

followers is his claims to a low spiritual rank. 

This love and devotion is not found to the same extent in every case. What we have described is the love of Sufis for a great shaykh, for a shaykh who is also a 

great wali. Even in this case, different degrees of commitment are found with different followers. For one, the shaykh will be the most important thing in his life; 

for another, the shaykh will be one of the most important things; for another, the shaykh will be merely important. Not all shaykhs are great shaykhs, and in the 

case of a Sufi who follows a shaykh out of habit as part of a local tradition, the love of the shaykh may be weak indeed, often replaced by a mixture of awe and re- 

spect. Awe and respect are of course present in the love we have described, and awe and respect on their own have something of the same effect, though on a re- 

duced scale. 

 

Community 

We have seen how important a Sufi’s love of his shaykh is, and also that in many cases a Sufi will only spend one week a year in the company of his shaykh. Even 

then, the amount of time a Sufi actually has alone with his shaykh is minimal. Popular shaykhs have little privacy, and a Sufi may at the most hope for a suitable 

opportunity to ask his shaykh a question in public at some point during a week. An actual discussion is unlikely, and a private discussion almost unknown for an 

ordinary follower. The person with whom a Sufi spends the least amount of time, then, is his shaykh. Much more time is spent with other Sufis, with other fol- 

lowers of his own shaykh or even of other shaykhs. This environment also plays an important role in the Sufi’s spiritual training and progress. 

Much unspoken testimony is paid by Islam to the influence of environment, and the concept of community is well established. The umma, the community of 

all Muslims, is much spoken of, and has some significance in reality as well. For at least the last thousand years, the umma has not been all that it might be, to 

the extent that some radical Islamists recommend a hijra away from corrupt society to re-establish a pure umma, on the model of the Prophet’s hijra (emigration) 

from Mecca to Medina. Few go so far as this, but there is a general recognition that the umma today—or at any point in recent centuries—is very different from 

that established by the Prophet, and from how it should be. As a consequence, visiting the salihin—those who keep to the straight path, the virtuous—is a recom- 

mended practice. Spending one’s time with the salihin and avoiding places frequented by fasihin (wrongdoers, the corrupt), such as bars, means that one spends 

one’s time with the better elements of one’s contemporary, albeit imperfect, umma, and hence that one is living in something closer to the original umma. A 

gathering of Sufis is by definition a gathering of the salihin, or at least includes few fasihin. Living very much in the community of one’s fellow Sufis, then, is a kind 

of internal hijra, away from the imperfect umma of later centuries. 

Sufis spend time with Sufis for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that people of common interests and views tend to associate any- 

how. There are numerous occasions on which Sufis gather together: the dhikr (considered below), various mawlid celebrations (discussed above), and probably 

a weekly meeting often known as a dars or a suhba. A dars is a lesson, a suhba a meeting for purposes of companionship, and whatever the meeting is called, it 

usually shares characteristics of both of these. It may start with a talk of some sort, given by the shaykh or by someone else who is qualified to speak: the talk is 

invariably followed by tea and conversation among the Sufis present; in some cases, those who have assembled together may then eat together. These meetings 

are conducted on premises belonging to an order (a zawiya), in a mosque, or in the house of a shaykh or a follower. 

These occasions on which Sufis may gather have greater significance than a Westerner might expect, because other occasions for people to meet are compar- 

atively rare. The social life of Islamic countries in general revolves around the family, and visitors to a household tend to be either relatives or very old friends. 

Parties on the Western model are virtually unknown, although the number of weddings of distant relatives a Muslim attends is probably similar to the number of 

parties a Westerner attends. Restaurants tend to be eating houses for working men rather than places one goes with family or friends, and cafes are similarly a 

male preserve and usually fairly basic in their amenities. Few of the many varieties of societies and clubs which occupy the spare time of many westerners exist. 

The various gatherings of Sufis, then, provide an unusual opportunity for sociability. 

For a Sufi to spend much of the spare time he spends away from home with other Sufis creates, then, an environment which is sympathetic to the aims of Su- 

fism and of Islam. Just as a Western drug addict may find it difficult to escape his habit because his established social life revolves almost exclusively around 

drugs, so a Sufi finds it difficult to stray from the right path because he is deeply enmeshed in a Sufi community. 

Some orders take steps beyond the various gatherings already discussed to enhance the coherence and significance of the Sufi community. At one point it 

was common for Sufis to dress distinctively, most frequently in a khirqa or patched cloak, and ‘taking the khirqa’ came to be synonymous with joining an order. 

Some orders require their followers to wear a sibha (a plain wooden rosary) around their necks. Such badges or uniforms, in creating a distance between the Sufi 

and the surrounding society, obviously enhance the homogeneity of the Sufi sub-community. In more recent times, some orders have involved their followers in 

commercial activities; in some countries, it is still usual for some or many of the followers of a shaykh to live in an agricultural settlement, a variety of commune 

where all work together in the fields, on building new houses, or whatever. Other orders have used the network of their followers as trading networks. Commer- 

cial involvement or communal living with one’s fellow Sufis is an effective way to build or maintain a sense of community, and so to provide an environment 

favorable to the practice of Sufism and of Islam. 

 

Dhikr and wird 

Much of the practice of Islam is designed to make people mindful of God, not to forget Him. to make people act consciously rather than automatically. When a 

pious Muslim of any variety says “b-ismi-Llah” (in the name of God) as he starts a meal or even begins to drink a glass of water, the objective is not just to 

remember that these are gifts from God, but to take these gifts thinkingly, rather than to respond semi-automatically to an urge of the nafs, as an animal does. 

The Arabic for ‘to remember’ (in the sense of ‘not to forget’) is dhakara, and one use of the imperative form—‘idhkur Allah,’ do not forget God—is sufficiently 

widespread to have been chosen to adorn a number of signs on the motorway which links Mecca with Medina. The traveler or pilgrim on this road is periodically 

admonished, by signs that look very much like regular road signs, to give thanks to God and not to forget Him. 

These signs are a Saudi peculiarity. More general is the use of repetitive prayer: one is unlikely to forget God while actually addressing Him. This variety of 

practice is found in most religions; many Catholics were once devoted to the rosary, for example. In Islam, repetitive prayer is known as dhikr (from the verb 

dhakara, its objective); the actual physical rosary is known as a misbaha or a sibha and consists either of thirty-three plain wooden beads or of three groups of 

thirty-three beads. The sibha is found throughout the Muslim world and is used by non-Sufis as well as Sufis. Sufis use their sibhas for counting repetitions of 

short prayers assigned to them by their shaykh. Normally, a given formula must be repeated a certain number of times a day: 100, 250, whatever. One Syrian 

housewife, finding frequent interruptions made it hard to keep track on a normal sibha, turned instead to a mechanical counter of the type used by museum 

guards to count entering visitors: “there is no divinity other than God,” click, “there is no divinity other than God.” It is counting that matters—not how one 

counts—so that the nafs cannot play tricks on one, to ensure that one does one’s daily assignment, or wird. 

The wird has many benefits, but for some orders a major objective is that the Sufi’s constant repetition of whatever formula is used for dhikr should ultimately 

become an unceasing repetition, so that the formula repeats itself inside the Sufi’s head and heart without interruption, whatever the Sufi is doing, perhaps even 

in sleep. When this is achieved, the Sufi in question is most unlikely to forget God. This technique is probably rather more effective than the Saudi road signs. 

Different shaykhs assign different wirds and may also assign different varieties of wird to different followers, but the assignment of some wird is almost uni- 

versal. The daily wird typically consists of certain longer prayers to be said and some dhikr to be done after the Dawn Prayer, some more dhikr or prayers after 

other Prayers, and some dhikr for any time during the day. The wird is the central, basic, distinctive practice of the followers of any shaykh. 

As we have seen, community is also an important part of the practice of any order. As the wird (with its component of individual dhikr) is the basic individual 

practice, communal dhikr is the basic communal practice. The followers of any shaykh will gather at least once a week to do dhikr together. This meeting for com- 

munal dhikr goes by many different names and takes many different forms, but all have in common that the followers of a shaykh are doing together on one occa- 

sion what they do individually on many occasions. 

One possible form of communal dhikr consists of a shaykh and his followers, probably seated in a circle, possibly after the Sunset Prayer on a Thursday 

evening (as in Judaism, in Islam days run from sunset to sunset, so Friday starts after sunset on Thursday). Toward the start of the dhikr, the shaykh may for 

example say “Ikhlas [the name of a short chapter of the Quran] ten times”—and everyone then recites the chapter in question, silently, ten times. The later ele- 

ments of the communal dhikr are usually shorter, more like the individual dhikr, perhaps twenty-five repetitions of “Ya Rahman!” O Merciful One! (Rahman is one 

of the ninety-nine names by which God has made himself known.) 

This type of dhikr is restrained and may appear rather low-key. An observer of dhikrs might proceed from this basic model by stages to the more spectacular 

models of dhikr (a Sufi usually remains with one shaykh and so with one variety of dhikr). The first stage is that a shaykh’s followers may say the dhikr aloud 

rather than to themselves; they may move their upper bodies a little to the rhythm of the words. The dhikr may be chanted rhythmically rather than said; the move- 

ments may be more pronounced. The chanting may become musical; the followers may stand, perhaps in lines rather than a circle, and sway. Persons with partic- 

ularly fine voices may lead the chanting; drums or cymbals or pipes may be introduced; the swaying may become swinging. Finally, persons with fine voices may 

be replaced by a professional munshid (reciter) who uses a microphone and an amplifier, and who might even sell his performances on cassette tapes. Swaying 

may turn to whirling; live snakes may even make their way into the dhikr. In general, the more spectacular dhikrs at one end of our scale are associated with 

shaykhs with more popular followings, and the more restrained ones at the other end with shaykhs with more educated followings, though this is not an invari- 

able rule. I have seen doctors and professors swinging to Sudanese rhythms I could not myself follow, though I have never seen such people getting involved 

with snakes. Snakes are a peculiarity of one particular order, the Rifa‘iya; whirling is the preserve of the Mevleviya, once a major Turkish order. 

The more spectacular dhikrs are also public spectacles, serving a secondary purpose of attracting new followers, while the more restrained dhikrs are com- 

monly private affairs. This has the incidental effect of leaving many non-Sufis, especially Westerners, under the impression that Sufism is about snakes and 

whirling, because snakes and whirling are very visible, while a small group gathered in someone’s house may be inaudible as well as invisible. The prominence of 

‘whirling dervishes’ in the Western imagination has led the aggressively secular Turkish republic to export performances of the Mevlevi dhikr as a variety of ‘folk 

dance’; the Egyptian Ministry of Culture subsequently sponsored regular performances in Cairo derived from this ‘folk dance.’ This enjoyable entertainment, 

known to foreigners in Cairo as ‘the Sufi dancing,’ has only a tenuous connection with real Sufism. 

Communal dhikr, then, serves a variety of purposes. Like individual dhikr in the wird, it prevents its participants from forgetting God. It also brings all the fol- 

lowers of a shaykh together and thus enhances the unity of the community in question. Finally, it is a starting-point for new Sufis: passers-by who stop to watch a 

spectacle, perhaps join in, and perhaps return next week. A Sufi whose friend has expressed an interest in Sufism may take that friend to a dhikr, in the case of the 

more restrained dhikrs, normally after obtaining his shaykh’s permission to bring a stranger. 

 

Khalwa 

A practice which has grown less frequent in recent years is khalwa, withdrawal. Sufis in general withdraw from the world while remaining in it. but they will some- 

times withdraw from it totally as well. A shaykh may instruct a Sufi, at a particular stage of his spiritual development, to withdraw from society for a given period, 

often forty days. Some older zawiyas (the premises of an order) have cells built for this purpose; other orders may use caves or remote places. In general, during 

a period of khalwa a Sufi will leave his place of retreat only to attend the five canonical prayers in the mosque or to use sanitary facilities. Food will be delivered to 

him, and he will probably speak to no one, save for occasional meetings with his shaykh, during which he may discuss his states of mind, tell of his dreams, and 

so on. 

Some Sufis follow more dramatic ascetic practices, either by withdrawing for longer periods or by depriving themselves of sleep. Such practices are however 

unusual and usually restricted to those on the very highest stages of the path back to their Creator. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, even normal khalwa 

has become less and less frequent. 

 

Sufis, as has been said, withdraw from the world while remaining in it. They devote themselves in total obedience to a shaykh whom they may meet only compar- 

atively rarely, but whose picture they carry with them wherever they are, perhaps literally on the dashboard of their cars or perhaps in their hearts. They perform an 

internal hijra to the virtual community of other Sufis and do their wird as they go about their daily life. They are in the world, as Muslims should be since the 

Prophet specifically forbade monasticism, and they have jobs and spouses and children; but in certain ways they are as much withdrawn from the world as a 

Christian monk, even without any actual khalwa. 

 

The majdhub 

An important exception to the general rule that Sufis are withdrawn from the world while remaining in it is a category known as majdhub, ‘attracted‘—taken by 

God toward Him. To an observer, many of the majdhub might simply seem mentally disturbed, but Muslims distinguish carefully between majdhub and majnun 

(taken by the jinn [spirits], possessed; in modern usage, crazy). 

A majdhub might look crazy, but he is not. A majdhub is one who has been taken by God and who has not fully returned to earth. This state of jadhb (attrac- 

tion) may be temporary or long-term. While in it, an individual is not fully accountable for his actions and may behave very strangely indeed. During a temporary 

state of jadhb, a Sufi may foam at the mouth or jerk like an epileptic. Such states are often seen during a dhikr of a less restrained variety, though in the more re- 

strained varieties majdhub is normally discouraged and rarely seen. In extreme cases, a majdhub may jump into water and need rescuing, or faint, or scream. 

When jadhb is prolonged, the majdhub may become in appearance like a tramp, may talk to his walking stick, or may speak in tongues in an incomprehensible 

language known as Suryani, a language which sounds like no other human language. 

The majdhub are in general treated with care and respect. This may be either a consequence or a cause of the in many ways gentle attitude of Islamic societies 

toward those with disabilities. Islam is one of the few cultures in which a blind person can rise to a position of prominence and in which it is quite normal for a 

scholar to be blind. There are few other large cities in the world where a simple-minded man may be allowed to roam at will with a large notice sewed to the back 

of his robe giving his name and address, as sometimes happens in Cairo. Respect for the apparently simple-minded may be enhanced, however, by the possibility 

that the afflicted is not only majdhub (and so under special divine protection) but even, perhaps, a great wali, someone who is to be feared as well as respected. 

Respect for the majdhub has at times been great enough for their details to be recorded in biographical dictionaries along with scholars, high officials, and walis 

of a more normal variety. The archetypal dervish of the western imagination—poor, disheveled, and a little crazy—is majdhub. 

To be majdhub is not, on the whole, regarded as desirable. Transient jadhb may be a blessing, since who would not want to be drawn by God toward Him? To 

be left permanently in a state of majdhub, however, is something of a misfortune, though awareness of their ignorance of divine purposes would restrain most 

Muslims from stating unequivocally that it was pure misfortune. Stories are told of a Sufi who anticipated his shaykh’s instructions and undertook advanced spir- 

itual exercises for which he was not prepared, of his sufferings in a prolonged state of jadhb, and of his final restoration to normality by his shaykh at a later 

period. Continuance of a state of jadhb is, then, a variety of occupational hazard for the Sufi traveler on the higher reaches of the path—infrequent, but spec- 

tacular. 

 

====

3] The orders 

 

 

 

 

The archetypal Friend of God 

 

All Sufi orders since the eleventh century have been named after one of a small number of great shaykhs. These shaykhs may not have actually established the or- 

ders named after them in an organizational sense, but in each case an order emerged from the group of followers who were left on their death. Generations of 

shaykhs and ordinary Sufis have since acted in the name of one of these shaykhs and on the particular pattern he established. It can never be established with 

total certainty that the great shaykh from whom an order derives was a wali, but it is hardly possible that he was not. The start of any order, then, is the birth of 

the man who will become a wali, and so we will start our consideration of the orders with a composite biography, a picture of the archetypal Friend of God. 

The birth of our archetypal great shaykh will later be described as having been attended by signs and miracles, a strange light in the sky, perhaps, or dreams or 

visions experienced by his mother while carrying him in her womb. The child in question will be recognized as special soon after his birth: quiet and well- 

behaved, completing the first stage of traditional Islamic education (the learning by heart of the entire text of the Quran) at an astonishingly early age—five, per- 

haps. Since the child’s parents are often a family with local religious responsibilities—the father a village preacher, perhaps, with an uncle who occupies some 

minor religious or administrative position in a local town—the child’s early education will often be in the hands of his family. Having learned the Quran and lit- 

eracy at home, then, and having spent some time studying the hadith traditions of the Prophet with his uncle, the young man will proceed to a local center for fur- 

ther study. Each Muslim country has such a local center, and if it is not one of those pre-eminent in the Muslim world (such as the Azhar in Cairo), our young 

scholar may leave his home country for a greater city: Cairo, Baghdad, or Damascus. At some point in his early education away from home, the young scholar will 

have ‘taken’ a Sufi order, but will soon have realized that his first shaykh can only take him so far. The first shaykh, recognizing the abilities and promise of his 

follower, will then send him to a greater shaykh of whom he has heard, possibly in yet another country. 

The young Sufi will continue traveling, then, and may spend some time with various shaykhs and at a variety of institutions of learning, and often make the pil- 

grimage to Mecca before he finally meets the shaykh who is destined to guide him. This meeting is a great event, usually attended by some wonder. The young 

Sufi may, for example, travel to a far and remote place in search of a certain shaykh and ask for him without success, until he finally gives up his search. At this 

point a man whom he has never seen before, but whom he immediately knows must be the shaykh he has been searching for, will approach him in the street, ad- 

dress him by name, and tell him that his coming was announced in a dream. The young Sufi will feel great love for the shaykh he has at last found, and the 

shaykh will take the young Sufi to his home or to the orders zawiya, showing him extraordinary marks of respect which astonish the shaykh’s other followers. 

Typically, our young Sufi’s new shaykh will have only a few followers, but devoted and very serious ones. He will be old, and after five or ten years during 

which our Sufi devotes himself to him, the shaykh will die. Before he dies, the shaykh will have authorized our Sufi to pass on the order which he had himself 

admitted him to, or ‘given’ him. Our Sufi may also have a similar authorization given to him in a dream or vision by the Prophet, often in the presence or through 

the intermediary of Khadir, a figure in the Quran whose exact status (man or angel) is unclear, but who appears there as a supremely wise being who briefly 

trained the young prophet Moses. 

Our Sufi will now leave his adopted home and begin to travel again, perhaps to Mecca. After spending a year there, he will set off for his distant home, stop- 

ping at various places on the way to teach. In one of these places he will stay longer than usual, and the number of his followers will become so great that he set- 

tles there. His followers will build him a house and a zawiya for themselves, and our Sufi will marry a local woman and have children. At this point, he has be- 

come a shaykh himself, the title in this case being one conferred by general recognition. 

Our shaykh may have followers in places other than the town in which he has finally settled. Those who took the order from him in the various places where 

he stopped to teach on his journey from Mecca remain his followers. As his fame spreads, other young Sufis will come to him from afar, just as he himself once 

traveled in search of his shaykh. Some of those who come to him will ‘take’ the order from him, and after spending a few months or years with him return to their 

own homes. Before they leave, they may be authorized to ‘give’ their shaykhs order, and on their arrival in their place of origin they may themselves attract a group 

of followers, loyal to our shaykh though never meeting him. 

Eventually, our shaykh will die and will be buried by large numbers of disconsolate mourners—not only his own followers, but also the townspeople, who will 

have by then come to appreciate that a great wali has been living in their midst, perhaps as a result of the karama miracles he performs, stories of which they can- 

not but have heard. Some years later our shaykhs tomb may become somewhat elaborate, and perhaps a mosque will be built over or next to it. The mosque and 

tomb will then become a place of pilgrimage for those who were never able to visit our shaykh in his lifetime. 

The order that our shaykh gave to his followers in his lifetime was that which he had himself ‘taken’ from his shaykh, and it was referred to by the same name. 

Increasingly, however, the order ‘given’ by our shaykh’s successor will be referred to by the name of our shaykh, and as the memory of our shaykh’s own shaykh 

fades—as it will, since that shaykh died in a distant country to which no one from the locality has ever been—the origin of the new order will be remembered only 

in the names listed in the silsila. Our shaykh may also have modified the practices he inherited in various ways: an extra element may have been added to the wird, 

perhaps on the instructions of the Prophet appearing to him in a dream. Khalwa may have been de-emphasized in response to the difficult conditions of the time. 

Beyond this, the practice of the new order will anyhow change slowly in many ways over the years, until the new order has become visibly different from that 

which was its origin. A new and distinct order, then, has come into being. It has its own wird, its own practices, and various hagiographical accounts of the life of 

our shaykh and of his miracles, some in verse and some in prose, which will be recited for centuries on occasions such as the mawlid now celebrated at his 

tomb. 

 

The role of Sufism in the spread of Islam 

The archetypal biography given above is of a shaykh who is born and dies within the lands of Islam. Many shaykhs, however, travel or traveled beyond the Islamic 

world of their time, in Southeast Asia, Africa, or, today, the West. Those who ‘take’ their order in these places become not only Sufis, then, but also converts to 

Islam. 

The origins of the spread of Islam in many regions are hard to establish with certainty, partly because recorded history will often start with the arrival of Islam. 

The regions which became Muslim in the early centuries of Islam, during the new religion’s astonishing wave of expansion and conquest, already had sophis- 

ticated and literate cultures. The course of the Islamization of Egypt, Syria, and Persia is thus reasonably well known. This was not the case for areas such as In- 

donesia, Malaya, and the Sudan, to take three examples of areas which became Muslim without military intervention. The Sudan first emerges into history in state 

documents referring to rulers with Muslim names, but whose kingdoms do not sound—from rare and scanty mentions in the accounts of travelers—to have 

been particularly Islamic. In Malaya and Indonesia, early records also suggest nominally Muslim kingdoms with populations which may or may not have been 

Muslim. This can be explained in terms of rulers taking on the trappings, if not the realities, of apparently more advanced—and certainly more powerful—local 

cultures. It is not the same as Islamization. 

The spread of Islam in Southeast Asia may have been associated with the influence of Muslim traders or with the activities of Sufis. These are in a sense not 

really alternative explanations, since traders were often Sufis and Sufis were often traders (the use of trade networks to enhance the cohesion of a Sufi community 

has been noted above). Trade may also provide the material means to support religious activity. It is not clear what the spread of Islam in the Sudan should be 

associated with, but it is clear that the spread there of knowledge of Islam and of compliance with Islamic norms was the work of Sufis. The picture becomes 

clearer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries once there is more information, when a variety of orders can be seen establishing themselves in new areas of the 

Sudan, East Africa, Somalia, Nigeria, and so on. Usually a shaykh returns from his studies abroad having ‘taken’ an order which he then ‘gives’ at home. His fol- 

lowers not only build a house for him and a zawiya for themselves, but also a school, and often begin to farm local land, providing an alternative source of eco- 

nomic support to trade. The Sufi-run school is probably the only available educational institution anywhere nearby, and as children go to the school to study they 

also learn what Islam (rather than local custom) really requires of them and also join their teacher’s Sufi order. It is hard to find a Sudanese Muslim who does not 

have at least a family connection with a Sufi order. 

The shaykh who spreads his order outside the lands of Islam, then, is both a standard figure and an important agent of Islamization. 

 

The organization of an order 

In its early years, a new Sufi order such as that established by our archetypal shaykh has little formal organization, although our shaykh was represented in distant 

areas by Sufis who had spent time with him before returning home with his authorization to ‘give’ the order in their turn. This role is the basis of any order’s or- 

ganization. 

Persons who represent a shaykh in this way are called by different names in different orders. In some cases the word used is khalifa (‘caliph’ or ‘vicar’ or ‘rep- 

resentative’), and in some others the term is madhun (‘authorized one’). These two terms emphasize two different but complimentary functions, representation 

and authorization. Nearly all shaykhs with more than a dozen followers have some sort of authorized representative, usually looking after followers in areas far 

from the shaykh’s main residence and sometimes acting as an assistant to the shaykh. 

Some orders, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have much more complex organizational structures than this. One Sudanese order, for 

example, had an almost military command structure, with several layers of official ranks supervising Sufis of the rank below. Another order in the Sahara sepa- 

rated the spiritual from the administrative control of its many zawiyas, which were trading posts and agricultural settlements as well as schools and spiritual cen- 

ters: regulations specified matters as detailed as how much meat the spiritual director’s wife was entitled to eat on which days of the week. An order in Egypt kept 

membership records as precise as those of a political party, and so on. 

In recent centuries, government regulation has forced certain organizational characteristics on many orders. The country with the most elaborate official regu- 

lation of Sufism today is Egypt, where Sufism was one of many areas of life affected by the nineteenth-century project of building a modern, centralized state (dis- 

cussed in Chapter Five). A government appointee was given authority to oversee the orders, and a variety of laws were passed to control their administration and 

to some extent even their practices. All orders were obliged to register and to keep records of a specified variety in a specified format. The authorities—or rather a 

Supreme Council for Sufi Affairs—sometimes intervened in the selection of a new shaykh or even replaced one shaykh with another. As a result of this, partic- 

ularly in Egypt but also in other countries, some orders became more or less bureaucratized, while others simply failed to register, thus depriving themselves of 

the possibility of public dhikr or processions during mawlids, but preserving their independence. The full story of the difficulties Sufis have experienced at the 

hands of modern states is told in Chapter Five. What is significant here is that in some cases it has changed the nature of the organization of the orders in a way 

which Sufis themselves would not have chosen. 

Such complex organizational structures and techniques are however the exception rather than the rule. Most orders have only a loose system of authorized 

representatives (whom we will call khalifas) reporting personally to the shaykh. The precise role of a khalifa, like his title, varies from order to order, but in general 

he acts as a minor or junior shaykh. He usually holds dhikr sessions, teaches, accepts new Sufis into the order, and deals with the day-to-day problems of the 

community he heads. Some difficulties and questions, particularly those of newer arrivals, will be fully within his experience and competence; those which are not 

he will refer to the shaykh. The shaykh knows that someone he trusts is keeping an eye on things; the ordinary Sufi has immediate access to someone he knows 

reasonably well and who will have more time to spend with him than the shaykh himself. A khalifa differs from a shaykh in that he can be a more ordinary person: 

he does not need to be a wali or even like a wali, since the Sufi’s love is not for the khalifa but for the shaykh he represents. In the shaykh, the khalifa has some- 

one on whom he can rely when in difficulty, and he will normally teach what he has learned from the shaykh. To be a khalifa is in a sense an apprenticeship for 

being a shaykh: nearly all shaykhs were someone’s khalifa at some point before becoming shaykhs themselves. Most khalifas, though, do not become shaykhs. 

 

Central control of a sort is often exercised in the first generation of an order’s existence, but soon fades. If a shaykh in Mecca has a khalifa in Malaysia who dies, a 

replacement will often be selected locally. He may be less inclined to follow the shaykh in Mecca and still less inclined to follow the Meccan shaykh’s successor, 

whom he may never have even met. After a further generation or two, the Meccan and Malaysian branches of the order in question will be aware of each other and 

may keep up some sort of friendly and mutually respectful relations, but organizationally they will be entirely separate. A similar split may occur to either or both 

of these now independent branches a generation or so later. Sometimes a newly independent branch will retain its original name; sometimes an adjective will be 

added to the original name to indicate the locality of the branch; sometimes a branch may acquire a name of its own, in which case it appears as a new order alto- 

gether. Some shaykhs resist splits such as these, and some observers have seen them as constituting some sort of setback for an order; but if one remembers 

the primary objective of a Sufi order, it will be seen that a split is not so terrible. An order exists to provide a context for the practice of Sufism, as a community 

and for purposes such as dhikr. For an individual Sufi, the shaykh matters more than the order, and distant branches of his order are of little immediate relevance. 

The splitting of an order, then, is less a problem than a means of spreading, rather as when the pod of a flower opens and gives forth seed. 

Bodies such as the Supreme Council for Sufi Affairs in Egypt have been particularly active in intervening in succession disputes. Given the role and impor- 

tance of the shaykh, as noted in the previous chapter, it is clear that the death of a shaykh leaves an immense hole in the lives of those who have followed him, as 

well as in the order itself. If the order is not to vanish immediately—which happens very rarely indeed—a new shaykh, a successor, has to be found, and this is 

rarely an easy process. A shaykh may nominate his successor, but this is rare (the Prophet himself did not nominate a successor). Equally, one of the late 

shaykh’s khalifas is sometimes so obviously well qualified to succeed him that no doubt arises. More frequently, however, there are either multiple candidates or 

no candidate at all. In the case of multiple candidacies, an order may sometimes split into two. This split is not always permanent, since followers from one camp 

may gradually cross into the other until one of the two new shaykhs is very clearly the main or true successor. When this does not happen, two branches of the 

order may continue independently; this is especially easy if they are located in a large city, and less easy (and so less likely) in a small village. As has been said, 

though, it really matters little for the spiritual practice of ordinary Sufis whether an order splits or not. 

Where there is no obvious candidate, the succession will often pass to a son of the late shaykh, or occasionally to a daughter, or to a daughter’s husband. 

Hereditary succession of this sort becomes established in most orders sooner or later, giving rise to dynasties of shaykhs, in some areas called ‘holy families’ by 

outside observers. There are obvious practical advantages to such a system. Disputes are avoided or run their course quietly within one family. The zawiya of an 

order may be the same as the house of the late shaykh, whose tomb will also be a concern of the order; the ownership of the house and the family tomb thus re- 

main in the hands of the order’s shaykh. For these reasons, Egyptian law assumes that the leadership of an order passes in the family, just as property does. 

There are also disadvantages to the system. Most obviously, there is no guarantee that wisdom, piety, and sanctity will be inherited. It may be expected that a 

shaykh’s son will have benefitted from the baraka enjoyed by all who were in the shaykh’s presence, and also that he will have been exposed to the shaykh’s influ- 

ence and training as much as or more than anyone else; this, however, is far from an absolute guarantee. The sons of shaykhs sometimes have interests and incli- 

nations very different from their fathers (as all sons do). Even if a son can play the role of shaykh adequately for many of those followers who remember his fa- 

ther, he may not be able to impress or attract others purely on the basis of his own nature and abilities. In this case, the membership of an order will gradually de- 

cline and may even become extinct. Some shaykhs, however, have many sons, and in some cases nephews are also considered eligible to succeed. The larger the 

field from which a choice may be made, the greater the chances of a suitable new shaykh being found; there is an observable correlation between the number of a 

shaykh’s offspring and the future health and growth of his order. 

Two solutions are possible when the son of a shaykh succeeds, but proves inadequate to his task. One is that another follower of the late shaykh fulfills the 

more difficult spiritual tasks incumbent on a shaykh, leaving the new shaykh with largely ceremonial roles, such as leading the dhikr. The other is that older fol- 

lowers join a different, related shaykh in some collateral branch of his order: earlier splits can thus guarantee the longevity of an order, just as genetic diversity 

does in the case of living beings. Whether a Sufi remains with his original branch, or finds another branch or even another order, depends largely on his own spir- 

itual aspirations. Those Sufis who are to travel to the highest reaches of the path usually pass through the hands of a number of shaykhs anyhow, as we have 

noted, while a minor shaykh whose actions are conditioned largely by the tradition within which he operates will often suffice for those whose involvement in Su- 

fism is less deep. 

 

Some of the great orders and their shaykhs 

A Sufi order is, in its origin, a shaykh and his followers. The orders established by the very earliest shaykhs were not usually given names and are thus generally 

invisible to later historians; the practice of naming orders after certain shaykhs is first found in the late twelfth century (around the lime of al-Ghazali and Ibn al- 

‘Arabi), when a number of orders which are still in existence today emerged from the teachings of their eponymous shaykhs. Among these were the Qadiriya, 

named after ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1078–1166), and the Rifa‘iya, named after Ahmad al-Rifa‘i (1106–82). The thirteenth century saw the emergence of the Shad- 

hiliya, named after Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (1187–1258), and the Mevleviya, named after Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273). in the fourteenth century, the 

Naqshbandiya arose, named after Baha al-Din Naqshband (1318–89). These orders emerged in various places across the Islamic world. ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani was 

born in Persia and taught in Baghdad, as did Ahmad al-Rifa‘i; al-Shadhili was a Moroccan who lived in Spain, taught in Tunis, and settled in Alexandria, while 

Rumi was born in Afghanistan and taught in Turkey. Naqshband, on the other hand, was born and taught in the same place: Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan. All 

these orders spread far beyond their places of origin, though not always evenly. 

New orders continued to emerge after the fourteenth century, sometimes as offshoots of earlier orders with slightly different names or sometimes with the 

same name: that an order in Egypt in 1650 and in Malaysia in 1950 are both called ‘Shadhiliya’ does not mean that they are the same thing. The difference between 

individual branches of an old-established order may sometimes be as great as the differences between that order as a whole and other orders. Nomenclature, 

then, is not so important and is often misleading. 

Entirely new orders also continued to come into being, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which saw the birth of orders such as the Ti- 

janiya, from Ahmad al-Tijani (1745–1815), and the Ahmadiya, from Ahmad ibn Idris (1760–1837). The twentieth century, too, has seen new orders, but not generally 

of the same significance: most twentieth-century orders remain, so far, limited to their countries of origin. 

We will now consider in slightly more detail the histories of three of these orders. The first two have been selected as representative of the half-dozen or so 

great and ancient orders; the third has been selected as a representative of the more recent orders and also because it happens to be an order which has been 

well studied by various scholars, and so one about which more is known than is the case with most others. 

 

The Qadiriya 

‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani was born in Persia in 1078. He died in 1166 in Baghdad, where he had been a shaykh since 1127. He moved to Baghdad to study and special- 

ized in the Hanbali school of legal interpretation; his first shaykh was probably one Hamad al-Dabbas, but he later received his order from Khadir (for whom see 

above). Little else is known of ‘Abd al-Qadir’s life with much certainty, though his sober orthodoxy was always much stressed. 

The order named after him spread far and fast, in his lifetime to the Yemen and Syria, and shortly after his death to the Hijaz, Turkestan, Egypt, and Morocco, 

from where it passed, with Islam itself, south to Senegal. By the fifteenth century it was established in Turkey, and at the same time it spread to India. The six- 

teenth century saw its arrival in the Sudan, the seventeenth in China and Malaysia, and the eighteenth in Greece, Bosnia, and Albania. In the nineteenth century it 

was established in Somalia, whence it spread in the early twentieth century to Zanzibar and other areas of East Africa. In the twentieth century it appeared for the 

first time in Siberia, carried there by Stalin’s deportees from the Caucasus. 

This picture of continuous outward spread is somewhat misleading, however. The Qadiriya, like any Sufi order, may be present at a particular place in a coun- 

try, not throughout a country: we are talking about one or more shaykhs or khalifas in one or more towns, not about nation-wide coverage. We are also talking 

about decay as well as growth. In the fourteenth century the most important Syrian center of the Qadiriya was in the city of Hama, while in the sixteenth century 

Aleppo had replaced Hama. The history of the Qadiriya is not a unitary one; it is the sum of the histories of a number of individual shaykhs operating in a variety 

of different circumstances. All that the various branches of the order really have in common, in fact, is a form of liturgy—the wird, various prayers, and a form of 

dhikr probably deriving from ‘Abd al-Qadir himself—and a devotion to the person of ‘Abd al-Qadir and some of the other early shaykhs of the order, whose ha- 

giographies are much read and who serve as a source of inspiration for later Qadiris. 

 

The Shadhiliya 

The Shadhiliya is almost the contemporary of the Qadiriya. It is named after Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (1187–1258) a Moroccan shaykh from Seville. After studying 

locally, al-Shadhili traveled to Baghdad and then back to Morocco, where he took as his shaykh another Moroccan, ‘Abd al-Salam ibn Mashish (d. 1225), the au- 

thor of an enduringly popular prayer. Like ‘Abd al-Qadir, he was in non-physical communication with Khadir, from whom he received part of what was to become 

the Shadhiliya’s liturgy. He then taught in Tunis for some time and finally moved to Egypt, where he died in 1258 on his way to Mecca for the hajj pilgrimage. 

Again, little more than this is known about him. The spread of the order across the Islamic world could be chronicled as we have chronicled that of the 

Qadiriya, but this would serve little purpose; the history of the Shadhiliya, again, is the sum of the histories of individual shaykhs. We will, therefore, consider 

briefly two of these shaykhs, one early and one late. 

The best-known early Shadhili shaykh is Ibn ‘Ata Allah of Alexandria, the city where al-Shadhili spent his most influential years. Ibn ‘Ata Allah was born in the 

mid-thirteenth century to a family of academic and practicing lawyers. Although his father had followed al-Shadhili, Ibn ‘Ata Allah himself had no particular inter- 

est in Sufism until he met Abu al-‘Abbas al-Mursi (d. 1287), the successor of al-Shadhili. On meeting him, he immediately found that he loved him. He continued 

his legal studies, becoming a senior professor at the prestigious Azhar university in Cairo, where he died in 1309, having also become the third shaykh of the 

Shadhiliya after the death of his own shaykh. He is universally known among Sufis for his collection of Hikam (sayings), a selection of which are given at the end 

of this book. The manuscript of these was made by a follower of Ibn ‘Ata Allah’s, Taqi al-Din al-Subki (—1355), also later a famous shaykh. Many Sufi texts orig- 

inate in this way, as notes made by a student rather than the written composition of the author himself. This reflects the extent to which Sufi teaching is by its na- 

ture oral; any written text can only give a part of the message in a generalized form. The Hikam, however, gives as good a taste of what it is like to sit at the feet of 

a great shaykh as can any merely written work. 

A well-known recent Shadhili shaykh is Abu Hamid al-‘Arabi al-Darqawi (1760–1823), origin of the Darqawiya, an order in its own right which is also described 

as a Shadhili order in recognition of its origins. Among his students was Muhammad al-Madani (1780–1847), from Medina. At the age of twenty-seven al-Madani 

left the Hijaz for Morocco, where he visited various shaykhs, finally staying with al-Darqawi in Fez. After al-Darqawi’s death, al-Madani proceeded independently 

and attracted many followers in the Hijaz, Algeria, Tunisia, and especially in western Libya. It was in the Tripolitanian coastal town of Misrata that Nur al-Din ‘Ali 

al-Yashruti (d. 1899) met and took from al-Madani, thereafter staying with him until his shaykh’s death. Al-Madani was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Zafir 

(1828–1903), the shaykh of the future Ottoman sultan, ‘Abd al-Hamid. Muhammad Zafir spent the years 1876–1906 in Istanbul, residing at a zawiya which the sul- 

tan had constructed for him near the Yildiz palace. 

Al-Yashruti, however, left the Madaniya (as the followers of al-Madani were often known) and traveled east with nine followers, finally arriving at Acre in Pales- 

tine, where he established a zawiya of his own, attracting progressively more followers and, from the 1860s, acting no longer in the name of the Darqawiya but in 

the name of his own Yashrutiya—a further split. The Yashrutiya was led after his death by his own sons, and his daughter Fatima wrote a number of texts for the 

order. The Yashrutiya survives to this day, though the creation of the State of Israel, into which Acre has been incorporated, led to the transfer of the zawiya to 

Amman (Jordan). 

 

The Ahmadiya 

Our third order, the Ahmadiya, is named after Ahmad ibn Idris (1760–1837), a Moroccan scholar who started to teach in Mecca in 1799. It has nothing to do with 

the Pakistani-originating heterodox movement of the same name. Before arriving in Mecca, Ibn Idris studied various aspects of Islam in his country of origin, had 

‘taken’ orders from a number of shaykhs there, and had also been in contact with the Tariqa Muhammadiya. This was a movement which in general emphasized 

man’s direct (rather than mediated) relationship with God and the Sufi’s direct connection with the Prophet. It inspired a number of new Sufi orders during the 

eighteenth century, of which the Ahmadiya was the last. Like many other great shaykhs, Ibn Idris received the command to establish his own following directly 

from the Prophet, in the non-physical presence of Khadir. 

Ibn Idris gathered around him in Mecca a small number of devoted followers. These addressed him not as ‘shaykh,’ but as ustadh, professor, and he referred 

to them not as followers but as students. He taught them the intricacies of the basic texts of Islam, the Quran and the hadith, and largely ignored the work of aca- 

demic scholars, the ulema. He stressed that piety and divine inspiration were the most important qualifications for settling disputed questions of law and prac- 

tice, far more important than the precedent beloved of the ulema. He also taught them prayers, some of which he had received from the Prophet and some of his 

own composition, and trained them to achieve a constant spiritual awareness of the Prophet, an awareness so close that it was a form of contact. 

As a result of political disputes in Mecca in which, as a prominent resident, he could hardly have avoided becoming involved, Ibn Idris was obliged to leave 

Mecca. During his time there Mecca was twice captured by foreign armies, and the dynasty of a ruler who had patronized Ibn Idris was replaced by its enemies. 

On leaving Mecca, Ibn Idris traveled south to the remote Yemeni town of Sabya, accompanied by most of his companions. Here he continued teaching until his 

death. On leaving Mecca, Ibn Idris had appointed Muhammad ibn al-Sanusi (1787–1859) to lead those of his followers who remained there. Al-Sanusi, also from 

the Arab West, had joined Ibn Idris late in life, after becoming an established scholar and Sufi in his own right: that a senior shaykh should himself take a shaykh 

at the point in his career where one would expect him to be taking followers rather than new teachers is eloquent testimony to the power of Ibn Idris’s teachings, 

personality, and baraka. By his own account, al-Sanusi was instructed to follow Ibn Idris by the Prophet in a dream. After Ibn Idris’s death, al-Sanusi became a 

leading shaykh himself, with a following not only in the area around Mecca, but also across the Sahara, especially in what was later to become Libya. He estab- 

lished a network of zawiyas, in which most aspects of the life of his followers were regulated by more than usually detailed rules (including the one about the 

meat entitlement of the shaykh’s wife). Most of these followers were uneducated nomads, and as well as training them in Islam and in Sufism, his order worked 

for their general education and improvement. Al-Sanusi himself, however, remained the scholar he had been before, returning whenever possible from the desert 

to Mecca and his library there. After his death his order was administered by his descendants, spreading most importantly to Indonesia. It later became known as 

the Sanusiya (except in Indonesia, where it continued to be known as the Ahmadiya). 

Al-Sanusi was not the only follower of Ibn Idris who became a shaykh in his own right. Even before Ibn Idris’s death, a Hijazi of Indian origin, Muhammad 

‘Uthman al-Mirghani (1793–1852) had established a following across the Red Sea in the Sudan. Whereas al-Sanusi had joined Ibn Idris as a mature man, al- 

Mirghani joined him at the tender age of fifteen and was still comparatively young when he first left for the Sudan, in 1815, to spread his order there. Although 

deriving considerable prestige from his connection with Ibn Idris in Mecca, the order that al-Mirghani spread was not exactly that of his own shaykh. Containing 

elements of the practice and teachings of a number of other orders, it soon described itself as the Khatmiya (a name derived from the word khatm, meaning ‘seal’ 

or definitive conclusion). Al-Mirghani asserted that his own order was the khatm of all the orders, superseding and comprehending them all. He attracted many 

followers, some individuals and also some minor local shaykhs, whose own followers thus became followers of the Khatmiya and of al-Mirghani personally. After 

his death, the Khatmiya was spread to Somalia by his nephew, who was half Somali. 

Both al-Sanusi and al-Mirghani made modifications to the order they had received: in both cases in organization, and in one case in doctrine and practice. Ibn 

Idris was evidently aware of some of al-Mirghani’s activities in the Sudan, but seems to have been mostly concerned by the extent to which al-Mirghani’s own 

spiritual development might be suffering from “the adulation of crowds.” He was not aware of al-Sanusi’s organizational innovations, since these happened after 

his death, but might not have disapproved, since al-Sanusi’s objective—the improvement of the Bedouin—had also been an objective of the Tariqa Muham- 

madiya movement from the beginning. 

A further follower of Ibn Idris who later acquired a significant following of his own was Ibrahim al-Rashid (1813–74), a Sudanese. Al-Rashid made no modifi- 

cations, either doctrinal or organizational, to the Ahmadiya, and remained based in Mecca, as Ibn Idris had himself originally been. Mecca was at this time a great 

center for Sufism and, of course, a great center for Muslims from all over the Islamic world because of the annual hajj pilgrimage. Many visitors to the Hijaz took 

the Ahmadiya from al-Rashid and then established it in their places of origin on their return; it spread in this way to Malaysia, for example. Two followers of al- 

Rashid were particularly important in spreading the Ahmadiya further. One took it to India, Turkey, and parts of the Levant. Another, an Egyptian, Muhammad al- 

Dandarawi (1839–1911), took it down the coast of East Africa. He also established a large following of his own in many areas where Ahmadis already existed, in- 

cluding Egypt, Syria, and Malaya. Of these, Malaya later became a Dandarawi-Ahmadi center in its own right: from Malaya the Ahmadiya spread to Cambodia, 

Thailand, and Singapore. In turn, from a shaykh in Singapore, ‘Abd al-Rashid ibn Muhammad Said (1918–92), it passed to Brunei and also to Italy, from where a 

very small following in Paris derives. 

The speed at which the Ahmadiya spread, and the proximity of these events to our own time, makes it possible to ask how much the Ahmadiya at the end of 

the twentieth century in Paris or Cairo or Bangkok or Beirut resembles the followers of Ahmad ibn Idris in Mecca two centuries before. The answer to this ques- 

tion is: not very much. The same prayers are used (with some modifications). Ahmad ibn Idris himself is universally respected and to some extent venerated. 

Most of Ibn Idris’s distinctive teaching has, however, vanished without a trace. In its place are various characteristics related to the order’s area of destination, 

rather than of origin. In Italy one finds Traditionalism, a school of thought of French origin (to be discussed below). In Cairo and Beirut one finds an attempt to 

create a ‘third way’ between Sufism and Salafism (to be discussed in Chapter Five). In the Central Plains of Thailand, one finds that Sufism has almost vanished 

and that the main zawiya has become a village mosque combined with a state-run primary school where most of the teachers are now Buddhists. In some cor- 

ners the original Ahmadiya still exists, but these survivals are few, small, and atypical. 

 

The Ahmadiya, then, lost its specificity as it spread, as do all other orders, to a greater or lesser extent. It is hard to be different. It is harder still to maintain differ- 

ence as the generation of those who enthusiastically followed a newly arrived great shaykh is succeeded by later generations, often the children or grandchildren 

of the first followers, sometimes following the child or grandchild of the first shaykh. The general features of Sufism common to all the orders are often adopted, 

and in the end the difference between one order and another is not so great. Differences of litany and hagiography remain, but Ahmadis from the branch of al- 

Sanusi and Ahmadis from the branch of al-Rashid resemble one another in most other respects. For that matter, they differ little from Qadiris or Shadhilis: Sufis 

are, in the main, Sufis. 

 

Sufism in the West today 

As has been seen, in the centuries after Islam’s initial explosion across the Arab world through Persia and beyond, Sufism was an important vehicle for the spread 

of Islam. Sufis have always been found in countries where the religion of the majority is not Islam, and this is as true today of the West as it is of countries like 

Thailand and Singapore. Sufi orders are present in France and the United States, in Denmark and Italy; Sufi works are written in or translated into English and 

French as well as Arabic and Persian. 

Some of the Sufi orders in the West do not differ in any important respect from their counterparts in the Islamic world or in non-Muslim countries outside the 

West. A Senegalese immigrant worker in Italy, for example, may belong to an Italian branch of the same order to which his brother belongs in Senegal. Indeed, 

one Senegalese order has been particularly active among expatriate Senegalese in Italy, providing them not only with spiritual guidance but also with material 

assistance. Senegalese khalifas travel to Italy much as they might travel to a distant part of Senegal. Much the same thing happens with Muslim immigrants in 

other countries. 

The shaykhs and khalifas of such orders in Western countries do, of course, have to cope with problems that do not occur elsewhere. In the first place, most 

countries’ emigrants to the West are not a cross-section of their own country’s society, but tend rather to be from among those groups who are unlearned in 

Islam. This is because they are usually either from the poorest sections of society with no education at all (in which case they emigrated because they saw no fu- 

ture at home) or are people who were educated in Western technical and scientific disciplines, emigrating because they see a brighter future in the West. In nei- 

ther case will emigrants have had much education in Islam. Secondly and most importantly, cultural and social conditions in the West are far from ideal for the 

practice of Islam or of Sufism. Many Western social practices contradict Islamic and Sufi values and practices, and Western culture for various reasons has more 

influence over Muslim minorities in the West than has the local culture on Muslim minorities in many other parts of the world. Despite these problems, however, 

the differences between first-generation immigrants’ Sufi orders in the West and the Sufi orders we have so far been considering, are not important. 

At the other extreme, there are certain so-called Sufi groups in the West which have more to do with the West than with Islam or with the Sufism which this 

book describes. Their origin is not the movement of Muslims or of Islam toward the West, but rather the search of Westerners for sources of religious truth and 

comfort from outside the Christian churches. This search is in some senses a part of Western modernity, particularly since the age of the French Revolution, and 

since the start of the nineteenth century Westerners have often found material and inspiration in non-Western religions, especially in Hinduism and Buddhism. 

Various nineteenth-century groups, of which the most important was Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, made use of Hindu or Buddhist teachings, texts, 

and concepts, out of which they created something distinctively new and different. By the end of the twentieth century, many religious concepts of non-Western 

origin had become part of Western civilization as a whole. The (originally Hindu) concepts of karma and reincarnation, for example, are now known to almost 

everyone, if rarely understood in quite the same way as they are in their cultures and religions of origin. 

Non-Christian monotheistic religions have provided the West with less material than Hinduism and Buddhism: both Judaism and Islam seem to have been of 

too solid and too rigid a construction to be adopted piecemeal. Sufism, the most flexible aspect of Islam, has, however, been mined with some success, as has 

the Kabbala, the Jewish mystical tradition. Western borrowings from Sufism did not follow quite the same pattern as from Hinduism. The two most important 

sources of Westernized Sufism were Muslim by birth (though one had a Scottish mother), not Westerners like Madame Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. 

The first of these was an Indian, Inayat Khan, who published his Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty in England in 1914. The second was Idries Shah, who published 

The Sufis in 1964. Books by both men remain very popular today, but would be seen by the vast majority of Sufis in the Islamic world as teaching something other 

than Sufism, if only because they present Sufism as something which can be separated from Islam. As has been seen, Sufism is a path within Islam, and so can 

only become something very different if removed from that context. 

Idries Shah and Inayat Khan were themselves both Muslim by birth, but their followers were generally non-Muslim Westerners for whom Sufism was not an 

aspect of Islam but something self-contained, sometimes something closer to a philosophy of life than a religious practice. For many such non-Muslim Western 

Sufis, Sufism is not only something separate (or at least separable) from Islam, but also something to be mixed with other religions and practices. Sociologists 

have pointed out that for some searchers after religious truth, searching may become a habit. In a sense, the search for truth becomes an obstacle to finding it, 

since even when such ‘searchers’ find something (such as Sufism) they do not stop to immerse themselves in and practice what they have found. Instead, they 

often continue their search, as did one of Inayat Khan’s most important American followers, Samuel Lewis. Lewis took various ‘regular’ orders (such as the 

Naqshbandiya and Shadhiliya) in the Islamic world, but mixed Zen Buddhism and Hinduism with his Sufism. Three years before his death in 1971, he was or- 

dained by a Korean Zen teacher in the United States. This sort of syncretism is typical of many neo-Sufi groups found in the West. It is very different from the 

non-Western Sufism we have so far been examining. 

Somewhere between these neo-Sufi religious movements and the standard Sufi orders of Muslim immigrants to the West lie what may he called Western Sufi 

orders. One of the most important of these is a branch of the Naqshbandiya led by a Turkish Cypriot shaykh, Muhammad Nazim al-Qubrusi. Since he grew up in 

what was then part of the British Empire, Muhammad Nazim learned rather better English at school than do most shaykhs. After an early career similar to that of 

our archetypal shaykh (considered in Chapter Three), Nazim succeeded his own shaykh in Damascus. As well as concerning himself with his followers in Syria, 

Lebanon, and his native Cyprus, however, in 1974 Shaykh Nazim made his first visit to England. Twenty years later, in the late 1990s, more than three thousand 

people a night attended the London mosque (in the suburb of Peckham) where he led prayers during Ramadan. By this time he also had sizeable followings in 

Germany and the United States, as well as in the Islamic world from the Levant to the Far East. Every year he visited his followers in four different continents, 

spending relatively little time at his home in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 

Although Shaykh Nazim’s followers in the Islamic world differ little from Sufis following other orders there, his followers in the West are different from the fol- 

lowers of the immigrant orders we considered earlier. Those among them who were born Muslim (Turkish, Arab, Pakistani, and Malay immigrants of the first or 

second generation) are following what is for them a new order, not one from within their ethnic communities. More importantly, many of Nazim’s followers are 

ethnic European or American converts to Islam, the majority of whom he was instrumental in bringing to Islam. Though converts, these are indisputably Muslim 

in a way that most of the followers of teachers such as Idries Shah and Inayat Khan are not. As has been stated before, any order in the West has to cope with 

problems which are not found elsewhere, and this is particularly true when dealing with Western converts; but although certain rules may need temporarily to be 

relaxed because of special circumstances, the practice and conduct of Nazim’s Western followers does not differ in any important respect from that of his non- 

Western followers, or from that of Naqshbandis anywhere. 

Nazim’s order, then, differs from the immigrant orders in that it has an independent identity in the West and to some extent grew in the West rather than 

being imported to the West fully grown. It differs from the neo-Sufi groups in that its doctrine and practices are not Westernized in any significant way and in its 

having large numbers of followers in the Islamic world, not just in the West. It also differs from another group of Western Sufi orders, which may be described as 

Traditionalist orders. 

The Traditionalist orders derive from a special case in the history of Western borrowing from Eastern religions. René Guénon, a French writer on religion, 

began his career in the fin-de-siècle Paris milieu of occultism, Freemasonry, and neo-Hinduism. He became increasingly disenchanted with what he came to see 

as ‘counterfeit’ spirituality, finally devoting himself to Islam and Sufism and moving to Egypt, where he joined a Shadhili order. Before his death in 1952, he had 

become an Egyptian citizen. Guénon’s writings portrayed modernity as a dark age and argued that the only salvation lay in following an ‘orthodox’ religious tradi- 

tion, from which definition he excluded mainstream Catholicism. 

Guénon’s writings have since inspired many to find, in tradition, alternatives to modernity. These alternatives are usually religious ones, but have sometimes 

been political. The political implications of his work were worked out by an Italian, Julius Evola. Evola’s rejection of political modernity earned him a following in 

Nazi Germany, in the Italian extreme right of the 1960s and 1970s, and in the former Eastern block after the demise of the Soviet Union. Although important, 

political Traditionalism is an unusual response to Guénon’s work. Most of his readers have been drawn toward religious alternatives to modernity: sometimes in 

Buddhism or Orthodox Christianity or Freemasonry, but most typically in Sufism. In the same way that Evola worked out the political implications of Guénon’s 

writings, a Swiss, Frithjof Schuon, worked out the Sufi implications—but not in books and pamphlets as Evola had, but in a Sufi order. 

Schuon’s order, the Maryamiya, and other orders which broke away from it, are found in many Western countries and also in some parts of the Islamic world. 

These Traditionalist Sufi orders rarely have large numbers of followers, but their followers are invariably very active in spreading Islam, Sufism, and a Tradi- 

tionalist perspective: they translate, teach, publish, and broadcast. Their connection with Schuon and Guénon is rarely explicit, partly out of a general reticence 

which may be inherited from the secretive habits of the various groups in which the young Guénon participated. Traditionalists do not consider themselves to be 

spreading the views of Guénon, but rather the truth; for them Guénon explained the truth, but did not in any sense create it. 

These Traditionalist orders are far from the other three varieties of Sufi orders in the West. Unlike immigrant orders, their followers are almost exclusively 

Western converts, usually from the intellectual and cultural elite. Where born Muslims are to be found, invariably they will be highly Westernized. Traditionalist 

orders are also far from the neo-Sufi orders, in that they consider themselves Muslim and abhor syncretism (although syncretist elements occasionally creep in). 

They differ from orders such as Shaykh Nazim’s, because rather than just growing in the West, they came into being in the West and exist largely independently 

of all other Muslim groups there. Traditionalists also differ from Muslims in the Islamic world in that the influence of Guénon upon their views, understanding, 

and actions—if not their practice—is very significant. Guénon was not a shaykh, but his work is more important to Traditionalist Sufis than the work of any indi- 

vidual shaykh is to the followers of any other order in the Muslim world. This alone makes them different. 

=====

4] Friends, warriors, and merchants 

 

 

 

 

Sufism has, so far, been considered solely as a religious path. In its essence, intention, and purpose, this is what Sufism is, but in practice it can be and has been 

other things as well. Mention has already been made of Sufis’ commercial activities. In addition to economic significance, Sufism has often had, and sometimes 

still has, military, political, and social significance. 

 

Sufism and jihad 

In the first part of the twentieth century, one of the best-known Sufi orders in the West was the Sanusiya, an order which played an important role in French and 

Italian colonial history. Ironically, it is now becoming clear that it was the French army’s attack on the Sanusiya, an attack itself based on faulty intelligence as- 

sessments, which initiated that order’s long involvement in jihad against first French and later Italian forces. The errors of French intelligence of the time can be 

to some extent excused: even if the Sanusiya was not originally an active political or military opponent of colonization, it later became one without too much diffi- 

culty. Many other Sufi orders in other places were also involved in jihad. 

Mention has already been made in Chapter Three of a Daghestani shaykh living in Damascus (it was from him that Nazim al-Qubrusi took the Naqshbandiya 

order). He had arrived there at the age of five as one of many Daghestani refugees from the Russian subjugation of Daghestan (in the Caucasus), a subjugation 

against which his own shaykh had been active, in a long and bitter resistance led by another Naqshbandi shaykh, Shamil. The nineteenth century saw Sufi-led 

resistance against colonization not only in the Russian Empire, but also in the British Empire: Sufis led armed men against the British in India and Somalia. As 

well as jihads against European colonization, Sufis at times launched jihads against secularizing governments in their own countries: against Egyptian rule in the 

Sudan, against the secularizing reforms of the Ottoman Empire in the Yemen, and against those of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey. 

These various military actions may at first sight seem hard to reconcile with our picture of the Sufi occupied with the ‘greater jihad’ against the nafs, withdrawn 

from the world in which he lives and concentrating on God. The explanation lies partly outside religion, in the nature and position of many of the Sufi orders, and 

partly inside Islam. The ‘greater jihad’ may be that against the nafs, but the ‘lesser jihad’—armed struggle—is far from unimportant. Islam was not spread only by 

the sword, but the sword played a part in its spread. In the early centuries of Islam, many countries of the Middle East were ‘opened’ to Islam (as the Arabic term 

usually used for these conquests literally translates) by Muslim armies. These conquests would never have happened without the jihad of the soldiers serving in 

these armies, even though there were often reasons for the local inhabitants to welcome Muslim rule. In the case of Egypt, Spain, and Cyprus, for example, there 

was an expectation that Muslim rulers would discontinue the persecutions of local versions of Christianity which the inhabitants of these areas were then suf- 

fering at the hands of Christian rulers. Despite this, the conditions which encouraged gradual and pacific conversion to Islam over the succeeding centuries 

would not have obtained without jihad. 

Jihad does not only have its place in the history of Islam, but also in the spiritual practice of Islam. In the West, we have learned to see that many motives 

other than the pure love of God motivated the Crusaders, and many base motives were surely among those of later Muslim soldiers, too. The archetypal jihad in 

Islam is, however, that of the time of the Prophet, when little immediate advantage was to be gained from fighting. Although the victors in a battle enjoyed plun- 

der (as was the custom of the place and time), the war between the new Muslims under the Prophet and his Meccan adversaries was in the nature of a civil war, 

dividing families and testing loyalties. Half-hearted commitment to the new religion was most visible on the battlefield, and the Quran and the hadith are full of 

passages relating to commitment to Islam and sacrifice in war. The atmosphere and environment at this time, then, was such that participation in jihad was a very 

real act of subjugation of the nafs, of turning to God. This is how jihad came to be counted among the religious practices of Islam: to give one’s life for some- 

thing, or to be prepared to give one’s life, is seen as the ultimate act of commitment to God and His religion. Islam, then, does call for the lesser jihad’ as well as 

the ‘greater jihad.’ As devout Muslims, Sufis were and are more inclined to answer that call than many of the less devout, just as they were and are more inclined 

to scrupulous observance of fasts and prayer times. 

Sufi shaykhs and orders were also well positioned to answer the call for jihad. A Sufi shaykh often plays a special role in Islamic societies because he is a 

major figure whose position is independent of almost all other interests and structures. His position depends almost exclusively on his own prestige, or at the 

least the prestige of the order which he leads, which is also independent of other structures. Shaykhs are therefore frequently called on by those who are not their 

followers to act as arbitrators. This is particularly true in tribal societies, where an arbitrator must of necessity be outside the tribes in question, as a shaykh (who 

may have come from a distant corner of the Islamic world) often is. In times of crisis, a Sufi shaykh may similarly be called on to give wider leadership. 

The Yemeni jihad against the Ottoman Empire at the start of the twentieth century, for example, was led by a young shaykh who had initially worked to pacify 

warring tribes as a first step toward bringing them closer to God. His success in settling various disputes between tribes derived partly from his status as a re- 

spected shaykh (he was a learned man and a possible wali, and certainly the descendant of an undoubted wali) and partly on his being from outside the tribes in 

question: his family came from Morocco, his wife from the Sudan. After settling disputes, he was successful in persuading the tribes to live according to Islamic 

law rather than tribal custom and violence. It was thus an easy step from arbitration to leading the tribes he had pacified against a weak Ottoman force when the 

decision was made in faraway Istanbul to replace Islamic law with a modern (and for the Yemenis a profoundly alien) civil law. This Yemeni jihad was one of the 

few Sufi jihads to achieve some measure of success. Distant events made first the Italians and then the British eager to support it against the Ottomans, and the 

shaykh who had led it became the ruler of an internationally recognized state which disappeared only after his death (when it was incorporated into the powerful 

new kingdom of Saudi Arabia along with other previously independent territories). 

The position of the order, as well as that of the shaykh, places Sufis in a position from which jihad can easily be launched. An order may be small in absolute 

numbers, but many cover wide areas: sometimes a region within a country, sometimes more than one country. The members of the order are used to obeying in- 

structions, and this makes them potentially significant organizations for many purposes. In the case of the Sanusi jihad, for example, the tribes of Cyrenaica (later 

in Libya) looked to the Sanusiya for leadership against the Italians partly because the Sanusis had already withstood attack by French forces, but mostly because 

there was no other existing organization which rose above the level of the tribe. There was simply no other pre-existing organization to co-ordinate resistance. 

The political importance of Sufi orders is not restricted to jihad or to tribal societies. Even in societies with more developed institutions than those of the 

Yemen or the Sahara, an order may still become involved in politics. A shaykh may suggest to his followers that they vote for a particular candidate in an election, 

for example. In some countries, a shaykh who lends his support to the regime in power may reap handsome rewards: official support can help an order to grow 

or at least to avoid persecution. It is unusual, however, for political involvement to go as far as it did in the Sudan, where one of the two main political parties— 

the Unionist Party—is the political face of the Khatmiya order and where members of the main family of Sufi shaykhs have thus served as Prime Minister. 

In all periods and regions, there are many examples of Sufi involvement in politics. Mostly this involvement is marginal, and the order is affected by it only a 

little. Sometimes aspects of an order are changed significantly, especially in tightly-controlled states such as Hafez al-Assad’s Syria. The rewards of an alliance 

with the Syrian regime are high, but a price must be paid: an order’s teaching is expected to reflect official propaganda. Even in states such as Turkey, too great a 

concentration on matters political may in effect submerge the Sufi origins of an organization in a new identity. In the Sudan, the Khatmiya order still exists as a 

Sufi order alongside the Unionist Party, but its political significance means that it can hardly remain a normal order. An extreme case is the shaykh who estab- 

lished his own state in the Yemen. He soon found himself occupied with the matters that normally occupy rulers in turbulent times: international alliances, joint 

operations with British naval forces during the First World War, problems of revenue and expenditure, and so on. He himself seems to have remained a Sufi 

shaykh with a few followers, but there was ultimately nothing distinctively Sufi about the state he ruled, to the extent that many outside observers were quite obliv- 

ious to the fact that there was any connection with Sufism at all. 

Most Sufis do not, however, become involved in politics. The saying that “the best man is he who is not known to the Sultan and knows not the Sultan” has 

already been referred to, and Sufi literature and proverbs abound with warnings of the corrupting consequences of contact with power. Sufism may sometimes 

become political, and many shaykhs may have some involvement in politics, but politics is far from Sufism’s heart. 

 

Sufism and commerce 

Commerce is nearer Sufism’s heart than politics, since (as has already been mentioned) commercial activities can reinforce the sense of community of an order. 

Many orders have thus become heavily involved in economic matters without losing anything of their original identity. The use of a network of Sufis for trade has 

different implications from the use of the same network to support a political party. 

In the absence of the various modern devices such as letters of credit and international banks which make long-distance trade easier and safer, Sufi trade net- 

works were particularly important from an economic point of view. The difficulties of doing business with someone in a distant region can be significantly re- 

duced if some non-commercial connection reduces the risk of default. Family connections have often been used to this end, but there is a natural limit to the size 

of family networks. Overseas Chinese have used ethnic networks, and ethnic-religious networks have been of use to the Jewish diaspora. Sufi networks are thus 

just one more example of something found in many regions and periods. 

Trade is not, however, the only commercial activity in which Sufis became involved. A certain amount of voluntary, communal labor is found in almost any 

order, as it is in almost any voluntary organization. At the very least, someone will make tea or cook food; someone may also make available premises for an 

order to meet in and maintain those premises. Sometimes, Sufis will work together to build their order’s zawiya; in some parts of the world, they will continue to 

work together to provide funds for the zawiya and for those who use it. In the Sudan, for example, where land is plentiful if poor, it has been common for many 

centuries for a shaykh to establish on virgin land a khalwa (as the Sudanese call it) consisting of a few houses and a mosque. The shaykh’s followers then work 

the surrounding land, keeping some of the produce themselves and using some to support the community, which often comes to include children from the local- 

ity, sent to attend school at the khalwa. These Sudanese communities sometimes grow to become regular villages, their origins remembered only in the name 

they continue to bear: the khalwa of Shaykh So-and-So. Such Sufi communities are the norm in the Sudan and are found in certain other countries as the cre- 

ations of particular orders. In Senegal, the Mouride order has a city of its own, Touba. In Somalia, several orders established agricultural settlements in parts of 

the country in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Sanusiya established zawiyas across the Sahara. In some other countries, though, such as Egypt 

and Syria, such communities are unknown. 

One reason why self-sufficient Sufi communities are found in some places and not others is purely economic. The more sophisticated a region’s economy, 

the more difficult it is to establish a commune. If land is cheap or even free and most people’s everyday needs do not exceed what they can produce, a commune 

with a standard of living similar to the local norm can be established quite easily. 

There is more than this, however, to many Sufi settlements in certain regions. Certain orders have at times occupied themselves with the problem of the 

Bedouin, particularly (as has been seen) those related to the Tariqa Muhammadiya movement. For many Europeans and for some Arabs, the Bedouin symbolize 

freedom and nobility; for most Arabs, they have more usually symbolized ignorance and crime—crime because when conditions in the desert are hard, Bedouin 

tribes raid the edges of settled areas, and because certain tribes have made a practice of attacking and stealing from those who pass through their territories. Even 

in the early decades of the twentieth century, pilgrims traveling from Mecca to Medina needed a military escort to protect them from Bedouin attack, and pilgrims 

as well as soldiers were frequently killed. The Bedouin may revere poetry, but were until very recently almost always illiterate and usually knew little of Islam, not 

just of those parts of Islamic Law which forbade stealing the transport and possessions of pilgrims, but even of those dealing with matters relating to prayer. 

Even when the Bedouin did know of Islamic Law, tribal custom in general took precedence. Many Muslims came to the conclusion that the Bedouin needed to he 

settled in order to restrain their criminal activities; some also realized that settlement was a prerequisite to remedying Bedouin ignorance in matters of religion. 

Settlements were thus established in the Sahara, parts of the Arabian peninsula, and Somalia to make Bedouin better Muslims, not just to create Sufi commu- 

nities. In these settlements one might see a parallel to the role (already considered) which the Sufi orders played in the spread of Islam. 

 

Sufism and sociability 

As has been observed, the activities of Sufi orders provide unusual opportunities for sociability in societies where few such opportunities exist. Like commerce, 

sociability may strengthen the community of the order and so assist in Sufis’ practice. Sometimes, sociability may become the main feature of an order. This is 

particularly likely with older orders, where the position of shaykh has been handed down for several generations within a family. In such cases a new shaykh may 

of course turn out to be a wali at the level of the first shaykhs under whom the order came into existence, but this rarely happens, partly because such a person is 

more likely to start a new branch of an order somewhere else than to follow a minor shaykh until his death and then take over. It is also the case that the longer an 

order has been established, the larger the proportion of its followers who belong to it because their parents did. As has been observed, the degree of commitment 

of such people is generally lower, the role played in their lives by Sufism less important. 

In some cases, then, a Sufi order can become more of a local tradition than anything resembling the dynamic and often fast-growing groups of Sufis we have 

considered in contexts such as the life of our archetypal shaykh. In cities, such ‘social’ Sufi orders may blend into each other to produce a sort of general Sufi mi- 

lieu inhabited by people who may not even follow a particular shaykh, but who attend a variety of dhikrs and mawlids, listen to chants and music, meet friends, 

talk, and drink tea. Even though Sufism has in these cases become more a social than a religious activity, it would be wrong to see it as exclusively social. Many 

people in Europe go to church because one goes to church, but that does not stop going to church being a religious activity with spiritual consequences. 

 

====

5]  Whose orthodoxy? 

 

As has been remarked, particularly in the nineteenth century, Western scholars frequently placed Sufism in opposition to Islamic orthodoxy. From a purely histor- 

ical point of view, this is incorrect. Muslims, too, have denied the orthodoxy of Sufism, however, particularly in the twentieth century, but also in earlier periods. 

Sufis have always had to deal with opposition, perhaps inevitably given their position as a sort of minority within Islam. Minorities everywhere attract opposition, 

if only because they are different, and differences from any norm tend to produce tension with that norm. 

Sufis are perhaps lucky that Islam is in general a tolerant religion. Although in theory the strictest possible penalty—death—is prescribed for a Muslim who 

turns to disbelief, and although a wide variety of acts and views have been classified as indicators of disbelief, actual executions have been very rare indeed. The 

systematic persecutions of doctrinal opponents-so familiar in European history are almost unknown. One ingenious response to the existence of difference of 

opinion within the community of Muslims has been to concede that more than one view may be right. Thus there are seven authoritative readings of the Quran, 

differing from one another in a number of admittedly very minor ways. Of all the different schools of legal interpretation which came into being in the early cen- 

turies of Islam, four have survived down the centuries; all of these are considered equally correct, even when they differ on important points. Sufism has bene- 

fitted from this spirit of general tolerance, of reluctance to create open breaches. There are exceptions, however, and it is with them that this chapter deals. 

The three opponents of Sufi practice who are considered below are not the only figures who have condemned Sufis, but are probably the most important. In 

all three cases, the opposition was not to Sufism as such, but to particular Sufi practices. In all cases, too, opposition to specific Sufi practices was part of an at- 

tempt to reform Islam as a whole, an attempt which produced an exception to the general rule of tolerance with regard to many or all other Muslims, not just 

Sufis. 

 

From Ibn Taymiya to the Wahhabis 

The earliest major critic of Sufi practices was Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiya (1263–1328). Ibn Taymiya was a Syrian academic from a well-established scholarly family, a 

lawyer and theologian. He was also a strict and uncompromising man: his first action on returning home from the pilgrimage he made in 1293. for example, was 

to write an exposé and condemnation of various unorthodox practices he had noticed while in Mecca. As well as being uncompromising, he was also brave: when 

in 1299 Damascus was threatened by the Mongols who had already sacked Baghdad, Ibn Taymiya went out to the camp of the allied Mongol and Georgian armies 

to argue with the Tartar khan, Ghazan. The khan was himself Muslim (unlike his ancestors), and Ibn Taymiya managed to convince him that it was therefore not 

right for him to sack a Muslim city. 

To write to a Sufi shaykh in Cairo, as Ibn Taymiya did in 1305 to condemn the teachings of Ibn al-‘Arabi, might seem less foolhardy than to go out to face an 

invading Mongol, but it had more serious consequences for him personally. The letter was not his first challenge to Sufis—he had already accused the Sufis of 

one popular order, the Rifa‘iya, of counterfeiting miracles—but it was one which was answered. Syria was then under the authority of the Mamluk sultans in 

Cairo, and the Egyptian Sufi who had received Ibn Taymiya’s letter arranged for Ibn Taymiya to be interrogated in Damascus and then summoned to Cairo by the 

sultan. Ibn Taymiya was imprisoned in Egypt in 1306 and 1308 and again from 1309 to 1313, after which he returned to his teaching in Damascus. In 1318 he was 

imprisoned again for ignoring an order of the sultan forbidding him to issue fatwas (legal opinions) contradicting the decisions of the sultan’s council on matters 

quite unconnected with his earlier differences with Sufis. In 1326 he was again arrested for issuing fatwas and held in the Citadel of Damascus until his death 

three years later. Shortly before his death he was deprived of writing materials, since he had continued to deliver fatwas even while in prison. The issue in Dam- 

ascus, then, was defiance of the sultan’s orders, though the fatwa of 1326 had been against the visiting of tombs, a practice particularly associated with Sufis. 

Although Ibn Taymiya is now remembered as an enemy of Sufism, it was not Sufis but Ibn Taymiya himself who suffered as a result of his views. These views 

fell into two parts, both deriving from a variety of fundamentalism. As well as denouncing various practices he considered unorthodox, Ibn Taymiya had uncom- 

promising views on the significance of references in the Quran to physical attributes of God: His hands, face, etc. Ibn Taymiya maintained that such references 

should be taken literally, on the grounds that to seek to interpret the words of the Quran to mean anything other than what the first Muslims had taken them to 

mean was in effect blasphemous and that the first Muslims had simply listened to what they heard. Although Ibn Taymiya’s point was about Quranic exegesis— 

he did not mean to suggest that God literally had hands in the same way that he himself did—his views were enough to sustain charges of anthropomorphism 

made against him, and it was for this heresy that he was generally imprisoned. 

Ibn Taymiya’s views on Quranic exegesis were of little direct relevance to Sufism, but did lead him to disagree emphatically with views that many Sufis held 

and particularly with those of Ibn al-‘Arabi on the Unity of Being. This evidently combined with his attacks on certain Sufi practices to give the appearance of an 

attack on Sufism as a whole—an appearance against which Ibn Taymiya’s persecutors reacted, or perhaps over-reacted. In fact, Ibn Taymiya was not hostile to all 

and every aspect of Sufism. Although he rejected most of Ibn al-‘Arabi he endorsed most of al-Ghazali, for example, and was himself at some point a member of 

the Qadiriya order. He accepted walis much as everyone else did, opposing only the way they were often treated: some Sufis, he believed, were following shaykhs 

and walis rather than God. He condemned the visiting of walis’ tombs and suggested that dead walis who people thought appeared to them in dreams were nor- 

mally demons impersonating walis. These denunciations of unorthodox practice seem to have been less important in drawing Sufi fire on Ibn Taymiya than his at- 

tacks on Ibn al-‘Arabi. 

 

A second important critic of Sufi practices, two and a half centuries later, was the Ottoman Turk, Mehmed Kadizade (1582–1635). Kadizade shared with Ibn 

Taymiya an early association with Sufism and a legal and scholarly training. Like him, he attacked aspects of Sufism—especially the work of Ibn al-‘Arabi—rather 

than Sufism as such. The main difference between him and Ibn Taymiya was in the consequences of his work. Kadizade was protected rather than persecuted by 

his sultan (Murad IV), whose presence saved him from physical assault by enraged Sufis against whom he had been preaching a high-profile sermon in 1633. 

This time it was not the critic of Sufis but ultimately Sufis themselves who suffered, for almost half a century, along with many other Ottoman subjects. 

Kadizade was more of a puritan than an opponent of Sufism; not all the practices he objected to were associated with Sufism. Kadizade condemned Ibn al- 

‘Arabi and the visiting of tombs of walis, as had Ibn Taymiya, and he condemned the use of music or chanting in dhikr, but not the practice of dhikr in itself. Ac- 

tion was taken initially only against members of the general public. The Ottoman sultan responded to Kadizade’s urgings to act against dubious and unorthodox 

practices by closing down coffee houses; those found drinking wine or smoking tobacco were executed. This was an astonishing act, since while all Muslims 

would agree that wine is forbidden, few would consider execution even a remotely appropriate penalty for its consumption. Today, smoking and drinking coffee 

are regarded in the Islamic world much as they are in the West; while opinion on tobacco is divided, smoking is invariably seen as a lesser offense than wine- 

drinking and is often considered no offense at all. The view of coffee as forbidden is very much an unusual, minority one. 

It was not at first Sufis who suffered from these measures, but the emphasis of the Kadizadelist movement shifted more toward anti-Sufism after Kadizade’s 

death and the death of the sultan who had protected him. During the 1650s, Kadizade’s successor called for the execution of Sufis who failed to abandon prac- 

tices such as visiting tombs and the kinds of dhikr Kadizade had condemned and for the destruction of their zawiyas. He obtained an order from the Grand Vizier 

for the destruction of one Sufi zawiya; his followers, many of whom were palace soldiers, attempted to pull down a number of others, but were restrained by 

order of the senior Ottoman religious dignitary, the Shaykh al-Islam. This kind of public disorder was particularly dangerous while the new sultan was still a child, 

and so a new Grand Vizier arrested the Kadizadelist leadership in 1656 and banished them to Cyprus. On the death of this Grand Vizier in 1661, however, 

Kadizadelist influence reasserted itself. The ban on smoking was reintroduced, coffee houses and at least one wali’s tomb were demolished, and in 1665 all public 

performances of Sufi rituals were forbidden. Fortunately for Sufis, the Kadizadelist leader was implicated in the disastrous attack on Vienna in 1683 and as a 

consequence of this was banished. The following year, Sufis were able to return to their old practices, and subsequent Ottoman sultans were generally patrons 

rather than opponents of Sufism. Kadizadelist influence continued for some time in remoter areas of the Ottoman empire, however, especially among Turkish 

soldiers and students. 

 

The third great opponent of Sufi practice was Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92). Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was born on the desolate eastern side of the Ara- 

bian peninsula just as the remaining Kadizadelists were causing disorder in cities such as Cairo and Damascus. Like Kadizade, he was more of an extreme puritan 

than an opponent of Sufism as such. The difference between the two is that while Kadizadelism exercised some influence over the Ottoman state for fifty years, 

the rise of Wahhabism continues to this day—Wahhabism is the official doctrine of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is a rich country which has 

spread its own version of Islam across the Islamic world. 

Like Ibn Taymiya and Kadizade, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was a scholar who condemned unorthodox practice. Both his background and his early training were less 

cosmopolitan, however, and his followers were mostly desert nomads: the tribes which acknowledged the leadership of Muhammad ibn Sa‘ud, a local ruler who 

gave Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab his protection. His teaching condemned not only visits to tombs, as had Ibn Taymiya and Kadizade, but also their construction, to the 

extent that when Wahhabi-Saudi forces captured Medina in the early years of the nineteenth century, they demolished part of the Mosque of the Prophet itself. To 

this day pilgrims who tarry too long by the Prophet’s tomb there are moved on by guards with sticks. 

Kadizade’s anti-Sufism was partial and was part of a larger attack on specific unorthodox practices. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab went further in his larger attack, 

declaring all those who did not actively follow his teachings as unorthodox. In effect, the entire Muslim population of the earth (Sufi or non-Sufi) was classified 

as unbelievers, with the exception of his own followers. This had the important consequence that, for the Wahhabis, the lives and property of non-Wahhabi Mus- 

lims were forfeit. Very considerable bloodshed and plunder accompanied the first Saudi-Wahhabi conquest of the Hijaz, the western side of the Arabian penin- 

sula where Mecca and Medina lie. 

The excesses of the Wahhabis in the Hijaz shocked the Muslim world, and an army was despatched from Egypt to repel the invaders. In 1812 this army drove 

the Saudi-Wahhabi forces back east and defeated them. Before returning across the Red Sea, it deported four hundred leading Saudis and Wahhabis and razed 

the first Saudi capital (Dir’iya) to the ground. The Hijaz returned to Ottoman control, and Wahhabism lay dormant for almost a century. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new Saudi ruler, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, established control of the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula. The destruction of 

the Ottoman empire in the First World War left a vacuum which the Saudi-Wahhabis then filled, conquering Mecca for a second time in 1924 and proclaiming the 

present Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Twentieth-century Wahhabism had mellowed somewhat—abandoning the view of all other Muslims as unbelievers, for 

example—and, from the beginning of the second conquest of the Hijaz, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz was careful to avoid any repetition of the excesses which had provoked the 

reaction which ended the first conquest of that area. Tombs of all sorts were demolished, however, and the teaching of versions of Islam at variance with Wah- 

habism was banned. Although the Saudi rulers resisted some of the more extreme Wahhabi views, allowing the use of the telegraph and tobacco for example, 

Mecca was transformed from the great center for the practice and spread of Sufism it had been into a city where Sufi practice can only continue under cover. 

Since the changes wrought in Saudi Arabia by the coming of great oil wealth, Wahhabi influence has been spread across the Islamic world by well-funded 

institutions such as the Saudi-dominated Islamic World League and by subsidized educational programs inside Saudi Arabia, which are attended by many of the 

future religious leaders of poorer Muslim countries. Not all graduates of such institutions are precisely Wahhabis, but their views are inevitably influenced by 

Wahhabism, including Wahhabi hostility toward many Sufi practices. Wahhabism, then, was by far the most serious of the three main challenges to Sufis. It still 

remains a challenge today. 

 

Sufi ‘renewers’ of Islam 

Ibn Taymiya and Kadizade had Sufi backgrounds, and Ibn Taymiya at least may have remained faithful to some variety of Sufism. In a sense, then, Ibn Taymiya 

may be regarded less as an opponent of Sufism than as someone who wished to reform it. Reform may also be found at the origin of the Kadizadelist movement: 

Kadizade was inspired by the teachings of Mehmed Birgili (1518–73), an Ottoman who had started as a Sufi but abandoned his shaykh and order for the study of 

fiqh (law) and who thus made the reverse of the journey that al-Ghazali had made. One product of his journey was a book. Tariqa al-Muhammadiya. As well as 

being the inspiration of the Kadizadelists, this text was also probably one of the sources of the Tariqa Muhammadiya movement from which Ahmad ibn Idris’s 

Ahmadiya (discussed above) derived. It has been very widely read, and although it is sometimes taken and used as an anti-Sufi work, it also contains positive 

recommendations, of which the central one is that the true order (or tariqa) is the umma, the whole Islamic community. It criticizes certain Sufi practices, but 

that on its own does not make it anti-Sufi; many Sufis, too, have criticized certain Sufi practices. 

Among the Sufis who criticized certain Sufi practices were the founders of the two early orders we considered in Chapter Three. ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani’s stress 

on orthodoxy was in part a corrective to the behavior of some Sufis of his time, whose concentration on inner spiritual realities Sometimes led them to forget the 

importance of the external rules of Islam: to forget that balance between the exoteric and the esoteric, which, as we have seen, is central to Sufism. Likewise, al- 

Shadhili objected to the use of patched cloaks and other external signs of Sufism, and Shadhilis ever since have been publicly more or less anonymous. 

Certain Naqshbandi shaykhs have attempted to modify Ibn al-‘Arabi’s conception of the Unity of Being into a more acceptable Unity of Witnessing. The details 

of this are complicated, but it served to head off some of the attacks on Sufis to which, as we have seen, the complexity of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s work gave rise. Other 

shaykhs have observed irregularities which have crept into aspects of Sufism and Islam and attempted to remove them, especially in India, where close contact 

with non-Muslim Hindus produces a special risk of cross-cultural transmission (or, from an Islamic point of view, infection). Indian Muslims have, for example, 

at times adopted aspects of the festivals of their Hindu neighbors to a point where their mawlids became more and more like Hindu festivals. Some Indian 

shaykhs have therefore attempted to return mawlids to what they originally were, often against the opposition of other shaykhs with less purist views. 

In other areas, Sufis have criticized more than aspects of Sufi practice. Sufi orders have from time to time arisen which preach the strangest doctrines, in one 

case going so far as to see their shaykh as an incarnation of God Himself. In these cases, all other Muslims, Sufi or not, have generally joined in shocked con- 

demnation. 

Besides being guides on the esoteric path of Sufism, all Sufi shaykhs are to a greater or lesser extent teachers of the exoteric law of Islam. Teaching is never 

simply a matter of setting forth that which needs to be learned and always involves an element of correcting misconceptions. Misconceptions can arise in a Mus- 

lim’s understanding of Islam or in a Sufi’s understanding of Sufism. In the same way that there have always been disputes among Muslims on a variety of points 

(usually minor) there have also always been disputes among Sufis on certain matters, the desirability of the use of music in spiritual exercises, for example. 

Sometimes the same practice may be condemned by a Sufi shaykh and by a critic unconnected to Sufism. It is not in the act of condemnation that opposition to 

Sufism is to be found, but in the general motivation of the individual in question. Until the modern period, blanket condemnation of all aspects of Sufism has 

been extremely rare. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, things have often been different. 

 

The impact of modernity 

Different parts of the world of Islam encountered Western modernity at different times and in different ways, and the impact of modernity on Sufism was equally 

varied. A full survey of these encounters would take many pages; what follows is necessarily much simplified. 

Napoleon’s landing in Egypt in 1798 is often used as the starting point for a consideration of Islam and modernity, but this date is too late. The Napoleonic 

expedition may have made a newly scientific and receptive West much more aware of Islam and of Pharaonic Egypt, but Napoleon did not introduce the West to 

Islam. Christendom and Islam had come into contact with the first Muslim expeditions beyond the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century, and remained in 

contact ever after. The change that marks the introduction of modernity to Islam is not a change in contact, but a change in attitude. 

In the days of Frederick II of Sicily in the early thirteenth century, some Christians—secure in their faith and in the knowledge of their superiority—had recog- 

nized that there was much they could learn from the Muslims. Frederick II adorned his splendid court with all the sophistication, both physical and intellectual, 

that he could import from the Muslim world. As the consequences of the Enlightenment worked their way through Europe, however, the balance between the two 

civilizations changed. A series of military defeats at the hands of European armies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began to make it clear to the Ot- 

tomans that something was wrong, that the West had something important which the Muslims did not have. (It was one of these defeats, incidentally, which had 

led indirectly to the final suppression of the Kadizadelists in Turkey itself). Many Muslims—secure in their faith and the knowledge of their superiority—now 

slowly recognized that there was much they had to learn from the Christians. The almost indecent speed with which Napoleon’s armies overcame resistance in 

Egypt served as a graphic illustration of this. 

The initial attempt was to learn from the West what was useful—techniques of organization, military tactics—and to protect Islam from what was harmful, 

from what might weaken Muslims’ security in their faith or damage Muslim societies. This objective proved difficult to achieve. Someone who learned French to 

read an artillery manual could also read Voltaire; someone who visited Paris to pick up ideas for engineering could pick up many other ideas at the same time. 

Printing was initially allowed by the Ottomans only for technical manuals, but works of history and then books on religion came to be printed, too, and finally so 

did newspapers, in city after city across the Muslim world. One by one, the ideas and techniques which had slowly introduced modernity in the West reached 

Islam rather more quickly than they had arrived in the West. In many cases, they were even followed by periods of Western rule. 

 

Salafism and its heirs 

One important consequence of the Muslim encounter with modernity was the rise in the late nineteenth century of a variety of movements collectively known (in 

the West, at least) as ‘Salafi.’ Varieties of Salafism are to be found almost everywhere, but the central focus of Salafism was a journal published by a Syrian in 

Cairo. This journal, al-Manar, was read by influential ‘reformers’ as far away as Malaysia, where local Salafis formed a movement known as Kaum Muda or ‘new 

generation.’ These Salafi reformers are in some ways the religious and ideological counterparts of the Young Turks, the modernist activists who seized control of 

the Ottoman Empire and steered it through defeat in the First World War to its final extinction. 

Whether Salafism was primarily a religious or primarily an ideological movement may be disputed. Either way, it was a modernist, ‘reformist’ movement that 

expressed itself very much in religious terms. The Salaf to whom the Salafis appealed were the ‘[pious] ancestors,’ somewhat hypothetical early Muslims to 

whose pure practice later Muslims needed to return. The late twentieth-century fundamentalist slogan ‘Islam is the solution’ (to, by implication, all possible prob- 

lems) is in origin a Salafi slogan. For Salafis and their fundamentalist heirs, the Islam which is the solution needs to be purified of all impurities and accretions. 

The Salafis are somewhat reminiscent of the early European Protestants and to some extent arose in response to similar stimuli. In their general orientation to- 

ward purification they are also similar to earlier figures such as Ibn Taymiya, but as we will see they are also very different. 

Certain characteristics of Salafism are very Protestant. Just as Protestants returned to the Bible to read it for themselves, so Salafis returned to the Quran and 

likewise ignored centuries of tradition and interpretation in a way which would have appalled Ibn Taymiya. As Protestants railed against the ‘superstitious’ cult of 

saints, so did Salafis. The subtleties of Ibn al-‘Arabi appealed to the Salafis no more than similar theological niceties had attracted the Protestants. As Protestant 

European writers ascribed the backwardness of southern Europe to the darkness of Papistry, so Salafis blamed the newly discovered backwardness of the Muslim 

world on, especially, the Sufis. 

As Salafism slowly spread through the institutions of Islam from the 1870s to the 1930s, Salafis progressively excluded Sufism and Sufis. The great univer- 

sities of Islam—the Azhar in Egypt, the Qarawiyin in Morocco—had once been staffed by ulema who were often Sufi, and the ulema they produced were also 

often Sufis. While there were still Sufi ulema at the Azhar at the end of the twentieth century, they were definitely a minority and they kept tactfully silent about 

their affiliations. At the start of the nineteenth century, Sufis had been a public majority among the ulema. While students at the Azhar today may be Sufis, this is 

likely to be more despite their attendance at the Azhar than as a result of it. 

Just as Sufis were being pushed out of the ranks of the ulema by Salafis, the ulema themselves were being pushed out of their leading positions in society by 

the processes of modernization. For centuries, administrators, judges, and sometimes even great merchants had been ulema, and the basic meaning of the word 

lies somewhere between ‘educated’ and ‘scholar.’ That the education and scholarship concerned was essentially religious was of much the same significance as 

the emphasis on classical education in European universities of the eighteenth century. While it had a definite impact on the world-view of the men concerned, it 

no more made educated Muslims mere ‘doctors of the Law’ than it made educated Europeans mere classicists. From the mid-nineteenth century, however, admi- 

nistrators, judges, and writers were increasingly trained in new secular institutions. The role of the ulema shrank, and their prestige and influence declined as a 

consequence. 

Sufis thus found themselves doubly marginalized. They were losing their position in a group which had once dominated intellectual discourse, and at the 

same time this group was itself losing its position to elites who favored a different kind of discourse, a more ‘modem’ discourse. Both the religious discourse 

(now dominated by Salafis) and the new secular discourse were hostile to Sufism. 

 

The new discourse 

The Arabic language itself changed significantly around the end of the nineteenth century. Journalism became increasingly influential, and Arab journalists relied 

heavily on the European press. Many articles would call for the coining of new words to represent European terms or concepts which until then had no equivalent 

in Arabic. 

One particularly revealing neologism at this time has been spotted by Reinhard Schulze. ‘Original’ acquired two almost contradictory meanings in Arabic, as it 

already had in European languages. Is an original idea a new idea, or is it the first idea—that is to say, a very old idea? This linguistic shift marks both a change in 

attitudes and a complicated and long-drawn-out argument within Islam about the proper place of later interpretations of the ‘original’ texts. This argument re- 

sulted in Salafis putting forth, and many people accepting, a variety of interpretations which were ‘original’ in the sense of ‘novel’—though Salafis, like Protes- 

tants before them, claimed that they were also ‘original’ in the sense of being more correct than the previously accepted interpretations. These ‘original’ interpre- 

tations undermined many of the bases of Sufism. 

If ‘original’ is good, ‘traditional’—previously accepted—becomes bad. Authority is questioned, and traditional authorities are rejected. This, too, had serious 

implications for Sufism and for the traditional authority of the Sufi shaykh. As we have seen, in previous ages individuals anti sometimes groups had attacked 

individual Sufi practices; now, for the first time, the general trend of most Muslim societies was hostile to much that was fundamental to Sufism as a whole. The 

old objections to Ibn al-‘Arabi and the visiting of graves continued, becoming even more serious: in the 1970s, for example, an activist member of the Egyptian 

parliament succeeded in having the works of Ibn al-‘Arabi briefly banned, and an activist village school teacher encouraged his pupils to disrupt the local mawlid 

by stealing candles left at the tomb of a wali. More important was a growing view that Sufism was opposed to progress, a cause of backwardness. Modernist 

intellectuals such as the Pakistani Fazlur Rahman, searching for the causes of the ‘decadence’ of Islamic civilization, frequently blamed ‘un-Islamic’ Sufism, “with 

its auto-hypnotic visions, orgiastic rituals and a motley of superstitious beliefs which further degenerated quite commonly into gross exploitation and charla- 

tanism.” 

The view of Sufis as backward and primitive has taken different forms in different parts of the Islamic world. In almost all cases, those who hold this view 

know almost nothing about Sufism. This is easy enough for urban elites who rarely venture out of the modern areas of major cities, since Sufis are nowadays 

most visible in villages or poor areas of the cities. In many cities, the old centers have become virtual slums. In Cairo, for example, amenities such as running 

water, electricity, and proper drainage were for many decades available only in the new quarters; the rich abandoned old palaces for villas in these new quarters, 

and their palaces fell into disrepair and became tenements or ruins. The streets surrounding the great mosques and tombs are now dark and noisy, full of 

crowds, donkeys, hand carts, and small workshops; the buildings are in a lamentable state of repair, to the extent that architectural gems sometimes simply fall 

down. The rich and middle classes, who live in modern blocks of flats with satellite television on the other side of town, might very occasionally drive their Japa- 

nese cars or their Mercedes down to the old city for a bit of local color, but the rich are more likely to experience ‘traditional culture’ in the form of sanitized re- 

creations of a street café in a five-star hotel than by actually venturing into areas which they see as full of disease, crime, and menace. 

In Egypt, then, the educated urban elites usually know almost nothing of Sufism, but have a very clear view of what it is: dirty, primitive, irrational, and nothing 

to do with Islam. In other countries the picture is somewhat different. In contemporary Malaysia, for example, ‘Sufism’ is commonly taught in schools and univ- 

ersities, but it has been redefined as something which would best be translated into European languages as ‘ethics.’ Only in a very few countries such as the 

Sudan does Sufism retain its original prestige. 

 

State intervention 

The general hostility of contemporary elites toward Sufism is everywhere a problem for Sufis; the hostility of the state itself has been an even greater problem in 

some areas. This hostility is not universal—the fundamentalist Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir and Dr. al-Turabi, for example, sought Sufi support—but 

the attempt to create modern, powerful stales has often had severe consequences for Sufis. 

One of the earliest Islamic states to earn through a policy of modernization was Egypt. After Napoleon returned to France having severely disrupted the work- 

ings of the Egyptian state, the Ottoman authorities sent an army under a Circassian general, Mehmed Ali, to restore order. Mehmed Ali was so successful in 

establishing control of Egypt that he saw little need to answer to his erstwhile masters in Istanbul and established a dynasty which ruled Egypt until its last rep- 

resentative, King Farouk, was escorted onto his yacht and into exile in 1952. He and his successors followed a program of centralization of power which echoed 

the earlier policies of the Enlightened Despots in Europe. The day-to-day administration of justice, which had previously been largely independent, was brought 

under government control; the fiqh was ultimately replaced by a version of the Code Napoléon. The rector of the Azhar university became a state appointee; the 

waqf endowments of charitable and educational institutions were nationalized. Sufis, too, were part of this centralization program: a state-appointed official was 

given powers to regulate them. This post was transformed by a series of laws into the presidency of the Supreme Council for Sufi Affairs, which existed through- 

out the twentieth century. 

In the event, the impact of this official and of the Council was limited. Many orders and shaykhs simply ignored it; those which did register (as the law re- 

quired them to) were obliged to adopt certain bureaucratic practices, including membership registers and printed forms of a specified variety for certain pur- 

poses, but were able to continue their religious activities more or less as they wished. Certain spectacular public ceremonies which had been exciting the interest 

of European visitors were banned, but these affected mostly only one order, the Rifa‘iya. The Supreme Council for Sufi Affairs intervened periodically in succes- 

sion disputes, almost always in favor of the hereditary candidate, which may have had a slightly deadening effect, but its more grandiose plans—such as one for 

harnessing Sufism to the ends of Arab Socialism, conceived in the early years of the Nasser period—came to nothing. 

The Egyptian experience of state intervention reflects the nature of the Egyptian state: all-powerful in theory, but in practice often ignored by a population 

much attached to a characteristic variety of somewhat anarchic liberty. The Syrian experience was different. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Syria 

was still part of the Ottoman empire, Sufis benefitted considerably from the Ottoman attempt to reinforce traditional values; subsidies and printing permits were 

distributed liberally to Sufis. After independence, the tables turned. Sufi orders suffered first expropriation, then persecution, more for political than ideological or 

religious reasons. Syria is a patchwork of different religious and even ethnic identities, ruled at the end of the twentieth century by an elite drawn from the Alawite 

minority. The Alawites are fearful and suspicious of the Sunni majority, and any significant Sunni groups are discouraged by the security apparatus. The most 

ferocious persecution is reserved for fundamentalists—perhaps with some justification, since their aims are avowedly political—but even Sufis are discouraged. 

Members of even the most apolitical of Sufi orders may be contacted by the security police and ‘advised’ not to attend dhikr any more, advice that some ignore, 

but which many do not. By the 1990s, one Sufi order reigned supreme over Syria: the Kuftariya, a branch of the Naqshbandiya led by a state official (the Mufti) 

who received generous state patronage in return for the political and ideological support he gave to the regime. 

Perhaps the most dramatic state persecution of Sufis, however, occurred in Turkey. Having saved his nation from the victorious Allies, General Kemal Ataturk 

turned to its regeneration. This required the obliteration of Ottomanism. The Republic of Turkey was given a new capital and a new language; script and other lin- 

guistic reforms mean that, for a Turk of 2000, a book printed in 1910 might as well be written in a foreign language. Ottoman music schools were closed and Ot- 

toman clothing banned by law; the wearing of many kinds of hat could lead to arrest. Islam also was ‘reformed,’ as Turkey became a ‘secular’ state in a very spe- 

cial sense: not in the sense of the state’s withdrawal from and neutrality in religious matters as is normal in the West, but in the form of an active discouragement 

of many forms of religious activity, more reminiscent of the official atheism of the Soviet Union. Under certain circumstances prayer became a criminal offense; 

for a brief period it was even forbidden to give the call to prayer in Arabic. This was the equivalent of forbidding the use of Latin in the mass in the days before the 

Second Vatican Council. Unsurprisingly in these circumstances, Sufism was ‘abolished.’ 

The Turkish abolition of Sufism could not, of course, extirpate it entirely, and by the end of the twentieth century a compromise of sorts had been reached. 

Jalal al-Din Rumi, the shaykh who founded the Mevleviya order, for example, is officially described as a ‘philosopher,’ and his tomb in Konya is now a state-run 

‘museum.’ It is possible to visit his tomb after buying a ticket, though a kind official will sometimes exempt a pilgrim from this formal requirement. There are few 

other museums in the world which people commonly enter in order to pray, in a room containing glass cases and even a few genuine tourists, but the appearance 

of secularism is maintained. Zawiyas continue to function on new premises, and rumors circulate of the Naqshbandiya order’s secret power. Modern Turkey’s 

intellectual and other elites may regard Sufism with something that at times approaches fascinated horror, but Sufism survives. 

 

Sufism in partial eclipse 

Sufism, then, began as a practice without a name, as the battle of individuals against their nafs in the greater jihad. It developed theorists and orders; orders rose, 

spread, declined, and were replaced; and the list of great shaykhs and walis grew longer and longer. Sufis became involved in trade and politics and warfare, and 

in the administration of Islam as scholars, lawyers, and preachers. Then, after more than a millennium, the mainstream that Sufis had inhabited turned; political, 

social, and economic changes forced Sufism out, making it in some instances almost a sect within Islam, sometimes even a persecuted one. 

At the end of the twentieth century, Sufism was in partial eclipse in the Islamic world—ironically, just as it was beginning to spread in the West, in the civi- 

lization whose earlier expansion was instrumental in the turn in the mainstream which marginalized Sufism in the Islamic world. Sufis are now more likely to be 

found in villages than in universities, on public buses or on foot than in airplanes. The tombs of great walis are falling into disrepair, and the future of the Islamic 

world is debated between fundamentalism and materialism. What future does Sufism have? 

Most Sufis would reply to such a question by asking what future the world has. For Sufis, the eclipse of Sufism is synonymous with the eclipse of true reli- 

gion, and once true religion has almost vanished from the world, the Final Day will come, as countless hadith predict and explain. Millenarian expectations have 

always been popular among Muslims, but are particularly widespread today among Sufis, many of whom would be not at all surprised to see the Day of Judgment 

in their own lifetimes. 

Some Sufis, however, have attempted to adjust to contemporary conditions. In some cases this may mean little more than giving an acceptable public face to 

their orders—renaming them ‘associations,’ for example, or stressing much the same activities that other Islamic organizations stress: education, the provision 

of medical services to the poor, Islamic unity. Often a Sufi order on more or less the normal pattern is to be found behind such a facade. Sometimes, however, a 

Sufi order has actually changed its inner identity in response to circumstances. One section of the Ahmadiya, the origins of which were discussed in Chapter 

Three, has, for example, attempted to map out a ‘third way’ between Sufism and Salafism, transforming itself from a Sufi order into a ‘Family.’ Many of the trap- 

pings of Sufism have been removed—the title ‘shaykh’ forbidden, the emphasis on dhikr reduced, anything resembling majdhub abhorred. Ethical values from 

mutual cooperation to cleanliness are instead emphasized, as is education. 

This ‘third way’ has had some success in attracting people who would otherwise have had little interest in anything connected to Sufism and might rather have 

become Salafis, if not fundamentalists. Many of its followers, however, stick obstinately to their original conception of Sufism, finding various ways to ignore the 

changes which have taken place in their order. For these people, those aspects of Sufism which depend little upon the shaykh continue much as normal. For oth- 

ers, the ‘Family’ is significant in their spiritual lives, but has a significance different from the Sufism which this book has presented. This ‘third way,’ then, and 

some others as well, could be seen to adapt Sufism to the modern world at the expense of what is essentially Sufi, and so as showing that Sufism and the mod- 

ern world are not really compatible. 

Sufism, however, remains, as do shaykhs and walis. For those who wish to follow it, the esoteric path which Sufis trace back to the Prophet is still there, even 

if it has to be looked for more carefully than in past centuries. Sufism survives its partial eclipse, numerically diminished perhaps, but offering the individual 

seeker the same possibilities that it always has. 

 

Some of the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata Allah 

 

What follows is an inevitably personal selection of some of the 262 hikam or sayings of Ibn ‘Ata Allah al-Sakandari (for whom and for the origin of whose work, 

see Chapter Three). On the whole, I have avoided hikam which are lengthy or which refer to complex concepts not covered in this short book; I have chosen par- 

ticularly those which appealed to me personally or which illuminated themes developed above. 

Although arranged as a book, the hikam can hardly be read as a book—that would be an excessively rich diet. Even a small selection such as that which fol- 

lows may best be read at several sittings. 

The translations are based on those by Victor Danner (see bibliography in Appendix Three). 

 

And he said (may God be pleased with him!): 

•  Bury your existence in the earth of obscurity, for whatever sprouts forth without having first been buried, flowers imperfectly. 

•  The cosmos is all darkness and is illuminated only by the manifestation of God in it. Whoever sees the cosmos and does not contemplate Him in it or by it or 

before it or after it is in need of light, and is veiled from the sun of ‘irfan [gnosis] by the clouds of created things. 

He who wishes that at a given moment there appear other than what God has manifested in it, has not left ignorance behind at all. 

•  Your postponement of deeds until the time when you are free is one of the frivolities of the nafs. 

•  Not a breath [nafs] do you expire but a decree of destiny has made it go forth. 

•  So long as you are in this world, do not be surprised at the existence of sorrows, for truly it manifests nothing but what is in keeping with its character and in- 

evitable nature. 

•  Among the signs of success at the end is turning to God at the beginning. 

•  The source of every disobedience, indifference, and passion is self-satisfaction. The source of every obedience, vigilance, and virtue is dissatisfaction with 

one’s self. It is better for you to keep company with an ignorant man dissatisfied with himself than to keep company with a learned man satisfied with himself. 

For what knowledge is there in a self-satisfied scholar? And what ignorance is there in an unlearned man dissatisfied with himself? 

•  Do not keep company with anyone whose state does not inspire you and whose speech does not lead you to God. 

•  Let no sin reach such proportions in your eyes that it cuts you off from having a good opinion of God, for whoever knows his Lord considers his sin as paltry 

next to His generosity. 

•  In your despairing you are a free man, but in your coveting you are a slave. 

•  Infer the existence of ignorance in anyone whom you see answering all that he is asked or giving expression to all that he witnesses or mentioning all that he 

knows. 

•  Sometimes He gives while depriving you, and sometimes He deprives you in giving. 

•  If you want a glory that does not vanish, then do not glory in a glory that vanishes. 

•  Suffice it as a recompense to you for your obedience that He has judged you worthy of obedience. 

•  A disobedience that bequeaths humiliation and extreme need is better than an obedience that bequeaths self-infatuation and pride. 

•  When He alienates you from His creatures, then know that He wants to open for you the door of intimacy with Him. 

•  When the forgetful man gets up in the morning, he thinks about what he is going to do; the intelligent man sees what God is doing with him. 

•  Were the light of certitude to shine, you would see the hereafter so near that you could not move toward it, and you would see that the eclipse of extinction 

had come over the beauties of the world. 

•  People praise you for what they suppose is in you, but you must blame your soul for what you know is in it. 

•  Sometimes you will find more benefit in states of need than you find in fasting or in ritual prayer. 

•  Every utterance that comes forth does so with the vestments of the heart from which it issued. 

•  When two matters seem confusing to you, see which is heavier on the nafs and follow it through—for nothing weighs on the nafs but what is true. 

•  He made service of Him obligatory for you, which is to say that He made entrance into His paradise obligatory for you. 

•  Incurable sickness results when the sweetness of passion takes possession of the heart. 

•  So that your sadness over something be little, let your joy in it be little. 

•  He knew you would not accept mere counsel, so He made you sample the world’s taste to a degree that separation from it would be easy for you. 

•  If fear is united with knowledge, then it is for you; if not, then it is against you. 

•  He only made affliction come at the hands of people so that you repose not in them. He wanted to drive you out of everything so that nothing would divert 

you from Him. 

•  So long as you have not contemplated the Creator, you belong to created beings; but when you have contemplated Him, created beings belong to you. 

 

====

Glossary 

Azhari  A scholar / member of the ulema educated at the ancient and prestigious Azhar university-mosque in Cairo. 

 

Baraka  Blessings, divinely-derived spiritual power, or divine grace. See Chapter Two. 

 

Bedouin  Nomads; dwellers in the desert. 

 

Dars  A lesson, especially one given on a formal occasion by a shaykh to a group of Sufis who have gathered to hear it. May be extempore or formal, based on a 

text. 

 

Dervish  In European languages, a Sufi. Actually the Europeanized form of darwish, a poor man; equivalent to the Arabic faqir. Hence a Sufi belonging to an 

order (qv) which emphasizes voluntary poverty. 

 

Dhikr  Repetitive prayer with the objective of ‘remembering’ (being always mindful of) God. When performed in a group, a distinctively Sufi ceremony. See 

Chapter Two. 

 

Esoteric  Relating to the internal realities of religion, man’s personal experience of the divine, etc. 

 

Exoteric  Relating to the external practices of religion, such as worship or ethics. 

 

Fatwa  The expression of the considered opinion of an expert on a question of law or religious practice. This opinion is expected to be persuasive, but is not 

legally binding or enforceable. 

 

Fiqh  Law; the codified parts of the Shari‘a (qv). 

 

Give  To ‘give’ an order (qv) is to admit into the order the person who ‘takes’ it (qv). 

 

Hadith  Reports of the words or actions of the Prophet or, sometimes, of his companions. Hadith are one of the two main sources from which the Shari‘a of 

Islam is derived, the other being the Quran (qv). 

 

Hijra  A migration, especially the migration of the Prophet and his companions from Mecca to Medina in year one of the Islamic calendar (A.D. 622). 

 

‘Irfan  Knowledge, especially direct knowledge of God; illumination; one description of the end of the Sufi path. 

 

Islam  The religion taught by the Prophet Muhammad and contained in the Quran (qv) as a result of what Muslims believe to be the last in a series of divine rev- 

elations. Islam perfects and replaces the two preceding divine revelations, of Christianity through Jesus and of Judaism through Moses. Hence Islamic: of or 

relating to the religion of Islam. 

 

Jihad  Struggle, war, especially the ‘greater jihad against one’s nafs (qv) or the ‘lesser’ jihad against the enemies of the Muslims, in which case jihad in practice 

often means ‘military service.’ Jihad, however, differs from conscription in that it involves an element of voluntary sacrifice. 

 

Khalifa  Heir, successor. The leaders of the Muslims after the death of the Prophet were the Prophet’s khalifas; hence, ‘Caliph,’ one of the titles of later rulers 

such as the Ottoman sultan. In Sufism, the successor or, more usually, the authorized representative of a shaykh (qv). 

 

Khalwa  Retreat (see Chapter Two). In Sudanese usage, a Sufi settlement including a school. 

 

Mawlid  The anniversary of a wali (qv) and thus the celebration of that anniversary, usually at the tomb of the wali in question. 

 

Muslim  One who has accepted (literally, ‘submitted to’) Islam. As an ad-jective, properly applied only to persons. Being Muslim is one stage below being 

mu’min, a believer, i.e. refers more to civil status than to spiritual state. 

 

Nafs  The lower self (literally, ‘breath’). Not the soul. See Chapter One. 

 

Order  A group of Sufis sharing some allegiance, however connected otherwise; an imprecise term used to translate the Arabic tariqa. The word is applied both 

to the immediate followers of a particular shaykh (qv), who may be as few as a dozen, or to all the followers of all the shaykhs who ‘take’ from (qv) an earlier 

shaykh, for example, al-Shadhili (for whom see Chapter Three). In the latter case, the members of the order will often be in the millions, with no significant or- 

ganizational links between them. 

 

Prophet  The Prophet Muhammad, through whom Muslims believe God revealed the Quran (qv) and established Islam. Although entirely human, the Prophet is 

considered to be the most perfect of all God’s created be-ings, and for many Sufis has a special cosmological significance. The normal Arabic term, rasul, is clos- 

er in meaning to ‘emissary’ or ‘messenger.’ 

 

Quran  The collection of all God’s revelations to the Prophet (qv). Muslims believe that the words of the Quran are entirely of divine origin, the only human 

agency involved being the first speaking of them by the Prophet and then the first recording of them by various companions of the Prophet. The Quran was re- 

vealed over a period of years, taking its final organizational form only after the death of the Prophet. Given its origin outside time and creation, Muslims regard 

the Quran as being entirely different from anything else on earth. 

 

Salafism  A nineteenth-century Islamic reform movement akin to Protestantism in Christianity. See Chapter Five. 

 

Shari‘a  The detail of the religion of Islam (qv); how a Muslim (qv) should live, in the widest sense. It includes the fiqh (qv), but also rules and principles (often 

the sunna [qv]) which cannot properly be called law. Often misused to mean only the fiqh . 

 

Shaykh  An old or respected man, especially a learned one; a scholar or ruler. In Sufism, a master; the one whom a number of Sufis follow. 

 

Silsila  The chain of succession linking a shaykh (qv) to the Prophet (qv). See Chapter Two. 

 

Sufi  A Muslim (qv) who follows the esoteric (qv) path within Islam (qv), usually by following a Sufi shaykh (qv). 

 

Sunna  Tradition, particularly certain traditions established by the words and actions of the Prophet (qv). Hence, Sunni (qv). Something which is sunna is not re- 

quired by the fiqh (qv), but although not incumbent on a Muslim (qv) is recommended. For example, it is sunna to put the right foot forward when entering a 

mosque. 

 

Sunni  Following the sunna; used to distinguish the majority of Muslims from the Shia, a distinct and in some ways distinctive group now forming the majority 

in Iran and sizeable minorities in many other countries from Iraq to Syria. 

 

Take  To ‘take’ an order (qv) is to join oneself to the silsila (qv) of a shaykh (qv); alternatively, a Sufi becomes a Sufi by ‘taking from’ a shaykh. The concept is 

often denoted in European languages by ‘initiation,’ but this word has a variety of connotations not present in Sufism, even though it often marks the beginning 

of a Sufi’s ascent of the spiritual path. 

 

Tekke  A zawiya (qv), Turkish. 

 

Traditionalism  An early twentieth-century religious and philosophical movement originating in France. See Chapter Three. 

 

Ulema  Scholars, especially scholars learned in Islam (qv), especially in the fiqh (qv) and the exoteric (qv) aspects of the Shari‘a (qv). Thus, the general class of 

exoteric religious scholars. 

 

Umma  The total community of all the Muslims (qv). 

 

Unity of Being   A conception given its classic expression by Ibn al-‘Arabi (and subscribed to by many Sufis) which describes the relationship between the Cre- 

ator and His creation. See Chapter Three. 

 

Wahhabi  An eighteenth-century Islamic reform movement akin to extreme Puritanism in Christianity. See Chapter Five. 

 

Wali  One whom God favors, one who is close to God; akin in some ways to a saint in Christianity. See Chapter Two. 

 

Wird  The extra practices, particularly prayers and individual dhikr (qv). which a Sufi is instructed to perform (usually daily) by his shaykh (qv). 

 

Zawiya  A small building or even room set aside for prayer; hence, in Sufism, the premises used or occupied by an order (qv). The word may also indicate the 

Sufis using a particular zawiya, rather as the term ‘lodge’ indicates a group of freemasons. 

====

Bibliography 

 

Works by Sufis 

Classic works 

The works of al-Ghazali and Ibn al-‘Arabi are immense, and only a fraction of them has been translated into any European language. These and most other works 

given here are theological in nature, whether in prose or in verse. 

There are more than fifty different compilations of Rumi’s poetry currently in print in English. Those suggested below are older and more scholarly trans- 

lations; many more literary translations will be found with ease in most bookstores. 

 

• Attar, Farid-Ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Penguin, 1984. 
• Chittick, William C., ed. Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth Century Sufi Texts. State University of New York Press, 1992. 
• Ad-Darqawi, Al-Arabi. Letters of a Sufi Master: The Shaykh ad-Darqawi. Trans. Titus Burckhardt. Fons Vitae, 1998. 
• Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid. Deliverance from Error and Mystical Union with the Almighty: Al-Munqidh min al-dalal. Trans. George F. McLean. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2000. 
• ——. The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife: Kitab dhikr al-mawt wa ma badahu [Book XL of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, Ihya ‘ulum al-din]. Trans. T. J. Winter. Islamic Texts Society, 1989. 
• Al-Haddad, Abdallah ibn Alawi. The Book of Assistance. Trans. Mostafa al-Badawi. The Quilliam Press, 1989. 
• Al-Jilani, ‘Abd al-Qadir. Utterances of Shaikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani [Malfuzat]. Trans. Muhtar Holland. Al-Baz Publishing, 1992. 
• ——. The Removal of Cares [Jala’ al-khawatir]. Al-Baz Publishing, 1997. 
• ——. Necklaces of Gems [Qala’id al-jawahir]. Ed. Muhammad ibn Yahya at-Tadifi. Trans. Muhtar Holland. Al-Baz Publishing, 1998 
• Ibn al-Arabi, Muhyi al-Din. Journey to the Lord of Power: A Sufi Manual on Retreat. Inner Traditions International, 1989. 
• ——. Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, Including What the Seeker Needs and The One Alone. Mass Market Paperbacks, 1997. 
• ——. Islamic Sainthood in the Fullness of Time: Ibn Al-Arabi’s Book of the Fabulous Gryphon. Ed. Gerald T. Elmore. Brill, 1999. 
• ——. Mysteries of Purity: Ibn Al-Arabi’s Asrar al-taharah. Trans. Eric Winkel. Crossroads, 1996. 
• Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah. The Book of Wisdom. Trans. Victor Danner. Published in one volume with Abdullah Ansari, Intimate Conversations. Paulist Press, 1988. 
• Rumi, Djalal al-Din. Tales of Mystic Meaning: Selections from the Mathnawi of Jalal-Ud-Din Rumi. Trans. R. A. Nicholson. Oneworld Publications, 1995. 
• ——. Rumi’s Divan of Shems of Tabriz: Selected Odes. Trans. James Cowan and R. A. Nicholson. Element, 1997. 
• ——. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi. Trans. William C. Chittick. State University of New York Press, 1983. 
• Sells, Michael A., ed. Early Islamic: Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings. Paulist Press, 1996. 

 

Modern Works 

The following works are a small selection of what is available and derive mostly from Sufi orders established in the U.S. Two authors (Javad Nurbaksh and Magh- 

soud Angha) are especially interesting because they represent Shi’i orders (the Nimutallahi and the Oveyssi). 

Many Sufi orders in the U.S. have extensive websites, some of which allow on-line book purchase. Most of these websites are linked and classified on the Su- 

fism Page maintained by Alan Godlas of the University of Georgia: 

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/Sufism.html. 

 

• Al-Jerrahi, Muzaffer Ozak. Love is the Wine. Philosophical Research Society, 1999. 
• ——. Irshad: Wisdom of a Sufi Master. Pir Publications, 1992. 
• Angha, Maghsoud Sadegh-Ibn Mohammad. Al-Salat: The Reality of Prayer in Islam. MTO Shahmaghsoudi, 1998. 
• ——. The Fragrance of Sufism. MTO Shahmaghsoudi, 1997. 
• Chishti, Hakim Moinuddin. The Book of Sufi Healing. Inner Traditions International, 1991. 
• Kabbani, Muhammad Hisham. The Naqshbandi Sufi Way: History and Guidebook of the Saints of the Golden Chain. Kazi, 1995. 
• ——. Angels Unveiled: A Sufi Perspective. Kazi, 1996. 
• Nurbaksh, Javad. Discourses on the Sufi Path. Khaniqahi Nimutallahi Publications, 1996. 
• Wilcox, Lynn. Women and the Holy Quran: A Sufi Perspective. MTO Shahmaghsoudi, 1998. 

 

Works by Traditionalists 

Some of the Traditionalist works given below are overtly Sufi, some on Islam and some on other religions. Traditionalist books on Islam take such a Sufi ap- 

proach that they might fairly be described as Sufi books. All these books are to a greater or lesser extent informed by Traditionalist views, but they are also Sufi 

works, especially the two books of Martin Lings (Sidi Abu Bakr). 

 

• Burckhardt, Titus. An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine. Kazi. 1976. 
• Guénon, René. The Crisis of the Modern World (1927). Kazi, 1996. 
• ——. The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times (1945). Perennial Books, 1995. 
• ——. East and West (1924). Perennial books, 1995. 
• ——. Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (1921). South Asia Books, 1993. 
• Lings, Martin. A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi: His Spiritual Heritage and Legacy (1961). Islamic Texts Society, 1993. 
• ——. What Is Sufism? Islamic Texts Society, 1999. 
• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man. Kazi, 1997. 
• ——. Traditional Islam in the Modern World. Kegan Paul International, 1995 
• Schuon, Frithjof. Understanding Islam. World Wisdom Books, 1998. 
• ——. Transcendent Unity of Religions. Quest Books, 1984. 

 

Neo-Sufism 

• Dervish, H.B.M. Journeys With a Sufi Master [Idries Shah]. ISHK Book Service, 1987. 
• Khan, Inayat. Awakening: A Sufi Experience. J.P. Tarcher, 1999. 
• ——. Sufi Teachings. Omega, 1991. 
• Lewis, Samuel L. Sufi Vision and Initiation: Meetings with Remarkable Beings. Sirs Caravan Publishers, 1986. 
• Shah, Idries. The Way of the Sufi. Arkana, 1991. 
• ——. Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way. Penguin, 1996. 
• ——. Knowing How to Know: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition. Octagon, 1998. 

 

Works by scholars 

General works 

Nicholson’s introduction to Sufism    and    Spencer Trimingham’s survey are classic works which are now inevitably somewhat dated. 

 

• Baker, Rob and Gray Henry. Sufi Orders, Lineages, and Saints: A Comprehensive Guide. Fons Vitae, 2000. 
• Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne. Studies in Islamic Mysticism. Curzon Press, 1994. 
• Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press, 1985. 
• Spencer Trimingham, J. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford University Press, 1998. 

 

Works on specific orders or figures 

Several scholars have written on early great Sufis—Ibn al-‘Arabi, Hallaj, and Rumi—and a selection of the best of these are given below. Other figures and orders 

are somewhat randomly covered by books currently available. Those given below, which deal with Sufism in Africa and India, and the Sanusiya and the Mevleviya, 

serve however to give some varied flavors to the interested reader. 

• Addas, Claude. Quest for the Red Sulphur: The Life of Ibn Arabi. Islamic Texts Society, 1996. 
• Arberry, A. J. The Life and Work of Jalal-Ud-Din Rumi. Oxford University Press, 1999. 
• Brenner, Louis. West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Quest of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal. University of California Press, 1984. 
• Buehler, Arthur F. Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh. University of South Carolina Press, 1998. 
• Chodkiewicz, Michel. An Ocean Without Shore: ibn Arabi, the Book, and the Law. State University of New York Press, 1993. 
• Ernst, Carl W. The Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center. State University of New York Press, 1992. 
• Friedlander, Shems. Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes: Being an Account of the Sufi Order Known as the Mevlevis and its Founder the Poet and Mystic Mevlana 
• Jalalu’ddin Rumi. Parabola Books, 2003. 
• Knysh, Alexander D. Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam. State University of New York Press, 1998. 
• Lewisohn, Leonard, ed. The Heritage of Sufism. Volume one: Classical Persian Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi (700–1300). Volume two: The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (1150–1500). Element, 1999. 
• Massignon, Louis. The Passion of Al-Hallaj; Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Princeton University Press, 1994. 
• Schimmel, Annemarie. The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddinn Rumi. State University of New York Press, 1993. 
• Vikør, Knut S. Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge: Muhammad B. Ali Al-Sanusi and His Brotherhood. Northwestern University Press, 1995. 

=======

=======