Sufi Orders 1100—1900

The Sufi orders were and remain the most important organized expression of Islamic spirituality. The word Sufism (from the Arabic Sufi, one who wears wool), is thought to derive from the coarse woolen garments worn by early Muslim ascetics who sought to develop an inner spirituality. This was sometimes expressed as the quest for union with God and it set them apart from believers who were content with the formal observance of Islamic law and ritual. Early adepts, sometimes known as “drunken” Sufis, cultivated mental states that would lead them to experience annihilation of the self in the divine presence. The desire for ecstatic union with the divine, and the pain of separation from it, is the theme of much Sufi poetry. Drunken Sufism sometimes displayed itself in extravagant displays aimed at demonstrating contempt for the flesh, such as piercing the body with iron rings or handling dangerous animals. Sober Sufism—exemplified in the teachings of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111)—insisted that the path to spiritual fulfillment lay firmly within the boundaries of normative legal and ritual practice.

Present from the beginnings of Islam, all Sufi movements would claim to have their origins in the religious experience of Muhammad and his closest Companions Abn Bakr and Ali. Organized Sufism, however, was consolidated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gaining ground rapidly in Asia in the aftermath of the Mongol invasions, when the institutional fabric of Muslim life was severely dislocated. Internally the Sufi orders cemented the sociopolitical order by providing rulers with popular sources of religious legitimacy, supplementing the formal authority conferred by the ulama. Many rulers were patrons of Sufi orders and placed themselves under the spiritual guidance of Sufi masters from whose baraka (blessedness or charismatic spiritual power) they derived benefit. Further afield the Sufi orders were instrumental in spreading Islam in peripheral regions such as the Malay archipelago, Central Asia, and Subsaharan Africa. Access to the normative, textual Islam of the ulama, based on the Koran, hadith, fiqh (jurisprudence), and tafsir (hermeneutics), required knowledge of Arabic, restricting its appeal. The Sufi shaikhs and pirs, however, were adept at spiritual improvisation and were able to convey Islamic teachings verbally, using local languages. The esoteric Sufi rituals, known as dhikrs (ceremonies held in remembrance of God), allowed them to develop spiritual techniques that meshed with practices derived from non-Islamic traditions such as ritual dances or controlled yoga-style breathing practiced in India. In Africa Sufis and Marabouts (from the Arabic murabit) were able to propagate Islam by assimilating local deities or spirits to the numinous forces such as djinns and angels referred to in the Koran. Ancestor cults could be accommodated by adding local kinship structures onto Arab lineages or Sufi silsilas, chains of spiritual authority linking the shaikhs and Marabouts to the Prophet and his Companions. In peripheral regions such as the High Atlas these silsilas provided a quasi-constitutional framework through which segmentary tribal groups achieved a basic minimum of cooperation, with leaders of saintly families acting as arbiters in intertribal conflicts. In all parts of the Muslim world Sufi holy men (and occasionally women) became the objects of popular veneration. In due course such cults became the targets of reformers who regarded the excessive devotion given to saintly mediators as a violation of the Islamic prohibition on idolatry.

A group of Mevlevi Sufis or dervishes (mendicants) perform their traditional whirling ritual. The “dance,” a dhikr, or “remembrance of God,” brings the adept closer to the divine, balancing spiritual ecstasy with formal discipline. The Mevlevi order was founded by Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207—73), the famous Sufi poet and mystic.

In contrast to the ulama, who tended to reflect the consensus of the learned, the Sufi tariqas developed elaborate hierarchical organizations with spiritual power concentrated into the hands of the leader—known variously as the shaikh, murshid, or pir. Murids (members or aspirants) were bound by the baya, oath of allegiance, to the leader or murshid who headed a hierarchy of ranks within the order based on ascending spiritual stages. Although the systems varied considerably, with some tariqas being more exclusive and tightly controlled than others, the combination of devotion to the leader and rankings within the organization made it possible for the tariqas to convert themselves into formidable fighting forces. In the Caucasus the Imam Shamil waged his campaign against the Russians from 1834 to 1839 under the spiritual authority of his murshid and father-in-law Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Ghazi-Ghumuqi, shaikh of the Khalidiyya branch of the Naqshbandiyya. In North Africa Abd al-Qadir, a shaikh of the Qadiriyya, took the lead in the struggle against the French; in Cyrenaica the Sanusiyya were at the forefront of resistance against the Italian occupiers. In other regional contexts, however, the tariqas ran with the flow of colonial power. In Morocco during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the influential Tijaniya order accepted lavish subsidies from the French, who used the order to further their colonial interests. In Senegal the Muridiya order founded by Amadu Bamba (c. 1850-1927) turned away from resistance to develop a work ethic based on peanut cultivation that brought economic stability to the country under the French-dominated regime.

The tariqas, in many cases, provided the leadership for the reform and revival movements that swept through the Islamic world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term “neo-Sufism” is sometimes applied to movements that strive to balance “outward” political activity with “inner” spiritual experience, with the structure of the tariqa providing the vehicle for the transmission and implementation of ideas. A well-known example is the Nurculuk movement in Turkey founded by Said Nursi (18761960). A Naqshbandi-trained preacher and writer, he sought to revitalize Islamic thought by integrating science, tradition, theology, and mysticism in a new version of the Naqshbandi slogan of “the hand turned to work and the heart turned to God.” In contrast to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was also influenced by Sufi ideas, the movement works with the grain of Turkey’s secular state.

In recent decades Sufi ideas and devotional practices have come under attack from two quarters—modernists, who regard Sufism as retrograde, and Wahhabi-inspired Islamists, who have taken over many Islamic insitutions with financial support from Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries. Though the two agendas are somewhat different, the consequences are the same. Modernists, adapting the ideas of the European Enlightenment, began with demands for a “rational” religion. They ended by turning against religion altogether. The Islamists, reacting against the modernists, are caught in the same “all-or-nothing” attitudes.

Sufism occupies the middle ground between modernism and fundamentalism, enabling religion to accommodate itself to changing social conditions. Without the mediating, adaptive power of Sufism, it is unlikely that the advocates of political Islam (or “Islamism”) will succeed in accommodating the variegated strands of Islam within the “restored” Islamic order that they seek.

Sufi Orders 1145-1389

• Shrine of founding saint of most important Orders

?  Egyptian and North African tradition derived from Iraqi tradition

?  Iranian and Central Asian traditions from al-Junaid and al-Bistami Iraqi tradition from al-Junaid

RIFAIYA Major Order in development of institutional Sufism. All subsequent Orders trace their lineage back to one or more of these Orders. Located where they first developed, although by 1500 they had spread widely beyond these regions except for Mawlawiyya, Qadiriyya, and Chishtiyya

Alwaiya Other Orders of importance in 1500, located where they were most prominent