Origins and early sufism

Abstract

Sufism is widely defined as Islamic mysticism, particularly the form that took shape around the Baghdadi master al-Junayd (d. 298/911?). In the early eleventh century CE, biographers worked out a spiritual lineage for Sufism going back to the Companions of the Prophet. The immediate forbears of the Sufis they identified as eighth- and ninth-century renunciants known as zuhhād, nussāk, or ‘ubbād (the most important extant biographical dictionaries are those of al-Sulamī and Abū Nu’aym). They underwent austerities, devoted extraordinary amounts of time to Qur’ānic recitation and prayer, and generally cultivated a solemn attitude towards life. Some spoke of thinking often and steadily of God, but the ideas of mutual love and mystical union were yet to come. A few wore wool, but express references to Sūfīyah before the later ninth century usually have to do with marginal, disreputable figures not identified as forbears by the later Sufi biographers. Modern research has largely confirmed that Sufism grew out of this earlier, ascetic tradition. By a process not yet convincingly mapped in detail, there arose in the mid-ninth century a mystical trend, identified in Iraq with persons called Sufis. They talked of reciprocal love between themselves and God, and found that God addressed them through things of the world. This aroused opposition from pious Sunni circles determined to protect divine transcendence, and in 264/877-8, a Sufi inquisition was instituted in Baghdad. Some Sufis were arrested, although released without punishment, while others went into exile. By the end of the century, something like classical Sufism had developed in Baghdad, from where it would spread and absorb other pious movements over the next two centuries. This chapter traces its emergence, as understood by twentieth-century scholarship, out of the earlier ascetical or renunciant tradition.