Sufism

The first Sufis were ascetics of the eighth century, such as Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya of Basra, who turned from worldliness to fear and love of God. In ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad the school of al-Junayd developed a “sober” Sufism of passing away and subsistence, while ecstatics such as al-Ḥallāj, executed in 922, spoke more boldly of union.

Manuals of the eleventh century, such as al-Qushayrī’s Epistle, presented Sufism as orthodox, and al-Ghazālī’s Revival brought it into the mainstream. From the twelfth century the great orders took shape, among them the Qādiriyya, the Suhrawardiyya, the Chishtiyya, the Naqshbandiyya and Rūmī’s Mevlevis, and spread Islam in India, Central Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia. Ibn ʿArabī gave Sufism its most systematic metaphysics.

In the modern period Sufism was criticized by reformist and puritan movements, and by modernists, but remains widely practised. In the West it was studied by scholars such as Reynold Nicholson, Louis Massignon and Annemarie Schimmel, and Rūmī became one of the most widely read poets in the world.