Sufism
Sufism - pronounced with a long 'u', SOO-fizm IPA: /ˈsuː fɪzm/ - is Islamic mysticism. A person who practices Sufism is known as a Sufi.
'Sufi' is the Arabic word صُوفِيّ (sufi). The most widely accepted explanation for the application of this word to Sufis connects it with the noun صُوف (suf, wool) and takes it to refer to the simple woollen cloaks worn by the earliest Sufis. An alternative explanation derives the name from the noun صفاء (safa, purity) and takes it to refer to the ascetic lifestyle of the Sufis. Although there is a word صُوفِيّـة (sufiyyah), the more common name for Sufism in Arabic is تصوف (tasawwuf), a noun from the verb ﺗﺼﻮﻑ (tasawwafa, to be a Sufi).
In common with mystics in other traditions, Sufis seek direct personal experience of the divine (by contrast with the knowledge or understanding of the divine that might be acquired by reasoning). The Arabic word which Sufis use to refer to this kind of experience is ﺫﻭﻕ (dhawq), which means 'taste'. Again like mystics in other traditions, Sufis insist that an ascetic life is an indispensable precondition for engaging in those practices which would bring the mystic closer to a direct experience of the divine. A mystical practice particularly associated with Sufism is ﺫﻛﺮ (dhikr, mention, remembrance, recollection), the ritual of repeating words in praise of Allah.
There seem to have been mystics among the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, but the Sufi movement began in the final decades of the seventh century CE. It gained adherents particularly among those opposed to the dominance within the Muslim community of the legalistic aspects of Islam and those repelled by the materialism and worldliness of some of the Ummayad caliphs.. As Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula eastwards into modern Iraq and Iran and westwards across North Africa and into Spain, Sufism spread with it, and by the twelfth century there were Sufis throughout the Islamic world. It was in the twelfth century that distinct orders of Sufism - the Arabic word is ﻃﺮﻳﻘﮥ (tariqa, way, method, system, order, religious brotherhood) - began to be established, some within the Sunni tradition, others within the Shia tradition, and others which considered themselves to be a part of neither tradition. Some of these orders have survived and still flourish today.
Sufism has been a significant influence on Islamic society and culture, and there have been many renowned Sufi philosophers and poets. Sufi philosophers include, for example, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and Shahrawardi (1154-1191); while the Sufi poets best known in the West are probably Omar Khayyam (?1059-?1123), a mathematician and astronomer as well as a poet, whose Rub'ayyat is familiar to many English readers in the translation of Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), and Jalal al-Din Muhammad al-Balkhi (1207-1233), more commonly known as Rumi, whose followers established the Mawlawiyah Sufi order.
