SUFISM (from sufi or soft, the Greek sophos, a sage; erroneously also derived from Arab. sof or suf, wool, and thus designating an individual who wears nothing but woolen garments) designates a certain mystic system of philosophical theology within Islam. Its devotees form a kind of ecclesiastical order somewhat similar to that of the fakirs (Qv.), or dervishes, but they are mostly of a far superior stamp; and some of the great est Persian poets, philosophers, historians, and even kings belonged to their ranks. They assume four principal degrees of human perfection or sanctity. The first or lowest is that of the shariat--i.e., of the strict obedience to all the ritual laws of Mohammedan ism, such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, almsgiving, ablutions, etc., and the ethical pre cepts of honesty, love of truth, and the like. The second degree (tarikat) is not attainable by all, but only by those higher minds that, while strictly adhering to the outward or ceremonial injunctions of religion, rise to an inward perception of the mental power and virtue necessary for the nearer approach to the divinity, the necessity of, and the yearning for, which they feel. The third (hakikal = truth) is the degree of those who, by continuous contemplation and inner devotion, have risen to the true perception of the nature of the visible and the invisible—who, in fact, have recognized the Godhead, and through this knowledge of it have succeeded in establishing an ecstatic relation to it. This state is finally sublimated into that highest and last degree (maarifal), in which man communicates directly with the Deity. Practically, the great mass of the people take the lowest degree; the second stage is reached by the " murides," who do not ful fill the behests of the ceremonial law because they are behests, but because they are good in themselves, knowing that virtue is good; and because it leads to truth, they adhere to it for its own sake. They give alms because the sight of poverty grieves them; their ablutions are as much due to their desire of physical purity as to that of obeying a religious injunction. The third stage is that of the naibs, to whom all this
spiritualizing of faith applies in a still more eminent degree. And the highest stage of attainable perfection is that of the murshid, whose words are God's words, pure and simple, because he is in direct and constant communion with God. He' is the " sun of faith," by whose reflected light shine the naibs, its "moons." All Sufistic poetry and parlance is to be taken allegorically and symbolically. They represent the highest things by human emblems and human passions; and religion being with them identical with love, erotic terminology is chiefly used to illustrate the relation of man to God. Thus the beloved one's curls indicate the mysteries of the Deity; sensuous pleasures and chiefly intoxication, indicate the highest degree of divine love as ecstatic contem plation; while the wine-house, of which constant mention is made, merely indicates the state in consequence of which our human qualities merge in or are exalted into those of the Deity. Founded in the 9th c. by Kafi-Mullah, this peculiar mysticism has princi pally struck root in Persia, and chiefly among men of genius, e.g., Hafiz (q.v.). Recently, it has been revived, with slight modifications, by Shamil, the renowned and once formidable antagonist of the RusSians, who undertook to enlist even the common soldiers, if not in the ranks of the initiated—for Sufism, in its real meaning, is very exclusive—at least of its votaries; and the very lowest among them even had a sentence given him indicative of his forming part of the sect and of the gradations that form its main characteristic. In conclusion, it may be observed that Sufism mixes up all religions and all their prophets indiscriminately in one class; and the words idolatry, unbelief, licentiousness, and the like are generally used in their reverse sense by its votaries. Their principal religious writer is Jalaleddin Rural •