SUFISM, soo'fizm or sO'fizm (Arab. Tasawwuf, being or becoming a Sufi), is Mo hammedan mysticism. It derives its name from the Arabic sufi, mystic, "clad in wool" (from suf, wool), because most of these mystics clad themselves in woolen garments or carry a woolen headdress. Some philologists connect the word with the Greek aciibor °wise," but their theory is untenable. Sufis often call them selves urafa, °Gnostics" or "Theosophists," namely, those who possess a special and esoteric knowledge of divinity. Travelers of to-day in Persia, Egpyt, India and Turkey commonly call them fakirs or dervishes (Arab fagir; Pers. darvish), that is, "the poor," °beggars," and the name is correct both in a good and a bad sense with this proviso that not all beggars are fakirs or dervishes.
The origin of Sufism is disputed. Some will derive it from the Vedanta and Buddhism, but their theories have no real foundations and fall to the ground when it is remembered that Vedanta is pantheistic and that Sufism in the main follows the Theistic lines of the Koran. Some even refer to it as an offshoot of Chris tianity. Sufis themselves reckon it to be older than its known historic forms and it seems quite probable that there was Sufism before the Sufis. As early as the 2d century after the Flight, asceticism and ethics and with them Sufistic quietism and the disinterested love of God, assumed a prominent position in Islam, and as fate would have it, contrary to Moham med's explicit order, this new feature arose in his own family with the favorite Ali. The name seems first to have been used by Abu Hashim (780 A.D.) ; but Abul Said Chair is mentioned as founder (about 820 A.D.). Leg endary lore, which has surrounded the pious woman Rabia al Adawiyya (725 A. D.) with much Sufistic halo, calls her the first Sufi and tells numerous stories about her quietistic dis position, all of which are profoundly character istic of early Sufism.
Early Sufis are profuse in their expressions about their "Union with the Beloved" (namely, God), and that has probably led some Western scholars to confound the mystic union with the pantheistic tat tvam asi, "That (the Universal Spirit) art Thou." Most Sufis of to-day are
very moderate in their claims compared with their early predecessors, and declare that they are simply esoteric Mohammedans and place more value upon the "inner doctrine," which they see behind the external forms, than upon the direct Koranic word. The inner meaning or doctrine which they read in such a verse as the following, which refers to the battle at Bedr, °Thou didst not shoot when thou didst shoot, hut Allah shot," minimizes individualism and makes the deity "all there is," but in no wise All.
Essentially, Sufism is an inner and personal experience or feeling of God. In this respect it is as original as any other mysticism, but in its outward forms it has borrowed, like any other mysticism, from its environment. Its im mediate cast is Mohammedan, hut its specula tive and doctrinal forms are in the main drawn from Parsceism, Peripatetic Philosophy and Neo-Platonism. From the first it draws a large part of its rich symbolism. The two latter were brought to it by the seven Greek philosophers whom Justinian's intolerance drove into exile and who found a welcome refuge at the court of Nushirwan, the Sassanian king. Sufis do not like to admit this, but it is a fact.
Sufism is primarily not a doctrine, but an experience, a "feeling." When it expresses it self intellectually it finds outlet in two principal doctrines, that of the One (Ahad) and the Way to the One (Tariqat). The first declares that there is not only "no god but God," but that there is nothing but God, a teaching which excludes all pantheism, inasmuch as it never says that the All is God, only that God is the All, and emphasizes that the world is a phan tom, an unreality. The second doctrine: "The Way to the One" contains the whole of the Sufis' ethics and is practically the main burden of all Sufi conversation. There are many methods or "Ways" (Tariqat) to "Union with God." They say "The Ways unto God are as the number of souls of men"; but they all begin with ascetic practices and end in a con templative beholding of the Divine.