The Sufi Orders

The mystical movement in Islam sprang, as we have seen, out of asceticism and was represented in its earliest phase by the personalities of individual men and women who, whether in town or desert-—but especially in desert— devoted themselves singly and exclusively to the service of God and the joyous experience of His Grace. This period was followed by an age in which theory went hand in hand with practice, and famous shaikhs, themselves holy men, taught the nascent doctrine of Sufism to disciples, either solitary or in groups. The Persian theorist Hujwīrī, writing in the 5/11th century, enumerates several schools of mysticism which transmitted the teachings of the masters. The relation of teacher and pupil, familiar in other disciplines, presently developed into the characteristic Sufi counterpart of elder (shaikh, pīr) and disciple (murīd, shāgird); and convents (ribāt, khānqāh) were founded and endowed where a celebrated saint would reside with a group of his followers, who studied under him and worshipped with him for a shorter or a longer period. Initiation into the Sufi mysteries was marked by the investiture of a special frock (khirqa) symbolising his acceptance of and into a tradition of Divine service mounting back stage by stage to the Prophet Muhammad. So, Abū Sa’īd b. Abi ‘1-Khair (b.357/967) received his khirqa successively from al-Sulamī and Abu ‘1-’Abbas al-Qassāb. ¹ It is important to remark that residence in a Sufi convent by no means implied celibacy, and most of the famous Muslim mystics are known to have been married. So they interpreted the Tradition ascribed to Muhammad, “No monkery (rakbāniya) in Islam.”