The popular expression of the dhikr amongst the Sufi communities of Eastern Europe A dhikr in the Sinaniyya tekke in Sarajevo, in 1890, as

Dr Martin Lings, in his What is Sufism? (University of California Press, 1977), discusses several aspects of the dhikr (or zikr) amongst the Sufis, whether the latter be fully initiated members of the brotherhoods, or whether they be aspiring novices (murı¯ds). He writes:

Another means of becoming submerged in the nature of the Prophet is to recite his names and the litanies that are associated with them. Yet another, the most direct of all, is to dwell in particular on one of these names, ‘Dhikru’llah’, the Remembrance of God, and to become like him a personification of all this name implies (page 44).