ABSTRACT
Scholars have asserted that the subject of the organization of the Sufi orders and their relations with the population at large raises important questions for which the sources fail to provide satisfactory answers.1 One reason for this is that mediaeval writers took it for granted that the organization and structure of the various orders were known to their readers. Another difficulty arises from the multifaceted nature of Sufism as a social phenomenon. The nature of the Sufi connections differed according to individual shaykhs, orders, regions, and so on.
