School of thought
Sufism
Tradition
Classification
- Period
- c. 750 CE onward
- Regions
- Middle East (origin), South Asia, Africa
- Domains
- Aesthetics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion
Overview
Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam, seeking direct experiential knowledge of God through love, devotion, and inner purification. From Rabia's pure love of God to Ibn Arabi's metaphysics of the unity of being (later named wahdat al-wujud), Sufism developed a rich tradition of poetry, philosophy, and spiritual practice centered on the transformation of the heart.
Key ideas
- Fana (Annihilation): The dissolution of the ego-self in God. As Al-Hallaj declared, 'Ana al-Haqq' (I am the Truth/God) — not self-aggrandizement but the complete disappearance of self.
- Wahdat al-Wujud: The doctrine drawn from Ibn Arabi — there is only one Being (God), and the world is the self-disclosure of the divine names and attributes. Multiplicity is the mirror of divine unity. Ibn Arabi never used the phrase himself; his later followers and critics coined it as the name for his teaching.
- Divine Love: Rabia al-Adawiyya pioneered the Sufi theology of pure love: 'O God, if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell. If I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.'
Key figures
Rumi · Ibn Arabi · Al-Hallaj · Rabia al-Adawiyya · Al-Ghazali
Positions held
Influenced by
- Medieval Islamic Philosophy
The engagement is that of the later Sufis, Ibn Arabi above all, who cast his teaching in the philosophers' technical vocabulary — wujud for being, and the distinction between what exists necessarily and what exists only possibly — turning those terms to mystical ends.
- Neoplatonism
Ibn Arabi drew on Neoplatonic terminology to support his teaching of the unity of being.
Uncertain: How far this makes his thought Neoplatonic is disputed: his account of the world as a series of divine self-manifestations does not follow a Plotinian scheme of emanation.
Later connections
- Kabbalah Influenced by this tradition
Sufi mystical practice and theosophical vocabulary reached Jewish mystical writing through contact with the Islamicate world.
Uncertain: The route by which Sufi practice reached Jewish mystical writing is debated.
- Medieval Mysticism Influenced by this tradition
Direct borrowing is documented for Ramon Llull, who wrote that his Book of the Lover and the Beloved followed the manner of the Sufis.
Uncertain: Wider claims of Sufi influence on Christian mystics such as John of the Cross go back to Asín Palacios and remain debated.
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ibn 'Arabî
- Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (University of North Carolina Press, 1975)
- Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Shambhala, 1997) (the Chishti order centred at Ajmer and Delhi in South Asia, and North African orders such as the Shadhiliyya, among Sufism's long-standing principal centres)
- Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (1975), ch. 2; Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), chs. 1–2 — Formation: the early renunciants of Basra in the eighth century and the later Sufi circles of Baghdad.
- Ian Richard Netton, 'Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy', Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Routledge, 1998), §2 'The God of Islamic Neoplatonism' (Ibn al-'Arabi employs Neoplatonic terminology to bolster his doctrine of the Unity of Being, though the circularity of his thought precludes a classical Plotinian system of emanation, and 'theophanies' (tajalliyat) may render it better than 'emanations')
- The Masnavi — Rumi (trans. Jawid Mojaddedi)
- The Bezels of Wisdom — Ibn Arabi (trans. R. W. J. Austin)