The zuhd literature that has come down to us consists of a large number of sayings (many of them very obviously Christian in origin, some citations even from the Bible) and accounts of early Muslim ascetics (Khalidi). The asceticism that they practiced focused upon forms of spiritual excess (staying the night in prayer, doing supererogatory actions, meditation), bodily deprivation (fasting, extensive denial of sleep), and embracing holy poverty. Little mention is made in the sources of the extensive beatings and other bodily mortifications that are part of Christian asceticism. In general, the Muslim ascetic was one who embraced the contempt of early Muslim elites, dressing in rags, associating with the poor, and performing base occupations (like herding animals, blood-letting, or professional mendicancy), but he still tended to live in cities or at least in populated areas rather than seeking out complete isolation. If one could point to an obvious difference between Christian and Muslim ascetics, it would be that the latter were urban and practiced their asceticism within civilization rather than outside of it.

Probably the most obvious characteristic of these early ascetics was the remembrance of God, called dhikr(remembrance or recollection). In Qur’an 2:152 it states: “Remember Me and I will remember you. Give thanks to Me and do not be ungrateful.” This constant dhikr of God became emblematic of both early ascetics and later Sufis and involved the attempt to clear the mind completely of all thoughts that did not center on God through constant repetition of the ninety-nine names of God (al-asma’ al-husna) or other mantric formulae. Even today the dhikr ceremony is basic to Sufi practice, although many local variations are found.

What Is Sufism?

By the beginning of the 9th century Muslim ascetic ideas coalesced around the term Sufism, with its singular “Sufi,” meaning “wool-wearer.” It is uncertain where this term came from or why precisely it came to be emblematic of Islamic mysticism. Many theories have been advanced, the most obvious of which is that possibly the early Sufis did wear this type of wool, although no evidence has been found that they, in fact, did. Suffice it to say that the Sufi movement took over the zuhd heritage in its entirety and many of its spiritual examples, such as al-Hasan al-Basri, Rabiʾa al-ʿAdawiyya, ʿAbdallah b. al-Mubarak, and Ibrahim b. Adham, were actually ascetics and belonged to the period before Sufism arose. Stories about them became mainstays in the Sufi literature from then until the present time.

Sufism has always suffered from a certain ambiguous relationship toward Islam, however. To begin with, Sufis embraced a lifestyle that stood in opposition to that of many Muslims, who embraced the Qur’anic notion of “it is no offense to seek a bounty from your Lord” (2:198), which meant to accept worldly success. There was also the major issue of the mystical nature of the union with God sought by Sufis and the practical implications of their relationship toward Muslim law (the Sharia). For many Sufis, the absolute love that they felt for God and the union they enjoyed with Him liberated them from the strictures of the law, which they felt was merely for those people who were in need of some form of coercion in order to compel them to behave. What need had Sufis for the five daily prayers, basic to Islam in all of its forms, when they were constantly in prayer to God day and night?

Moreover, some Sufis took their union with God in a direction that implied complete identification with God, and perhaps even a complete dissolution of self (the fana’ or cessation of being that was the goal of most Sufi systems). Probably the best known of these Sufis was the mystic Mansur al-Hallaj (c. 858–922), who was said to have stated in an ecstatic state (hal): “I am the Truth” (ana al-haqq), a statement that implied that he was God (or at least unified with Him). Al-Hallaj was crucified for these words, a fate that he made no attempt to hinder as he desired the mystical annihilation of fana’. But Sufism in general suffered as its opponents were able to demonize it as negation of the unity of God (a basis of Islam).

The other side of Sufism was more establishment in nature, one that embraced a duality between the open observance of the Sharia and the private observance of the Sufi rituals of dhikr and self-deprivation. Sufis who lived in this manner were able to avoid spiritual ostentation. An interesting off-shoot of this tendency was that of the Malamatiyya, a movement current in eastern Iran from the 10th to the 12th centuries, which sought to keep its orthodoxy entirely out of the public eye while at the same time performing good deeds in private and deliberately courting the contempt and rejection of the public. This formula was designed to avoid the spiritual pride that the Malamatis felt was characteristic of the impoverished and abstemious lifestyle of mainstream Sufis—these latter could revel in their relative poverty just as much as more successful Muslim could in their wealth.