Without going into the details of the early and subsequent development
of the Sufi orders
8
(sing.
silsila
pl.
salasil
meaning “chain, lineage”; or
tariqa
pl.
taruq
meaning “the way”) it can be safely assumed that the different Sufi
orders were and still are founded on a unique system based on the relationship
between the master and a disciple, in Arabic, respectively
murshid
(guide,
mentor) and
murid
(aspirant). To follow the Sufi path (
tariqa
) it has always
been necessary to accept the authority and guidance of those who have already
passed through its various stages (sing.
maqam
, pl.
maqamat
).
The Sufi masters believe that every man has an inherent ability to
achieve a release from the self and obtain a union with God. However, this
ability being merely latent, the aspirant cannot attain it by himself, without
the guidance of a mentor. It is only a mentor who can lead him to the ways
of proper meditation so that, finally, he may acquire an insight into spiritual
truth.According to Sufism
,ma‘arifah
, which means gnosis, cannot be reached
through intellectual exercise but solely through ecstatic states.A celebrated
theologian and theorist of mysticism, Abu Hamid Muhammad al Ghazzali
(d. 1111), who is famous within the mainstream of Islam as an authority on
fiqh
(jurisprudence) as well as for his perfectly argued and clearly articulated
attacks on the philosophers, writes of his own realization of Truth: “I knew
that the complete mystic ‘way’ includes both intellectual belief and practical
activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in
stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart
may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of
Him... It became clear to me, however, that what is most distinctive of
mysticism is something which cannot be apprehended by study, but only by
8
See for example,
The Sufi Orders in Islam
by J.S.Trimingham, Oxford, 1971, or particular entries
in the Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, Leiden, 1961 and after.
