sufficient reason, principle of See LEIBNIZ. Sufism (from Arabic fufi, ‘mystic’), Islamic mysticism. The Arabic word is tafawwuf. The philosophically significant aspects of Sufism are its psychology in its early phase and its epistemology and ontology in its later phase. The early practices of asceticism, introspection, and meditation on God and the hereafter as depicted in the Koran eventually developed in classical Sufism (eighth–eleventh centuries) into the spiritual journey of the mystic, the successive stages of which were described with a sophisticated psychological terminology. Sufis differentiated two levels of spiritual attainment: the first was that of ‘stations’ (maqamat) that were reached through individual effort, abnegation, and spiritual exercises (e.g., tawakkul, ‘selfless trust in God’, fabr, ‘patience’, etc.). The characteristic they all shared was that the Sufi, through an act of the will and deliberate deeds, suppressed his individual ego and its concomitant attachment to worldly things and emotions in order to become receptive to the following level of ‘states’ (ahwal), which were vouchsafed to him through God’s grace. These culminated in the goal of the mystical quest, the final states of bliss, which were variously identified by Sufis, according to their proclivities, as love (mahabba, later ‘ishq), mystical knowledge (ma’rifa), and the total loss of ego consciousness and the concomitant absorption and subsistence in and through God (fana’ and baqa’). The language describing these stages and states was allusive and symbolical rather than descriptive. Sufism, which was viewed initially with suspicion by the authorities and the orthodox, was integrated into mainstream belief in the eleventh century, primarily through the work of al-Ghazali (d.1111). After al-Ghazali, the theoretical and practical aspects of Sufism, which had previously gone hand in hand, developed in different ways. At the popular level, Sufi practices and instruction were institutionalized in fraternities and orders that, ever since, have played a vital role in all Islamic societies, especially among the disenfranchised. Life in the orders revolved around the regimented initiation of the novices to the Sufi path by the master. Although theoretical instruction was also given, the goal of the mystic was primarily achieved by spiritual practices, chiefly the repetition of religious formulas (dhikr). Among the intellectuals, Sufism acquired a philosophical gloss and terminology. All the currents of earlier Sufism, as well as elements of Neoplatonic emanationism drawn from Arabic philosophy, were integrated into a complex and multifaceted system of ‘theosophy’ in the monumental work of Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240). This system rests on the pivotal concept of ‘unity of being’ (wahdat al-wujud), according to which God is the only being and the only reality, while the entire creation constitutes a series of his dynamic and continuous self-manifestations. The individual who combines in himself the totality of these manifestations to become the prototype of creation, as well as the medium through which God can be known, is the Perfect Man, identified with the Prophet Muhammad. The mystic’s quest consists of an experiential (epistemological) retracing of the levels of manifestations back to their origin and culminates in the closest possible approximation to the level of the Perfect Man. Ibn ‘Arabi’s mystical thought, which completely dominated Sufism, found expression in later times primarily in the poetry of the various Islamic languages, while certain aspects of it were reintroduced into Arabic philosophy in Safavid times.
See also AL-GHAZA ALII, ARABIC PHILOSOPH. D.Gu.