The Origin and Evolution of Sufism

Abstract

The early Sufis believed that there were two dimensions to the revelations received by the Prophet, words of the Qur’an in their appearance, and the divine inspiration in his heart. This divinely inspired knowledge in the heart, Sufis claim, was gifted to only a chosen few, who contemplated and longed for nearness with the creator. The early Sufis also laid emphasis on one of the basic tenets of Islam i.e. i+san. I+san is that level of devotion where the devotee is completely absorbed in the worship of God. The ultimate aim of the Sufis is to raise the level of i+san to experience the presence of God. Since the Last Prophet (s.a.w.) was paragon of virtues including i+san, it was assumed that Sufism or Ta~awwuf originated from the Prophet himself. This paper aims to focus on the point of origin of ta~awwuf, on the one hand and the need for its revival, on the other.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.