SherAli Tareen
Annotated Bibliography: Sufism
Categories of Scholarship on Sufism
History of Sufism:
Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975.
This is the first most significant work to emerge in post-Hodgson scholarship on
Sufism. This book is at once quite comprehensive and easily accessible. Although
Schimmel discusses Sufism from multiple dimensions, her primary emphasis is on the
literary expression of Sufi thought and practice. Although she does seem to be somewhat
focused on South Asia, I think this book will serve as a very good choice for an
introductory course on Islam. She has covered a very wide range of topics in this book
including Sufi history, Sufi theosophy, Turkish mystical poetry, Indo-Pakistani Sufism
among others. It is arranged chronologically from the rise of Islam to the modern day and
it also has some very interesting phenomenological discussion on the ‘states’ and
‘stations’ that a Sufi practitioner typically goes through. She also has 2 very useful
appendices on letter symbolism in Sufi literature and on the feminine element in Sufism
that I think are worth looking into. And she also has very useful indexes of Quranic
quotations, names and places which will be useful for beginners.
Spencer Trimingham. The Sufi Orders in Islam. New York: Oxford University Press,
1971.
Drawing on an extensive range of sources, Trimingham delineates the formation and
development of organized Sufism. His project in this book is rather ambitious in that he
attempts to trace the historical and geographical development of Sufism from its early
formation through to the contemporary period. There is a wealth of information on the
formation of Sufi orders, on the lines tracing the descent of Sufi masters as well as lists of
the major orders and their many off-shoots.
Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics:
Edited by Frederick De Jong and Bernd Radke, Leiden: Brill, 1999.
This book is an enormous volume of 35 essays from a very distinguished group of
scholars on Sufism. These essays encompass not only the expected controversies and
polemics between Sufis and Ulama (or traditional Islamic scholars) about the legitimacy
of Sufism, but it also covers debates that have existed among Sufis themselves as they
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have struggled for political power and authority to define “true” Sufism. This volume
provides a very comprehensive overview of not only the theological, historical and
institutional issues that are pertinent to the study of Sufism, but it also gives a good sense
of the various contemporary scholarly approaches that are being implemented in studying
Sufi thought and practice.
Institutional Sufism:
Arthur Buehler. Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise
of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi
Shaykh is an important contribution to the study of the Naqshbandi Sufi order that
originated in Central Asia and is today one of the major Sufi orders in South Asia and
elsewhere. Buehler has discussed the ways in which the Naqshbandis have gone about
linking themselves to the legacy of the Prophet. The focus of his study is on the role of
the Shaykh (Sufi master) in the history of Sufism with particular references to Sufi
understandings of Muhammad’s personality and functions. Buehler’s study is very useful
in that it covers an area of Islamic studies that is quite applicable in a variety of different
contexts, this whole idea of Muhammad’s significance in Islam both for his role as the
religion’s historical founder and as the exemplary model emulated by Muslims in
different ways.
This book is also useful in understanding the processes involved in the geographic
movement of a Sufi order from one place to another. In the first half of this book, Buehler
spends quite some time discussing the movement of Naqshbandi Sufis from Central Asia
to India in the 16th century an how these newly arrived Sufi masters went about adapting
their worldview according to the new environment that they found themselves in. Buehler
also does a good job of talking about some of the most distinguishing features of
Naqshbandi Sufis such as an emphasis on a living-directing Shaikh instead of an
emphasis on the veneration of deceased masters, the importance of genealogies and
spiritual chains (silsilas) in the evolution of religious authority and so forth. But overall,
this book is most significant in providing a useful theoretical approach to studying the
interrelation between the symbolism of Muhammad’s example and the articulation of
Sufi religious authority.
Carl Ernst. Eternal garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi
Center. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
This is another important work on institutional Sufism that takes place in the Chishti
shrine of Khuldabad in Northern India. The Chishtis are perhaps the most significant Sufi
order in both pre-modern and contemporary South Asia. The first part of this book
provides a detailed overview of the methodological and historiographic issues that are
important in the study of Sufism and of Islam in India. There is a discussion on the
problems associated with both Indian and Pakistani nationalist historiographies, mainly
the problem of projecting a strictly positivist attitude towards doing history. And then
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there are 2 separate chapters on medieval Islamic views of India and medieval Indian
views of Islam that are also very helpful in giving some sense of the intellectual issues
involved in studying South Asian Islam. The focus of this book though is on the social
and political history of the Khuldabad Chishtis in the Indian Deccan, especially as it
relates to the institutional practices associated with a Sufi master by the name of Burhan
ad-Din Gharib (d.1337), who was a disciple of another very famous Indian Sufi by the
name of Nizam ad-Din Awliya.
From a methodological standpoint, this book is significant in that it really brings to
light some of the major ways in which a Sufi order can serve as a potent force for
legitimizing spiritual and political authority, and how that process of legitimization takes
place within a local context, which in this case is Northern India. In this respect, Eternal
Garden really brings to focus some of the ways in which mysticism and politics intersect,
and how that intersection defines the communal identity of a given Sufi order, which in
this case are the Chishtis of Khuldabad. Another important contribution of this book is its
demonstration that the early Sufi works that are associated with the Khuldabad Chishtis
are very strongly grounded in classical Islamic learning, and it thus problematizes the
overly simplistic idea of these medieval Sufis being these syncretic folksy types who
were completely disengaged from the classical Islamic tradition. So regardless of your
level of interest in Indian Sufism, this book does serve as a useful pedagogical tool to talk
about some of these important issues that apply to the study of Sufism in general.
Social-Scientific/Ethnographic Studies of Sufism
Valerie Hoffman. Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt is an extraordinary ethnographic study of
Sufism in modern Egypt. Valerie Hoffman conducted extensive and active field-research
as a young mother with a nursing child in tow. A lot of Hoffman’s discussion in this
book is very imaginative and also quite personal, as she talks about her relationship with
a Shaikh in Cairo, and the dynamics of this master-disciple relationship despite the author
not being Muslim. Hoffman also emphasizes and indeed argues for the continuity
between classical Islam and contemporary Sufism in Egypt.
In addition to showing a strong connection between Classical Islam and modern
Egyptian Sufism, Hoffman has further argued that the scriptural basis for contemporary
Sufism is provided by the Sufism that prevailed between the eighth through the thirteenth
centuries. In a somewhat similar fashion to Arthur Buehler’s argument about the
Naqshbandi Sufis in India, Hoffman also focuses on the importance of devotion to the
Prophet’s family in contemporary Egyptian Sufism. Hoffman also has a very interesting
discussion on issues of women and sexuality in Sufi life, the only such discussion that I
came across in the books on contemporary Sufism that I surveyed.
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Katherine Ewing. Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam.
Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 1997.
This is an anthropological analysis of Sufis located in Lahore, Pakistan.
Methodologically, Ewing’s approach is quite novel in that she has uses Lacan’s
psychoanalytic theory to investigate psychological processes embedded in the
relationship between Sufi masters (or Pirs) and their mostly middle-class Pakistani clients.
So in some ways, arguing sainthood is an exploration of the complexities and
contradictions of middle-class religion in Lahore, Pakistan. She discusses in some depth
the intersections of black magic, Sufism, political ideology, and religion. She also
documents the ways in which the modern state of Pakistan has been seeking to control
popular Sufism, often by taking over several of the most lucrative and popular shrines. So
Ewing has demonstrated that Pakistan represents a very effective case study to analyze
the ways in which a state might intervene in the functionality of Sufi masters to serve as
spiritual mediators between humans and God. So instead of calling these Sufi masters
spiritual mediators you can call them poets, social reformers or educated scholarsanything that diminishes that meditative functionality.
Another noteworthy and perhaps the most applicative aspect of Ewing’s work relates to
her discussion on the ways in which Pakistanis negotiate the clash between modern
rationality and traditional superstition. Another theme that runs throughout Ewing’s work
is the contradictions between public and private personas as held by clients of the Sufi
Pirs. For instance, in one of her case studies she talks about a woman who felt that her
life had been transformed by a cure affected by a Sufi Pir but then she goes on to accuse
him of being a fraud. But I think Ewing’s ethnographic/psychoanalytic methodology
allows her to explain such contradictions in a very effective fashion.
Sufism and Metaphysics
William C. Chittick. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of
Imagination. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
William Chittick is perhaps the most prolific scholar on Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240), who
is widely recognized as one of the most if not the most influential mystical thinkers in the
history of Islam. There are very few areas of Islamic thought and spirituality where you
do not find some trace of Ibn al-Arabi’s influence. Originally from Andalusia, he spent
time in North Africa, Anatolia, Mecca and eventually died in Syria. The Sufi Path of
Knowledge is a very comprehensive and detailed exposition of Ibn al-Arabi’s life and
thinking. It is meant to be an introductory book on Ibn al-Arabi’s metaphysics but some
of the discussion in this book is quite technical and dense.
The crux of his argument in is quite apparent from the title, mainly that Ibn al-Arabi’s
metaphysics cannot be understood without reference to his view of imagination, and his
view of imagination cannot be grasped without internalizing his metaphysics. And I think
for the purposes of an introductory course on Islam, one can get a decent flavor of
Chittick’s argument by going through the first chapter which is appropriately called
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‘overview’ in which Chittick argues that Ibn al-Arabi was chiefly concerned with the idea
of divine unity. And he has done a good job of summarizing Ibn al-Arabi’s
understandings of such critical concepts as divine acts, divine attributes, human
perfection and so forth. The rest of the chapters are entitled ‘ontology, ‘epistemology’,
‘Hermeneutics’, ‘soteriology’ and consummation. But again I think for an intro level
course chapter 1 is really more than enough to acquire a workable understanding of the
metaphysical concerns that drove Ibn al-Arabi’s writings.
Sufism and Gender
Ahmed T. Karamustafa. God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Later Middle
Period: 1200-1550. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994.
This is a highly fascinating book on Sufism in Ottoman Turkey between the thirteenth
and mid-sixteenth centuries. Basically this book is an interpretive analysis of antinomian
Dervish groups that existed on the peripheries of both organized Sufism and the broader
society in general.
Introductory Books on Sufism:
Carl W. Ernst. Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.
William Chittick. Sufism: A Short Introduction. Boston: One-world Publications, 2000.
Alexander Knysh. Islamic Mysticism: A Short History. Leiden, Brill. 2000.
Other Widely Cited Works
Michael Sells. trans., Early Islamic Mysticism, Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1996.
John Renard. trans., Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology,
Classics of Western Spirituality Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004.
The Heritage of Sufism, vol. 1, Classical Persian Sufism from its Origins to Rumi (700-1300), ed.
Leonard Lewisohn.
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Louis Massignon. The passion of al-Hallaj: mystic and martyr of Islam, trans. Herbert W. Mason
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Alexander D. Knysh. Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in
Medieval Islam, SUNY Series in Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Michael Sells. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
William C. Chittick. Faith and practice of Islam: three thirteenth century Sufi Texts . Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992.
Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence. Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and
Beyond. New York: Palgrave Press, 2002.
Carl W. Ernst. Words of Ecstasy in Sufism. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1985.
Shemeem Burney Abbas. The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and
India. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2002.
Shahzad Bashir. Messianic hopes and mystical visions: the Nūrbakhshīya between medieval and modern
Islam. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Jamal Elias. The throne carrier of God: the life and thought of Alā ad-Dawla as-Simnānī. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1995.
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Cyber Sufism:
For a detailed listing of Sufi websites, go to http://www.unc.edu/depts/sufilit/links.htm.
http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/index.html
http://www.uga.edu/islam/Sufism.html
http://www.armory.com/~thrace/sufi/
http://www.hayatidede.org/links.htm
http://www.naqshbandi.com/
http://www.chishti.ru
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