Arabic Thought: Chapter VII. Sufism

This is a scholarly history chapter from De Lacy O'Leary's 1922 work on Arabic intellectual history, tracing the origins and development of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) from its early puritanical roots through its transformation into a neo-Platonic theological system. O'Leary argues that the word "Sufi" derives from the Arabic for "wool-clad" and that early Sufi-like figures were not true mystics but rather Islamic puritans emulating the Prophet's simple lifestyle as a protest against the worldliness of the Umayyad caliphate. A central claim is that later Sufism — emerging prominently in the 3rd century A.H. — represents a sharp break from this earlier tradition, absorbing neo-Platonic ideas (chiefly through the pseudo-Aristotelian *Theology of Aristotle*, actually an abridgment of Plotinus's *Enneads*) transmitted via Syriac and Persian intermediaries before and during the 'Abbasid translation movement. O'Leary contends that writers like al-Qushayri incorrectly linked early Islamic puritans to later Sufis, when the two were actually driven by entirely different motivations — tradition-observance versus mystical progress of the soul. The text is distinctive for its insistence on disentangling indigenous Islamic asceticism from the Hellenistic philosophical imports that gave mature Sufism its characteristic doctrines of poverty, mortification, and union with God.

Arabic Thought: Chapter VII. Sufism

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