THE NATURE OF SUFISM 5

 

tion to the forms which they deny because they fail to
understand them. Now this role of Sufism in the
Islamic world! is indeed like that of the heart in man,
for the heart is the vital centre of the organism and also,
in its subtle reality, the ‘‘seat” of an essence which
transcends all individual form.

Because orientalists were anxious to bring every-
thing down to the historical level it could hardly be ex-
pected that they would explain this double aspect of
Sufism otherwise than as the result of influences coming
into Islam from outside and, according to their various
preoccupations they have indeed attributed the origins
of Sufism to Persian, Hindu, Neo-Platonic or Christian
sources. But these diverse attributions have ended by
cancelling one another, the more so because there is no
adequate reason for doubting the historical authenticity
of the spiritual “descent’ of the Sufi masters, a descent
which can be traced in an unbroken ‘“‘chain® (silsilah)
back to the Prophet himself. The decisive argument in
favour of the Muhammadan origin of Sufism lies, how-
ever, in Sufism itself. If sufic wisdom came from a
source outside Islam, those who aspire to that wisdom—
which is assuredly neither bookish nor purely mental in
its nature—could not rely on the symbolism of the Quran
for realising that wisdom ever afresh, whereas in fact

1. Thisrefers to Sufism in itself, not to its initiatic organisations. Human
groups may take on more or less contingent functions despite their connection
with Sufism; the spmtual elite is hardly to be re\,ogmsed from outside. Again,
it is a well- known fact that many of the most eminent defenders of Islamic,
orthodoxy, such as ‘Abd al-Qader Jilani, al-Ghazali or the sulmn Salah ad-
Din (Saladin), were connected with Sufism.

tion ; such movements are not intellectually free in rela-