judgment, and the brief passage of earthly life. Similar devotees, claimed as Sufis by later Sufi writers, but more properly devotees who were their precursors, appear in the course of the 2nd century, such as Ibrahim b. Adham (d. 162), Da'ud of Tayy (d. 165), Fadayl of 'Iyad (d. 188), Ma'ruf of Karkh (d. 200), and others, both men and women. Amongst these there was gradually evolved the beginnings of an ascetic theology in traditional sayings and narratives of their lives and conduct, a hagiology which lays great emphasis upon their penances and self mortification. Of this material the most important is the recorded teaching of Ma'ruf of Karkh, from which we may quote the definition of Sufism as "the apprehension of divine realities," which, in a slightly altered sense perhaps, becomes the keynote of later Sufism.
Can we trace the origin of these early recluses? Von Kremer (Herrsch, p. 67) considers this type as a native Arab growth developed from pre-Islamic Christian influences. Christian monasticism we know was familiar to the Arabs in the country fringing the Syrian desert and in the desert of Sinai: of this we have evidence both in Christian writers like Nilus and in the pre-Islamic poets, as in the words of Imru l-Qays:—
Friend, see the lightning—it flashed and is gone,
like the flashing of two hands on a crowned pillar:
Did its blaze flash forth? or was it the lamp of a
monk who poured oil on the twisted wick?"
