streamed into Islam from the Christian monasteries of Syria, from the Persian Academy of Jundēshāpūr in Khūzistan, and from the Ṣābians of Ḥarrān in Mesopotamia. The so-called “Theology of Aristotle,” which was translated into Arabic about A.D. 840, is full of Neoplatonic theories, and the mystical writings of the pseudo-Dionysius were widely known throughout western Asia. It is not mere coincidence that the doctrine of Gnosis was first worked out in detail by the Egyptian Ṣūfī, Dhu ’l-Nūn (d. A.D. 859), who is described as an alchemist and theurgist. Ṣūfīiism on its theosophical side was largely a product of Alexandrian speculation.
By the end of the 3rd century the main lines of the Ṣūfī mysticism were already fixed. It was now fast becoming an organized system, a school for saints, with rules of discipline and devotion which the novice was bound to learn from his spiritual director, to whose guidance he submitted himself absolutely. These directors regarded themselves as being in the most intimate communion with God, who bestowed on them miraculous gifts (karāmāt). At their head stood a mysterious personage called the Quṭb (Axis): on the hierarchy of saints over which he presided the whole order of the universe was believed to depend. During the next two hundred years (A.D. 900–1100), various manuals of theory and practice were compiled: the Kitāb al Lumaʽ by Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj, the Qūt al-Qulūb by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, the Risāla of Qushairī, the Persian Kashf al-Maḥjūb by ʽAlī ibn ‘Uthmān al-Hujwīrī, and the famous Iḥyā by Ghazālī. Inasmuch as all these works are founded on the same materials, viz., the Koran, the Traditions of the Prophet and the sayings of well-known Ṣūfī teachers, they necessarily have much in common, although the subject is treated by each writer from his own standpoint. They all expatiate on the discipline of the soul and describe the process of purgation which it must undergo before entering on the contemplative life. The traveller journeying towards God passes through a series of ascending “stations” (maqāmāt); in the oldest extant treatise these are (1) repentance, (2) abstinence, (3) renunciation, (4) poverty, (5) patience, (6) trust in God, (7) acquiescence in the will of God. After the “stations” comes a parallel scale of “states” of spiritual feeling (aḥwāl), such as fear, hope, love, &c., leading up to contemplation (mushāhadat) and intuition (yaqīn). It only remained to provide Ṣūfīism with a metaphysical basis, and to reconcile it with orthodox Islam. The double task was finally accomplished by Ghazālī (q.v.). He made Islamic theology mystical, and since his time the revelation (kashf) of the mystic has taken its place beside tradition (naql) and reason (ʽaql) as a source and fundamental principle of the faith. Protests have been and are still raised by theologians, but Moslem sentiment will usually tolerate whatever is written in sufficiently abstruse philosophical language or spoken in manifest ecstasy.
The Ṣūfīs do not form a sect with definite dogmas. Like the monastic orders of Christendom, they comprise many shades of opinion, many schools of thought, many divergent tendencies—from asceticism and quietism to the wildest extravagances of pantheism. European students of Ṣūfīism are apt to identify it with the pantheistic type which prevails in Persia. This, although more interesting and attractive than any other, throws the transcendental and visionary aspects of Ṣūfīism into undue relief. Nevertheless some account must be given here of the Persian theosophy which has fascinated the noblest minds of that subtle race and has inspired the most beautiful religious poetry in the World. Some of its characteristic features occur in the sayings attributed to Bāyezīd (d. A.D. 874), whom Buddhistic ideas unquestionably influenced. He said, for example, “I am the wine drinker and the wine and the cup-bearer,” and again, “I went from God to God, until the cried from me in me, ‘O Thou I.’ ” The peculiar imagery which distinguishes the poetry of the Persian Ṣūfīs was more fully developed by a native of Khorasan, Abū Sa‘īd ibn Abi’l-Khair (d. A.D. 1049) in his mystical quatrains which express the relation between God and the soul by glowing and fantastic allegories of earthly love, beauty and intoxication. Henceforward, the great poets of Persia, with few exceptions, adopt this symbolic language either seriously or as a convenient mask. The majority are Ṣūfīs by profession or conviction. “The real basis of their poetry,” says A. von Kremer, “is a loftily inculcated ethical system, which recognizes in purity of heart, charity, self-renunciation and bridling of the passions the necessary conditions of eternal happiness. Attached to this we find a pantheistic theory of the emanation of all things from God and their ultimate reunion with him. Although on the surface Islam is not directly assailed, it sustains many indirect attacks, and frequently the thought flashes out, that all religions and revelations are only the rays of a single eternal sun; that all prophets have only delivered and proclaimed in different tongues the same principles of eternal goodness and eternal truth which flow from the divine soul of the world.” The whole doctrine of Persian Ṣūfīism is expounded in the celebrated Mathnawī of Jalāluddīn Rūmī (q.v.), but in such a discursive and unscientific manner that its leading principles are not easily grasped. They may be stated briefly as follows:—
God is the sole reality (al-Ḥaqq) and is above all names and definitions. He is not only absolute Being, but also absolute Good, and therefore absolute Beauty. It is the nature of beauty to desire manifestation; the phenomenal universe is the result of this desire, according to the famous Tradition in which God says, “I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known, so I created the creatures in order that I might be known.” Hence the Ṣūfīs, influenced by Neoplatonic theories of emanation, postulate a number of intermediate worlds or descending planes of existence, from the primal Intelligence and the primal Soul, through which “the Truth” (al-Ḥaqq) diffuses itself. As things can be known only through their opposites, Being can only be known through Not-being, wherein as in a mirror Being is reflected; and this reflection is the phenomenal universe, which accordingly has no more reality than a shadow cast by the sun. Its central point is Man, the microcosm, who reflects in himself all the Divine attributes. Blackened on one side with the darkness of Not-being, he bears within him a spark of pure Being. The human soul belongs to the spiritual World and is ever seeking to be re-united to its source. Such union is hindered by the bodily senses, but though not permanently attainable until death, it can be enjoyed at times in the state called ecstasy (ḥāl), when the veil of sensual perception is rent asunder and the soul is merged in God. This cannot be achieved without destroying the illusion of self, and self-annihilation is wrought by means of that divine love, to which human love is merely a stepping-stone. The true lover feels himself one with God, the only real being and agent in the universe; he is above all law, since whatever he does proceeds directly from God, just as a flute produces harmonies or discords at the will of the musician; he is indifferent to outward forms and rites, preferring a sincere idolater to an orthodox hypocrite and deeming the ways to God as many in number as the souls of men. Such in outline is the Ṣūfī theosophy as it appears in Persian and Turkish poetry. Its perilous consequences are plain. It tends to abolish the distinction between good and evil—the latter is nothing but an aspect of Not-being and has no real existence—and it leads to the deification of the hierophant who can say, like Ḥuṣain b. Manṣur al-Ḥallāj, “I am the Truth.” Ṣūfī fraternities, living in a convent under the direction of a sheikh, became widely spread before A.D. 1100 and gave rise to Dervish orders, most of which indulge in the practice of exciting ecstasy by music, dancing, drugs and various kinds of hypnotic suggestion (see Dervish).
Bibliography.—Tholuck, Sufismus sive theosophia Persarum pantheistica (Berlin, 1821); Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik (Berlin, 1825); E. H. Palmer, Oriental Mysticism (Cambridge, 1867); Von Kremer, Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams (Leipzig, 1868); Goldziher, “Materialien zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des Sufismus” in W.Z.K.M. xiii. 35 sqq. “Die Heiligenverehrung im Islam” in Muhammedanische Studien, ii. 277 sqq. (Halle, 1890) “The Influence of Buddhism on Islam” in J.R.A.S. (1904), 125 sqq.; and Vorlesungen über den Islam, 139 sqq. (Heidelberg, 1910); E. H. Whinfield, the Gulshan-i-Rāz of Maḥmūd Shabistari, edited with translation and notes (London, 1880), and Abridged translation of the Masnavi (London, 1898); E. G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians (London, 1893); Merx, Ideen und Grundlinien einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Mystik (Heidelberg, 1893); H. Ethé, “Die mystische und didaktische Poesie” in Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, ii. 271 sqq. (Strassburg, 1896–1904); Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry, especially i. 33 sqq. (London, 1900–1907); D. B. Macdonald, “Emotional religion in Islam,” in J.R.A.S. (1901–1902); Development of Muslim theology (New York, 1903) and The religious attitude and life in Islam (Chicago, 1909); R. A. Nicholson, Selected poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz (Cambridge, 1898). “Enquiry concerning the origin and development of Sūfīism ” in J.R.A.S (1906), 303 sqq., and Translation of the Kashfal-Maḥjūb (London, 1910); Sheikh Muhammad Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (London, 1908). (R.A.N.)
SUGAR, in chemistry, the generic name for a certain series of carbohydrates, i.e. substances of the general formula Cn(H2O)m. Formerly the name was given to compounds having a sweet taste, e.g. sugar of lead, but it is now restricted to certain oxy-aldehydes and oxy-ketones, which occur in the vegetable and animal kingdoms either free or in combination as glucosides (q.v.) and to artificial preparations of similar chemical structure. Cane sugar has been known for many centuries; milk sugar was obtained by Fabrizio Bartoletti in 1615; and in the middle of the 18th century Marggraf found that the sugars yielded by the
