Author's note: I thank Hamid Algar, Julia Clancy-Smith, Ira Lapidus, Barbara von Schlegell, and the anonymous readers for IJMES for helpful comments on earlier drafts. A version of this article was presented at the 1990 Middle East Studies Association meeting.

¹ For a discussion and critique of western interpretations of the relationship between Sufism and law, particularly Hanbali law, see Makdisi, George, “L'Islam Hanbalisant,” Revue des études islamiques 42 (1974): 211–44;Google Scholaribid., 43 (1975): 245–76.

² Key studies of Sufism in Khurasan include Chabbi, Jacqueline, “Remarques sur le développement historique des mouvements ascétiques et mystiques au Khurasan,” Studia Islamica 46 (1977): 5–72;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the following studies by Meier, Fritz: “Hurasan und das Ende der klassischen Sufik,” Atti del Convegno Internationale sul Tema: La Persia nel Medioevo (Rome, 1970), 545–70;Google Scholar and Abū Saʿīd-i Abū l-Ḫayr (357–490/967–1049): Wirklichkeit und Legende (Leiden, 1976).Google Scholar For brief discussions of the importance of the late 10th and 11th centuries in the history of Sufism, see Hourani, Albert, A History of the Arab Peoples (Oxford, 1991), 154–55;Google Scholar and Lapidus, Ira, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 1988), 169–71.Google Scholar For general treatments of Sufism in the medieval period, see Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1974), vol. 2,CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods, 201–54;Google ScholarSchimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975);Google Scholar and Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

³ Sufi manuals from the 13th century on will describe in detail at least three essential elements that made up a disciple's initiation: akhdh al-ʿahd, talqīn al-dhikr, and the libs al-khirqa. These elements are discussed, although not systematically, in a number of 1 lth-century texts.

⁴ This is the rule of the Sufi Abu Saʿid ibn Abi Khayr (d. 1049). A translation of this rule can be found in Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 243.Google Scholar

⁵ Bulliet's, RichardThe Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)Google Scholar gives a detailed account of the social and political history of Nishapur and provides biographies of key ulema families in Nishapur. Bulliet did not give an account of Sufism in Nishapur, but his work does provide important data and context for such a study. The studies of Wilferd Madelung are also helpful, especially his Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, N.Y., 1988).Google Scholar Fritz Meier (“Hurasan”) discussed the changing relations between masters and disciples in Khurasan; and Jacqueline Chabbi (“Remarques”) showed that Sufism was one among a number of mystical tendencies and movements in 9th- and 10th-century Khurasan.

⁶ For a history of the Ghaznavids, see Bosworth, C. E., The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran 994–1040 (Edinburgh, 1963);Google Scholar and for the Seljuqs, see The Cambridge History of Iran, (Cambridge, 1975), vol. 5,Google ScholarThe Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. Boyle, J. A.Google Scholar.

⁷ The two realms had diverged by the middle of the 9th century. For a discussion of the separation of political and religious authority in Sunni Islam, see Lapidus, Ira, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 363–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Key institutions such as the madrasa and the urban ribāṭ(an Arabic term for the Persian khānaqāh) seem to have originated in Khurasan. For a discussion of the Khurasanian origins of the madrasa, see Makdisi, George, “Muslim Institutions of Learning in Eleventh-Century Baghdad,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24 (1961): 1–56;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and for the early history of the ribāṭ, see Chabbi, Jacqueline, “Le fonction du ribāṭ à Baghdad du Ve siècle au début du Vile siècle,” Revue des études islamiques 42 (1974): 101–21.Google Scholar

⁹ For a brief discussion of the importance of Khurasan and Nishapur in medieval Islamic political and religious history, see Bulliet, Richard, “The Political-Religious History of Nishapur,” in Islamic Civilization: 950–1150, ed. Richards, D. S. (Oxford, 1973), 71–93.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Abu Nasr al-Sarraj, for example, devoted an entire section of his Kitāb al-lumaʿ to the imitation of the Prophet, and another to accounts demonstrating the piety of the Prophet's companions. Kalabadhi (d. 994) claimed that the Sufis existed in the era of the Prophet and were the elect of Muslim society: “These [the Sufis] were deposited by God among His creation, and chosen out of those whom God made: they were the people of his bench (ahl al-ṣuffa), and after his death they were the best of his community.” al-Kalābādhī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad, Kitāb al-taʿarruf (The Doctrine of the Sufis), trans. Arberry, (Cambridge, 1977), 2.Google Scholar

¹¹ When used with care these texts can tell us much about our period. Key Sufi sources used here are the following: al-Qushayrī, Abū Qāsim, Risāla fi ʿcilm al-taṣawwuf, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1966),Google Scholar and Meier, Fritz, ed., “Qushayri's Tartīb al-sulūk,” Oriens 16 (1963): 1–39;CrossRefGoogle Scholaral-Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya, ed. Pedersen, J. (Leiden, 1960);Google Scholaral-Ghazzālī, Abu Hamid, Ayyuhā al-walad, ed. Scherer, George (Beirut, 1951);Google Scholaridem, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-d'in, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1939); and al-Hujwīrī, ʿAlī ibn ʿUthmān, Kashf al-maḥjub, ed. Zukovskij, V. A. (Leningrad, 1926; reprint, Tehran, 1957).Google Scholar

¹² For important information on the early history of Sufism in Khurasan and a discussion of other mystical movements present in that region, see Chabbi, “Remarques.”

¹³ A discussion of the process by which Sufism became the main form of mysticism in Nishapur is beyond the scope of this essay. For one discussion of the various strands of piety in Khurasan and a possible explanation for the ultimate success of Sufism, see Chabbi, “Remarques.”

¹⁴ Bulliet used the Taʾrīkh Naysābūr by al-Ḥakīm al-Naysābūrī (d. 1015) and its continuation, known as the Al-Siyāq li-taʾrīkh Naysābūr (Sequel to the History of Nishapur) by ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al- Fārisī (d. 1134–35). These biographical dictionaries have been published in facsimile form by N. Frye, Richard. in The Histories of Nishapur (London, 1965);Google Scholar for Farisī, see also Muḥammad, Ibrāhīm ibn ṣarīfīnī (d. 1243), Al-Muntakhab min al-siyāq li-taʾrikh Nāysabūr (Beirut, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See the evidence assembled in Bulliet, , Patricians, 41–42.Google Scholar Other prominent Sufis from nearby regions who were Shafiʿi include Abu Nasr al-Sarraj of Tus, Abu Nuʿaym al-Isfahani, and Ahmad and Hamid al-Ghazzali of Tus. Two exceptions are Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Kalabadhi and103:43 ʿAli ibn ʿUthman al-Hujwiri of Ghazna who were Hanafi.

¹⁶ This can be found in Qushayrī, Risāla, 731–52.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Qushayrī, Risāla, 731–32.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid., 734–35.

¹⁹ Massignon, Louis, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane, rev. ed. (Paris, 1968), 128–29.Google Scholar

²⁰ Qushayri's silsila is as follows: Abu ʿAli al-Daqqaq, from Abu al-Qasim al-Nasrabadi, from Abu Bakr al-Shibli, from Junayd al-Baghdadi, from Sirri al-Saqati, from Maʿruf al-Kharkhi, from Daʾud al-Taʾi, from Habib al-ʿAjami, from Hasan al-Basri, from ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, from the Prophet.

²¹ For a list of Sulami's teachers and students, see Sharība's introduction to his edition of Sulamī's, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣūfiyya (Cairo, 1953), 20–27.Google Scholar

²² George Makdisi described how Ashʿari theology acquired a wider audience by being adopted and disseminated within certain circles of the Shafiʿi madhhab. Although his focus is on how theological movements achieved legitimacy, the process he describes is similar to the way in which Sufism became more widespread. See his “Ashʿari and the Ashʿarites in Islamic Religious History,” Studia lslamica 17 (1962): 44–46.Google Scholar

²³ Bulliet, Patricians, 54.Google Scholar

²⁴ For example, Abu Saʾd al-Astarabadi (d. 1048–49) was a Shafiʿi-Sufi who built a madrasa. And Abu Sahl al-Suʿluki, who was a prominent leader of the Shafiʿi party and a Sufi who initiated Sulami, took over the madrasa of Abu al-Walid al-Naysabūri (d. 960). For Abū Saʿd, see al-Subkī, Abū Naṣr, Ṭabaqāt al-ṣhāfʿiyya al-kubrā, (Cairo, 1964), 4:293–94.Google Scholar For Abū Sahl, see Kohlberg, E., ed., Jawāmiʿ ādāb al-ṣūfiyya and ʿUyūb al-nafs wa-mudāwātuhā (Jerusalem, 1976), 8.Google Scholar

²⁵ Bulliet, Patricians, 152, 250;Google ScholarFrye, Histories of Nishapur, 1:5b, 82b; 2:123a, 36a, 106a-b, 69a, 135b, 121b.Google Scholar

²⁶ Sulamī, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan fi al-taṣawwuf (Hyderabad, 1950).Google Scholar

²⁷ Madelung pointed out that Ibn Munawwar, the biographer of the Sufi Abu Saʿid ibn Abi Khayr, claimed that all Sufi masters since Shafiʿi had been Shafiʿis. Although Ibn Munawwar acknowledgesthat the founders of the law schools were all pious, he suggests that Hanafism, the madhhab associated with Muʿtazili theology which denied the miracles (karāmāt) of Sufis, was inappropriate for Sufis. See Madelung, , Religious Trends, 46;Google Scholar and Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥīd fi maqāmāt al shaykh Abū Saʿīd, trans. Achena, M. (Paris, 1974), 36–39.Google Scholar There is also now an English translation of the Asrār, see O'Kane, John, The Secrets of God's Mystical Oneness, or the Spiritual Stations of Shaikh Abū Saʿid (Costa Mesa, Calif., 1992).Google Scholar

²⁸ The manuscript of this work is incomplete; however, 94 hadith of and about Shafiʿi are retrievable and are available in Meier, Fritz, “Ein wichtiger Handschriftenfund zur Sufik,” Oriens 20 (1967): 91–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ For a list of those authorized to teach the Risāla, see Gramlich, Richard, Das Sendschreiben al- Qushayris iiber das Sufitum (Wiesbaden, 1989), 17.Google Scholar

³⁰ Meier, “Hurasan,” 546–47. I am indebted to Meier's insights for some of the following. For the relevant passages in Ibn ʿAbbad, see Nwyia, Paul, Ibn ʿAbbād de Ronda (1333–1390), Lettres de direction spirituelle (ar-Rasāʾil aṣ-Ṣughrā) (Beirut, 1958), 106–15, 125–38.Google Scholar

³¹ A student might, for example, ask a master about the meaning of a spiritual state such as tawakkul (complete reliance on God for sustenance), and the master's words would be committed to memory, passed on, and eventually written down.

³² It should be noted that these roles were not necessarily performed by different masters. Qushayri, for example, combined both functions: he taught texts and directed the spiritual training of novices.

³³ Qushayrī, Risāla, 735. In the same passage he also repeats the well-known saying of Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 874): “The one who has no master has Satan as his imām.

³⁴ Hujwīrī, , Kashf al-maḥjūb, 62.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., 19–20.

³⁶ Ghazzālī, , Ayyuhā al-walad, 16–17.Google Scholar

³⁷ Al-Suhrawardi put it this way: “The characters (akhlāq) of the masters have been polished through their perfection in modeling themselves after the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him. They are the most successful of people in revivifying his sunna, in all that he commanded and commissioned, censured and enjoined,” al-Suhrawardī, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar, ʿAwārif al-maʿārif (Beirut, 1983), 380.Google Scholar

³⁸ This work most probably belongs to the period after Ghazzālī had acquired an intensive experience of Sufism: that is, after 1095. These topics are taken up again later.

³⁹ Hujwīrī, , Kashf al-maḥjūb, 62.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Qushayrī, , Tartīb, 15; and Risāla, 736.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Qushayrī, , Tartīb, 15–16.Google Scholar

⁴² Oaths were an important way in which social bonds were formed in medieval Islamic society. For an analysis of the function of oaths in Buyid society, see Mottahedeh, Roy, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton, 1980), 40–62.Google Scholar His work focuses on the centrality of oaths in Islamic political life, but is also suggestive for other areas of Islamic social life.

⁴³ Qushayrī, , Risāla, 737;Google Scholar and Tartīb, 16–22.

⁴⁴ ʿAtā:ʾ, Ibnal-Iskandarī, Allāh (d. 1309), claimed in his introduction to his Miftāḥ al-falāḥ wa miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ (Cairo, 1961)Google Scholar, that his monograph on dhikr is the first known to him. Qushayri's treatment of dhikr in the Tartib, however, seems to be the earliest extensive treatment of dhikr as a spiritual practice transmitted from master to disciple. See Meier's, introduction to his edition of the Tartīb, 5–13.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ al-Rāzī, Najm al-Dīn, for example, devoted three chapters to dhikr in his Mirṣād al-ʿibād min almabdaʾ ilā al-maʿād (The Path of God's Bondsmen from Origin to Return), trans. Algar, Hamid (New York, 1982), 268–78.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Najm al-Din al-Razi wrote: “It is related of the Prophet that he once assembled a group of the foremost companions in a room and ordered them to close the door. He then said aloud, three times, lāilāha iliā Allāh, and commanded the companions to do likewise. They did so, and he then lifted up his hands and said: ‘O God, have I conveyed that which was to be conveyed?‧ Then he said, ‘Glad tidings be unto you, that God Almighty has forgiven your sins.’ The sheikhs of the Path have derived the transmission of dhikr from this sunna”; ibid., 277–78.

⁴⁷ Qushayrī, , Tartīb, 16.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Suhrawardi seems to have been the first to discuss systematically and distinguish between the various types of khirqas. See the section in his ʿAwārif al-maʿārif on the khirqa.

⁴⁹ “The adept, then, who has attained the perfection of saintship takes the right course when he invests the novice with the muraqqaʿa after a period of three years during which he has educated him in the necessary discipline.” Kashf al-maḥjūb, trans. Nicholson, Reynold, The “Kashf al-maḥjūb,” the Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism by al-Hujwīrī, Gibb Memorial Series, no. 17(1911; reprint, London, 1959), 54–55.Google ScholarHujwīrī, devotes an entire chapter to the wearing of the patched cloak, Kashf al-maḥjūb 49–65.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ For example: “Investment with the khirqa establishes a bond between the sheikh and the murīd and makes the murīd subject himself to the discipline of the sheikh … the khirqa is the symbol of the oath of investiture (mubāyaʿa)” (Suhrawardi, , ʿAwārif, 95Google Scholar).

⁵¹ Qushayrī, , Risāla, 736.Google Scholar A later writer put it this way: “The adab of the murīd towards the sheikh is that he is stripped of his own choice and does not act independently, either with respect to himself or his possessions, only upon the advice and command of the sheikh.” Suhrawardi, , ʿAwāʿrif, 364.Google Scholar]

⁵² Ghazzālī, , Ayyuhā al-walad, 17.Google Scholar

⁵³ Details can be found in both the Waṣiyya and Qushayrī, , TartībGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ See the section on firāsa in Qushayrī's Risāla.

⁵⁵ Hujwīrī, , Kashf al-maḥjݭb, 206–8.Google Scholar There are also plentiful examples of his talents in this area in Muḥammad ibn Munawwar, Asrār al-tawḥīd.

⁵⁶ Hujwīrī, , Kashf al-maḥjūb, 211–12.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ A reference to their relationship can be found in an anecdote about Farmadhi recounted in Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥīd, 136–37.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ This was a common injunction. Qushayri, for example, specifically advised the murīd to imitate the behavior (adab) of his sheikh. Qushayrī, , Risāla, 735.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Hujwīrī, , Kashf al-maḥjūb, 229–30;Google Scholar trans. Nicholson, 184.

⁶⁰ See the section on adab in Qushayrī, , Risāla.Google Scholar

⁶¹ One Sufi put it this way: “The righteous disciple regards and knows that the master is a reminder of God and His Messenger. The disciple who cleaves to the master accustoms himself to that which existed in the time of the Messenger and cleaves to the Messenger of God” (Suhrawardī, , ʿAwārif 369).Google Scholar

⁶² This is summed up in the well-known saying attributed to the Prophet: “The master in the midst of his disciples is like the Prophet among his people.”

⁶³ On this point, see Hamid Algar's introduction to Schlegell's, Barbara R. von partial translation of Qushayrī's Risāla: The Principles of Sufism (Berkeley, Calif., 1990).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Chabbi, , “Remarques,” 38–45, and her article “Khānḳāh in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.;Google Scholar see also Madelung, , Religious Trends, 44–46.Google Scholar For a good general introduction to the Karramiyya, see Bosworth, C. E., “The Rise of the Karamiyyah in Khurasan,” Muslim World 50 (1960): 5–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ The transformation of the older Karramiyya strongholds into Shafiʿi Sufi centers cannot be fully treated here. For further discussion of the Karramiyya and their khānaqāhs, see Bosworth, “The Karamiyyah”; Chabbi, “Remarques,” and “Khanḳāh”; Madelung, Religious Trends; and Bulliet, Patricians.

⁶⁶ For Sulami's, khānaqāhGoogle Scholar, see the references in Bulliet, , Patricians, 299,Google Scholar and the article on Sulami by Gerhard BOwering in the Encyclopaedia Iranica. For Daqqaq's khanaqah, see Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥīd, 57,Google Scholar and Bulliet, , Patricians, 250.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥīd, 136–37.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Muhammad ibn Munawwar describes one such foundation in his biography of the Sufi Abu Sacid. After meeting Abu Saʿid, a wealthy man bought a house that he transformed into a khanaqah and then installed forty Sufis in it, Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrdr al-tawhid, 180–81.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See Bausani, A., “Religion in the Saljuq Period,” in Cambridge History of Islam (1970), 5:300; and Chabbi, “Khanḳāh.”Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥīd, 183.Google Scholar

⁷¹ For the policies of Nizam al-Mulk regarding the madrasa, see Makdisi, “Muslim Institutions.”

⁷² For example, Qushayri strongly recommended that the disciple go on retreat; Qushayrī, , Risāla, 738.Google Scholar

⁷³ Abu Said was associated with the founding of a number of khānaqāhs. From about 1016 on, he maintained a khānaqāh in Nishapur. The ten basic rules he recorded for khānaqāh life recommend ritual purity, frequent prayer, and chanty, but no details are given on the organization or administration of the khānaqāh. For evidence on the way of life in the khānaqāh, see Munawwar, Muḥammad ibn, Asrār al-tawḥid, 79, 81, 97, 165, 180, 356.Google Scholar For a study of Abū Saʿid's life, see Meier, Fritz, Abū Saʿīd.Google Scholar