Though the roots of Islamic mysticism formerly were supposed to have stemmed from various non-Islamic sources in ancient Europe and even India, it now seems established that the movement grew out of early Islamic asceticism that developed as a counterweight to the increasing worldliness of the expanding Muslim community; only later were foreign elements that were compatible with mystical theology and practices adopted and made to conform to Islam.

Some scholars traced the origin of Sufism from the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., when a new emphasis began to develop within the religion of Islam. This emphasis was a reaction against the prevailing impersonal and formal nature of Islam. For many Muslims the Shari’ah, while seen as necessary, failed to satisfy their deepest spiritual longings and desires. The search for deeper meaning began with a pietistic asceticism, which in turn led to the development of the popular mystical side of Islam – known as tasawwuf or Sufism.

Islamic mysticism had several stages of growth, including

1. the appearance of early asceticism,
2. the development of a classical mysticism of divine love, and
3. the rise and proliferation of fraternal orders of mystics. Despite these general stages, however, the history of Islamic mysticism is largely a history of individual mystic experience.

The first stage of Sufism appeared in pious circles as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad period (AD 661-749). From their practice of constantly meditating on the Qur’anic words about Doomsday, the ascetics became known as “those who always weep” and those who considered this world “a hut of sorrows.” They were distinguished by their scrupulous fulfillment of the injunctions of the Qur’an and tradition, by many acts of piety, and especially by a predilection for night prayers.

The introduction of the element of love, which changed asceticism into mysticism, is ascribed to Rabi’ah al-’Adawiyah (died 801), a woman from Basra who first formulated the Sufi ideal of a love of God that was disinterested, without hope for paradise and without fear of hell. In the decades after Rabi’ah, mystical trends grew everywhere in the Islamic world, partly through an exchange of ideas with Christian hermits. A number of mystics in the early generations had concentrated their efforts upon tawakkul, absolute trust in God, which became a central concept of Sufism. An Iraqi school of mysticism became noted for its strict self-control and psychological insight.

The Iraqi school was initiated by al-Muhasibi (died 857)–who believed that purging the soul in preparation for companionship with God was the only value of asceticism. Its teachings of classical sobriety and wisdom were perfected by Junayd of Baghdad (died 910), to whom all later chains of the transmission of doctrine and legitimacy go back. In an Egyptian school of Sufism, the Nubian Dhu an-Nun (died 859) reputedly introduced the technical term ma’rifah (“interior knowledge”), as contrasted to learnedness; in his hymnal prayers he joined all nature in the praise of God–an idea based on the Qur’an and later elaborated in Persian and Turkish poetry. In the Iranian school, Abu Yazid al-Bistami (died 874) is usually considered to have been representative of the important doctrine of annihilation of the self, fana’; the strange symbolism of his sayings prefigures part of the terminology of later mystical poets. At the same time the concept of Divine Love became more central, especially among the Iraqi Sufis. Its main representatives are Nuri, who offered his life for his brethren, and Sumnun “the Lover.”