When foreign lands were conquered, and the Mohammedan state became a great world power, the simple, upright life of Abu Bekr and Omar, the first successors of Mohammed, was soon left far behind. The caliphate became a scandal, the lesser officials were too often tyrants and profligates, and the common people, as usual, followed the example of their rulers to the best of their ability. The devout minority felt that the faith once delivered to the saints was going to the dogs. Wherever they turned they saw greed, the pursuit of luxury, loose morals, and neglect of religious duties. The Koran, the Word of God, though nominally reverenced was really made a mockery. They had thought of Islam as a unit, but were now horrified to see it breaking up into rival camps warring fiercely with one another. No wonder that spontaneously in various Mohammedan lands there arose companies or fraternities pledged to an ascetic life, in strong reaction against the prevailing worldliness. "Back to Allah!" was their watchword, and they found the true meaning of islãm in such maxims as these: This life is of no account in comparison with the life to come; Take no thought what you shall eat or drink; Cast yourself wholly upon God, if you will serve him. Just as these ideas appealed to the first Christian ascetics, or to the followers of Peter Waldus or Ignatius Loyola, so they appealed to many Mohammedans. From such beginnings arose the Sufi community, which eventually built its monasteries and formulated its monastic rules, after the manner of its Christian predecessors.

It is true that Mohammed had looked with little favor on the monkish scheme of things, and did not wish to see his followers live celibate or conspicuously ascetic lives. But the Koran abounds in exhortations to despise the present world with its pride and luxury, and the Sufi had the best of authority for his tenets. The strict devotees not only shunned the temptations of wealth and comfort, but also

gave up their trades and professions. How could a man really trust in God who relied on his day's wages? More and more they gave themselves over to religious contemplation. The Koran, as we have seen, gives little attention to cultivating a state of mind, but this they made their chief concern. In the matter of religious exercises also the Sufis had a real contribution to make. The worship as they found it was primarily a prescribed duty rather than the satisfaction of a need. Of its spontaneous side, as a means of coming personally near to God, Mohammed had had very little to say; though, as we have seen, something of the sort was present in Islam from the first. Here, then, the mystics had their opportunity. They made it their business to devise exercises designed to kindle a true religious fervor, putting into them all the oriental warmth which the matter-of-fact Mekkan had left out; working themselves up to the desired pitch by various means, such as long continued and intense contemplation, the reiteration of certain chanted formulæ, and especially dwelling on the ideas of self-renunciation and complete devotion. Where the Koran and the customary Muslim formulæ mention the fear of God, the Sufi speaks of the love of God, and his usual designation of the divine being is "The Beloved." In the early period, music as a means of inducing religious emotion was looked upon with a disfavor amounting to horror, for the line between religious ecstasy and an unholy excitement of the senses was seen to be often a vanishing one, and the latter result was more to be depended on than the former. So for a time the performer on the lute and the singer of songs were branded as impious by the stricter Mohammedans, and we frequently hear of a convert " repenting of music as he might repent of perjury or highway robbery. At a later day this rigidity was relaxed, however, and the Sufis made regular use of music in their exercises. As for the language needed to express the mystic's passionate devotion, it could

only be taken from the language of worldly passion, whence it comes about that some of the characteristic Sufi literature has a decidedly erotic sound.

As far as Muslim doctrine is concerned, the Sufis at first exercised no considerable influence, except negatively. Their chief aims and interests were not intellectual, but emotional. Religion was for them an experience, and systems of belief were of minor consequence. The goal which they set before them was complete devotion to God and ultimately complete union with him. This they sought to reach through a more or less definitely prescribed mode of life termed "the way," in which repentance, abstinence, self-renunciation, constancy in religious exercises, and patient trust in "The Beloved" were the principal stages. Seclusion, abject poverty, and long fasting were practiced by the most zealous. As might be expected, the rigidly consistent devotees pronounced flatly against calling in physicians, or employing medicine, in case of illness. "The power of God," they said, "is the only thing that can heal. What the patient needs to do is to bring his soul into the true harmony; then he will find that he is healed." One of the leaders of the new school is quoted as giving the following advice to a sick man of his acquaintance: "Put under your pillow my book" (a prototype of "Science and Health "), "and trust in God." Of course the extreme views regarding poverty and illness were opposed by the adherents of the traditional orthodoxy, for the simple reason that Mohammed and Ali and the primitive saints and heroes were mer. whose life and habits were well known. They had held property, labored like other men, and taken medicine when they were ill. The Tradition was quite clear on these points. But the Sufi teaching, enforced、 by the holy life of its exponents, made a strong impression, and the controversy was quite lively in the tenth century of

our era.

A chief source of recruits to the mystics was reaction

against the prevailing tendencies in Islam. As at first the groups of ascetics had arisen in protest against the widespread impiety, so a little later, and thenceforward, the followers of the way received large and constant reenforcement because of the spread of rationalism and skepticism among the more learned Muslims and their pupils. To unbelief the Sufis opposed intuitive knowledge assured by experience, and to those who would demonstrate that the traditional dogmas of Islam were outgrown they showed a faith and zeal that were positively burning. As has been the case in other religions, this type of faith gained more and more the sympathy and participation of the multitude. The reaction against an exaggerated scholasticism also played its important part. The Mohammedan doctors were as great adepts at hair-splitting as their Christian contemporaries, and the systems of doctrine evolved by the numerous rival schools, while worthy of admiration as intellectual achievements, left the mystics cold and the common people far behind. There were long and bitter controversies over definitions and various shibboleths, while prosecutions for heresy were frequent. The Allah of the orthodox theologians was a deity who might satisfy a philosophical system, but could satisfy nothing else. Between him and human beings there could be no communion of any sort. The philosophy and natural science of the Greeks, becoming accessible through Arabic translations made from Syriac versions of Greek treatises, exerted a profound influence and added to the complication. The task of harmonizing Plotinus and his fellows with the Koran was one that might well have given pause to Gabriel himself, but the Muslim scholars undertook it with joy and no misgivings. Those earnest Mohammedans who wished not only to be orthodox but also to have a religion that meant something to them felt that they were getting more stones than bread. One of them, after reading a certain neo-theological pamphlet, ex

pressed himself as follows; and his words, which have a very modern sound, doubtless voiced the feelings of a great many: "These men fill their writings with religious phrases, and with incidental bits of the divine book. They also put in any number of words which may mean two or more different things. As for the material contents, they are made up from every known science, but they do not satisfy the reader's hunger, nor show him the way to what he needs to know." As the reaction against a similar over-developed scholasticism in the Christian church brought forward Eckhart, Tauler, and their fellow mystics, so in mediæval Islam one effect of the exaggerated emphasis on doctrinal formulæ was greatly to swell the ranks of the Sufis. Also, as in the history of Christianity the ascetics and mystics and their adherents generally occupied a dominating place, so in the history of Mohammedanism the Sufis using the term in the broad sense soon came to be a most influential body. As has already been said, Sufism is not a system of philosophy, nor has it a creed. It is a way of life, and a practical theology; rooting originally in Islam, but so independent of either tradition or reason that it could not be held within the strict limits of any one faith. As a rule, Sufis have preferred to regard themselves as orthodox Mohammedans, and a large proportion of them could make this claim with some good reason. They have their own characteristic exegesis of the Koran, interpreting it allegorically in much the same way as the Bible has been interpreted from time to time by Jewish and Christian scholars. Sufis of every type observe the formal requirements of the Muslim faith, though generally without acknowledging to them any especial value. Here, again, they have their own allegorical interpretation, and regard the state of mind of the participant and his appreciation of the spiritual meaning of the ceremonies as the only thing of importance. The nearer the follower of "the way" approaches to his divine goal, the less it matters what