42 A Short History of the Middle East
which was not expressly authorized by the scriptures. Meanwhile
a third strain of Muslim religious thought, the mystical strain of
Sufism, which had developed in the eighth and ninth centuries,
had gained many adherents.1 The mystics were impelled by the
insistent desire to find a more Intimate and personal approach to,
and union with God than was provided by Sunni formalism and
detachment, which placed Man at an almost infinite distance from
his Creator and provided the Prophet as merely an interpreter of
God's word, but not as a mediator between God and Man. Though
the Sufis sought justification for their ritual practices in some few
and exceptional passages of the Qur'an, their main Inspiration was
in fact drawn from other religions, in particular from Christian
mysticism, the Zoroastrians of Persia, and the mystery-religions of
the pre-Christian Middle East. So great is man's natural desire,
amid the trials of this unsympathetic world, for consolation in
grief and hope in adversity from some more-than-human source,
that many thousands of Muslims were attracted as disciples of the
mystics, who originally practised their devotions Individually and
without any sort of mutual association. Following only their
individual inspirations, some of them were led into doctrinal
extravagances, Imagining themselves filled with the divine
spirit, even declaring ĢI am the Truth' and so claiming to be
the Godhead, and disparaging orthodox Islam as a 'religion
of the limbs' Immeasurably inferior to their own 'religion of
the heart'.
Thus by the eleventh century Muslim theology was undergoing
a real internal crisis, from which It has never completely recovered.
'While the (mystic) saints, with their innumerable followers and
worshippers, menaced the Islam of history and tradition, the ortho-
dox party, divided against itself, either clinging fanatically to the
letter of the Qur'an or disputing over legal and ritual minutiae or
analysing theological dogmas in the dry light of the Intellect, was
fast losing touch with the inward spirit and life which makes reli-
gion a reality. Many earnest Muslims must have asked themselves
how long such a state of things could last. Was there no means of
preserving what was vital to the Faith without rending the com-
munity asunder?'2
1 Sufi was originally a nickname, derived from suf. wool; the wearer of an
ascetic woollen garment, like that of the Christian monks.
2 R. A. Nicholson, in The Legacy of Islam, 220 L