Sufism meaning

Sufism (q.v.) appears in the 9th century among the Mahommedans of Persia as a kind of reaction against the rigid monotheism and formalism of Islam.

About twenty-five years later the first theoretical handbook of SufIsm in Persian was composed by Ali b.

Redhouse in the preface to his English metrical version of The Mesnevi, Book the First (London, 1881); there is also an abridged translation of the Mathnawi, with introduction on Sufism, by E.

The mystical tendency in Islam, Sufism, is also regarded as heretical (see Kuenen's Hibbert Lecture, pp. 45-5 0).

We pass over the wellstocked sections of philosophy, ethics and politics, of theology, law and SufIsm, of mathematics and astronomy, of medicine (the oldest thesaurus of which is the Treasure of the sMh of Khwarizam, i ~ Io), of Arabic, Persian and Turkish grammar and lexicography, and only cast a parting glance at the rich collection of old Indian folk-lore and fables preserved in the Persian version of Kalilah u Dimnak (see RUDAG!), of the Sindbdndma, the Tiltinama, or Tales of a Parrot, and others, and at the translations of standard works of Sanskrit literature, the epopees of the Ramdyana and Mahbhdrala, the B/ia gavad-Gita, the Yoga- Vasishtha, and numerous Purdnas and Upanishads, for which we are mostly indebted to the emperor Akbars indefatigable zeal.