The essential lexicon

التَّصَوُّف

at-taṣawwuf

Sufism

The Arabic word for “Sufism”. It appears in the 9^th century as a distinct science of the heart. Its root — ṣūf, coarse wool, or ṣafāʾ, purity — says the essence: poverty and inner limpidity.

صُوفِيّ

ṣūfī

The Sufi

The one who walks on the path. In the formula of Bistāmī: “The ṣūfī is the one who no longer belongs to himself.” And according to Junayd: “The ṣūfī is the son of the moment.”

طَرِيقَة

ṭarīqa

The path

The “way” — at once the initiatic method and the order that transmits it. Each great master founded his ṭarīqa: Qādiriyya, Châdhiliyya, Mevleviyya, Naqshbandiyya…

شَرِيعَة

sharīʿa

The Law

The religious, prescriptive Law — the rites, the obligations, the prohibitions. Sufism never opposes it: it interiorises it. The sharīʿa is the rind, the ṭarīqa is the way that leads to the kernel.

حَقِيقَة

ḥaqīqa

The Truth

The inner Reality, the kernel. “Without the Law, the path is mere wandering; without the Path, the Law is mere rind; without the Truth, the path itself is illusion.”

إِحْسَان

iḥsān

Excellence

Spiritual perfection: “To worship Allāh as if you saw Him.” It is with this third degree — after islām and īmān — that the Sufis identified their path.

قَلْب

qalb

The heart

Not the organ of feeling, but the spiritual centre of the being — the organ of direct knowledge. Like the mirror: polished, it reflects the light; rusted, it hides it. The Sufi work is to polish it.

نَفْس

nafs

The ego, the carnal soul

The whole of the unpurified tendencies — pride, desires, fear, the illusion of autonomy. The “greater jihād” is this inner struggle against the nafs. The outer struggle is, beside it, but a “lesser jihād”.

رُوح

rūḥ

The spirit

The divine breath breathed into the human being — through which he partakes of the heavenly world. Distinct from the nafs that draws him downward, the rūḥ is the wing that reaches upward.

سِرّ

sirr

The intimate secret

The “secret” — the innermost depth of the being, the place where God manifests Himself to the human being in his most profound intimacy. Beyond the heart, beyond even the spirit: there where the lover and the Beloved are no longer two.

عَقْل

ʿaql

The intelligence

Reason — discursive, calculating. The Sufis respect it but show its limit: it cannot “know” God, only speak about Him. True knowledge — maʿrifa — is tasted, not discursive.

فَنَاء

fanāʾ

Extinction

The extinction of individual consciousness in the divine Presence — “to die to oneself before dying”. The Sufi ceases to be a separate “I” and becomes transparency.

بَقَاء

baqāʾ

Subsistence

The return among men after fanāʾ. The individual being is reborn, but now inhabited by the Presence. It is the highest step — that of the saint who acts in the world without being attached to it any longer.

مَقَام

maqām

The station

A stable stage on the path. Repentance, scruple, patience, trust, contentment, love, knowledge… One does not “pass” a station: one inhabits it.

حَال

ḥāl

The state

Unlike the maqām, the ḥāl is fleeting — a gift of God that comes and passes: a flash of joy, a pain of absence, an ecstatic rapture. It is not kept, it is received.

شَطْح

shaṭḥ

The ecstatic utterance

A paradoxical word spoken in a state of ecstasy — like the famous Anā l-Ḥaqq (“I am the Real”) of Al-Ḥallāj. For the sober Sufis, the shaṭḥ is a sign of authentic rapture; for the jurists, a danger of heresy.

صَحْو

ṣaḥw

Sobriety

Self-mastery within spiritual intoxication. Junayd is the archetype of the “sober one”: he lives the union inwardly without betraying it outwardly. A path of measure and of control.

سُكْر

sukr

Spiritual intoxication

The ecstasy that overwhelms the being to the point of making it lose the measure of speech. Bistāmī and Al-Ḥallāj are its figures. A path of the flash and of overflowing.

مَعْرِفَة

maʿrifa

Inner knowledge

Gnosis — the direct and savoured knowledge of God, in contrast to discursive knowledge (ʿilm). As one knows honey when one has tasted it, not when one describes it.

مَحَبَّة

maḥabba

Love

The love of God — founded on the Quranic verse 5:54: “He loves them and they love Him.” Rābiʿa is the first to make it the central path, before the fear of hell and the desire for paradise.

عِشْق

ʿishq

Ardent love

Stronger than maḥabba: love as a consuming passion. Al-Ḥallāj, Rūmī, Ibn al-Fāriḍ sing this divine ʿishq. “Love burns the lover — and thus he becomes the Beloved.”

شَوْق

shawq

Yearning

The longing for the Beloved — that inner tension which is dissolved only in the encounter. It is the cry of the reed at the beginning of Rūmī's Mathnawī, torn from its original reed-bed.

وَجْد

wajd

Rapture

The state in which the soul is seized by the divine Presence — often during the samāʿ. The word comes from the same root as wujūd (being): one “finds” God by letting oneself be “found” by Him.

ذِكْر

dhikr

Remembrance

Invocation, the recalling — the central practice of Sufism. “Remember Me, I will remember you” (Quran 2:152). Vocal or silent, solitary or collective, the dhikr imprints the divine Name in the heart until the whole being becomes that remembrance.

سَمَاع

samāʿ

Spiritual listening

Attentive listening — often to music, to chant, to poetry — as a way of unveiling. The Mevlevi samāʿ (whirling dervishes) is its best-known form, but each tradition has its own.

خَلْوَة

khalwa

The retreat

Withdrawal into solitude for the inner work. Often forty days — the arbaʿīn — on the model of Mūsā (Moses) at Sinai. The Khalwati path made it its centre.

وِرْد

wird

The litany

The set of prayers, invocations and formulas to be recited daily, given by the master to each disciple according to his capacity. The discipline of the wird structures spiritual time.

أَدَب

adab

Spiritual courtesy

The art of right conduct — towards God, towards the master, towards one's brothers, towards oneself. “The whole of Sufism is adab,” says an early shaykh. Every gesture, every word, every silence is a spiritual courtesy.

زُهْد

zuhd

Asceticism

Detachment — not from the world, but from attachment to the world. “Be in the world like a stranger, or like a traveller passing through,” says a hadith.

فَقْر

faqr

Spiritual poverty

Not material destitution, but inner stripping-bare. To be faqīr — “poor before God” — is to have recognised that one is nothing by oneself, and that God is all. “The faqīr is nothing, and that is why he is everything.”

تَوَكُّل

tawakkul

Trust in God

Active surrender to the divine governance. Not passivity — one acts, one works — but without holding to the results, entrusting all to God. “Tie your camel, then trust,” the Prophet advises.

مُجَاهَدَة

mujāhada

Inner effort

The spiritual struggle against the ego. “The greater jihād is the one against the nafs.” Without effort, no transformation: the path is demanding.

ٱللَّٰه

Allāh

God

The proper Name of the one God. For the Sufis, this Name contains all the other Names. To invoke it is in itself a complete dhikr, which leads to extinction and to unveiling.

هُوَ

Huwa

He

The “pronoun of the absent” — which designates the divine Presence beyond all naming. The most secret of the Names: the one by which God names Himself in His intimacy.

تَوْحِيد

tawḥīd

Divine oneness

The central principle of Islam: “There is no deity but Allāh.” Among the Sufis, tawḥīd is not only a doctrine — it is an experience to be lived: to recognise inwardly that nothing is, in truth, outside the One.

وَحْدَة الوُجُود

waḥdat al-wujūd

The unity of Being

A metaphysical doctrine formulated by Ibn ʿArabī: God alone is, and creatures borrow their existence from Him through His ceaselessly renewed theophany. “The world is at once He and not-He.”

تَجَلِّي

tajallī

Theophany

The manifestation of God in His creation. For Ibn ʿArabī, the whole world is an infinite succession of theophanies — never repeated, always new. Each instant is a divine face.

ٱلظَّاهِر · ٱلْبَاطِن

aẓ-Ẓāhir · al-Bāṭin

The Outward · the Inward

Two divine Names, given by the Quran (57:3): God is at once aẓ-Ẓāhir, the Apparent, and al-Bāṭin, the Hidden. Sufism thus states its twofold demand: to honour the visible and to seek the invisible.

الأَسْمَاء الحُسْنَى

al-Asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā

The most beautiful Names

The 99 Divine Names — qualities through which God reveals Himself to the world. Ar-Raḥmān (the All-Merciful), Al-Laṭīf (the Subtle), Al-Wadūd (the Loving), An-Nūr (the Light)… Each Name is a door.

شَيْخ

shaykh

The spiritual master

The guide. A companion on the road, a mirror, a midwife of the soul. The authentic shaykh does not present himself as a mediator but as a servant (khādim).

مُرِيد

murīd

The disciple

Literally “the one who wills” — who has made an act of spiritual desire. The novice who places himself under the direction of a shaykh in order to journey.

سِلْسِلَة

silsila

The initiatic chain

The lineage of masters going back to the Prophet. Each shaykh transmits what he received from another, who had received it from another, and so on. The silsila guarantees the authenticity of the transmission.

بَرَكَة

baraka

Blessing

The spiritual influence that radiates from a master, a holy place, a word, a sacred object. The baraka is received — through the gaze, the touch, proximity, prayer.

صُحْبَة

ṣuḥba

Companionship

The fact of keeping assiduous company with a master or with brothers on the path. For the Sufis, ṣuḥba is not a formality — it is a spiritual contagion. One becomes like those one keeps company with.

وِلَايَة

walāya

Sainthood

“Friendship” with God. The walī (saint) is literally “the one who is close, who is a friend”. For Ibn ʿArabī, walāya never ceases: it inherits from prophecy, which, for its part, has come to an end.

كَرَامَة

karāma

The charism of the saint

The visible spiritual gifts — healing, the reading of hearts, presence from afar. The word comes from karam (generosity): they are “generosities” of God towards His friends.

خِرْقَة

khirqa

The mantle of investiture

A garment that the master transmits to the disciple on his formal entry into the path. A symbolic gesture — the disciple visibly receives the spiritual lineage.