groups of specialists and refer to them in case of difficulties.
Tradition and law are the basis for their lives, including both
their inner modes of spirituality and their outward behavior.
In the description of this outward behavior one sees an ex-
traordinary concern for personal relations in both family and
community life: patience with the ignorant, compassion with
one’s wife and family, agreement with brethren. Openness,
modesty, and humility are the ideals. The movements of
tongue, ear, eye, heart, hands, and feet are to be directed to
charity.
Meticulous attention is given to the details of social be-
havior, personal cleanliness, modesty in dress, and restraint
in eating. The brethren at any hospice should exercise great
care in their treatment of guests. As host, the shaykh should
encourage them to overcome their shyness at the table and
offer them whatever food he is able to provide. The guest,
for his part, should sit where he is directed, be pleased with
what is given to him, and not leave without excusing himself.
The host should then accompany the departing guest to the
door of the house. In certain circumstances joking is permit-
ted, provided that slandering, mimicry, and nonsense are
avoided. This practice is supported by a tradition relating
words attributed to EAl ̄ı: “When the Prophet saw one of his
friends distressed, he would cheer him up by joking.”
THE ROLE OF WOMEN. EAbd al-Rah:ma ̄n Al-Sulam ̄ı’s
(d. 1022) compilation of the lives of women S:u ̄f ̄ıs attests to
the involvement of many women besides the famous celibate
saint Ra ̄b ̄ıEah al-EAdaw ̄ıyah (d. 801). Ibn EArab ̄ı (1165–
1240) also writes about the miracles of S:u ̄f ̄ı women, one of
whom was his teacher. In Tunisia there is a shrine for a thir-
teenth-century woman saint, EA ̄Disha al-Mannu ̄b ̄ıyah, whom
oral tradition asserts to have been a disciple of al-Sha ̄dhil ̄ı,
and S:u ̄f ̄ı women healers in contemporary India or Uzbeki-
stan attract many informal disciples.
Although outstanding exemplars of female chastity and
purity in life or in literature have been upheld as saints and
S:u ̄f ̄ı heroines, in which role they become public figures as
honorary “men” (rija ̄l), the wayfarer along the t:ar ̄ıqah is con-
ventionally assumed to be male. A rather misogynistic atti-
tude can be found in some S:u ̄f ̄ı writings, including the view
that women (as well as children and the entaglements of sup-
porting a household) are distractions from the path of true
spiritual struggle.
The t:ar ̄ıqah orders operate in the public sphere, which
has historically been a male domain in most Muslim socie-
ties, whereas women’s religious organizations tend to operate
in the domestic sphere. In Salju ̄ q Anatolia and probably else-
where female members of ruling families cultivated relation-
ships with S:u ̄f ̄ı teachers, often financing the construction of
their lodges, as dedicatory inscriptions attest. This probably
gave aristocratic women considerable influence in the pro-
motion of specific orders, but it would appear that, as in a
mosque, women usually attended talks or other ceremonies
at S:u ̄f ̄ı lodges in a segregated gallery or behind a curtain or
grille. There is also documentary evidence of the wives or fe-
male servants of shaykhs serving S:u ̄f ̄ı brotherhoods in some
capacity behind the scenes, and the daughters of various
shaykhs were married into the families of political or commu-
nity leaders, solidifying membership and backing for the
t:ar ̄ıqah.
After World War II women shaykhas directing circles of
exclusively female disciples were noted among established
S:u ̄f ̄ı orders in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus, includ-
ing the Naqshband ̄ıyah and Qa ̄dir ̄ıyah of Daghestan,
though this development was condemned by the Muslim
Spiritual Board of the North Caucasus. In the late 1970s
western S:u ̄f ̄ı women in northern California met with an
elder Mevlevi initiate from Turkey who encouraged their ef-
forts; as a result some S:u ̄f ̄ı organizations in North America
and in Turkey have begun not only accepting female disci-
ples but even holding integrated ceremonies. However, in
Turkey it is more common for women to participate in fe-
male-only dhikr ceremonies in the homes of individuals. The
public participation of women in the t:ar ̄ıqah environment
(or the madrasah system) is not well documented for the me-
dieval period. In the absence of contrary evidence, it can be
assumed that the integrated public participation of women
in the t:ar ̄ıqah orders is a development of the late twentieth
century.
The t:ar ̄ıqahs of the thirteenth through the fifteenth cen-
turies are the culminating point in a shift from an individual-
istic, elitist, ascetic spirituality to a corporate, congregational
organization with a place for individuals representing a
whole range of spiritual attainment and every stratum of so-
ciety. There may be an inclination to see in them a counter-
part to the religious orders that developed in the Christian
tradition from the fifth century onward and that also chan-
neled a large part of the impulse for solitary asceticism into
an institutional framework. The analogy is only partly valid,
for the two types of organization were different. The shaykh
of a za ̄wiyah did not have the administrative authority of an
abbot, nor did the t:ar ̄ıqahs have the same centralized govern-
ment and formal lines of communication that linked the
houses of the Benedictine order, for example. While the
t:ar ̄ıqahs were, in one meaning of the term, corporate, they
did not become corporations in the Western sense.
INDIVIDUAL T:AR ̄IQAHS. There are over two hundred
t:ar ̄ıqahs, and in fact many more if the numerous branches
and subdivisions are counted. The selection presented here
is intended to show aspects of their individuality as reflected
in the social classes to which they made their appeal, their
attitudes toward government authority, their spiritual exer-
cises and theosophy, and the circumstances in which they
flourished.
Qa ̄dir ̄ıyah. The Qa ̄dir ̄ıyah t:ar ̄ıqah is commonly
viewed as the first of the brotherhoods to emerge in the form
of a structured organization, and it is still operating in the
early twenty-first century. It began in Baghdad but eventual-
ly established itself as far afield as Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, the
Maghreb, West Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. It claimsT:AR ̄IQAH 9007