Note 121 — Chapter VIII · FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM1

But the same formula might serve for the philosophy of the sect of Sufis,121 who in all ages seem to have included unbelievers as well as devoutly mystical pantheists. Founded, it is said, by a woman, Rabia, in the first century of the Hej’ra,122 the sect really carries on a pre-Mohammedan mysticism, and may as well derive from Greece123 as from Asia. Its original doctrine of divine love, as a reaction against Moslem austerity, gave it a fixed hold in Persia, and became the starting point of innumerable heterodox doctrines.124 Under the Khalif Moktader, a Persian Sufi is recorded to have been tortured and executed for teaching that every man is God.125 In later ages, Sufiism became loosely associated with every species of independent thinking; and there is reason to suspect that the later poets Sadi (fl. thirteenth century) and Hafiz126 (fl. fourteenth century), as well as hundreds of lesser status, held under the name of Sufiism views of life not far removed from those of Omar Khayyám; who, however, had bantered the Sufis so unmercifully that they are said to have dreaded and hated him.127 In any case, Sufiism has included such divergent types as Al Gazzali,128 the skeptical defender of the faith; devout pantheistic poets such as Jâmi;129 and singers of love and wine such as Hafiz, whose extremely concrete imagery is certainly not as often allegorical as serious Sufis assert, though no doubt it is sometimes so.130 It even became nominally associated with the destructive Ismaïlitism of the sect of the Assassins, whose founder, Hassan, had been the schoolfellow of Omar Khayyám.131