Before turning to the relationship between the Sufis and the schools of law, it is important to speak about the terms sharīʿa and Sufism first. The English word Sufism, from the Arabic taṣawwuf, is a term that refers to the dominant school of mysticism in Sunni Islam. Mysticism can be defined as a theory or praxis that hopes for the attainment of direct knowledge of God. The term taṣawwuf was preceded by the term ṣūfī which most probably meant ‘wool-wearer’ (from the word ṣūf, meaning wool). Woollen clothes were coarse and signified detachment from the world, and the term ṣūfī was used to identify a number of individual mystics from Kufa and Basra, two of the most important cities in the early centuries of Islam. The first known cohesive group of Sufis was a circle of prominent mystics led by Abū Ḥātim al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 260s/874–84) who taught in the Grand Mosque of Basra. Although they were called ‘the Sufis of the Mosque (of Basra)’, their leader Abū Ḥātim was critical of those mystics who wore wool. He accused them of making an outward statement about their purported inward states and distinguishing themselves from other Muslims. Ironically, then, the practice of wearing wool appears to have already started dying out by the time the first cohesive group of Muslims came to be known as ‘Sufis’. The mystics of this circle had students from Baghdad, where a circle of Sufis then appeared and gained great prominence. The most famous of the Sufis of Baghdad was al-Junayd al-Baghdādī, who acquired the title ‘shaykh al-ṭāʾifa’ – that is, the leader of the group (the Sufis).

The members of these Basran and Baghdadi circles of Sufis were distinguished by the emphasis in their discourse on topics such as love of God and an intimate spiritual relationship with Him, as well as experiential knowledge of God. Early authors described them as the first in their lands to discourse on matters such as attaining a pure state of remembrance of God and uniting all of one’s aspirations into one – namely, the desire for God, love and longing for God, as well as achieving nearness to Him and a feeling of intimacy with Him.