Sufism is a vast domain encompassing a wide range of social, philosophical, and literary developments in the Muslim community. In its broadest sense, the word refers to a collection of schools of Islamic mystical theology and philosophy and religious orders and factions that have had a major impact on the upsurge of Islamic society and politics and the various utterances of popular piety found across the Islamic world. Sufism is often regarded as the spiritual source underlying much of the Islamic world’s pre-modern poetry, the vernacular of much widely Known piety, the principal social arena available to women’s religious practice, and a key factor in the conversion of populations to Islam throughout Asia and Africa.
