Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/216

 introduced into Sunni theology and has since held its own. At the same time he reduced Sufism to a scientific form, and gave, or rather supported, a terminology derived from Plotinus. Such a Sufism may be described as Muslim mystic theology purged of its Shi'ite accretions. This admission of a modified Sufism into the orthodox church of Islam took place in the sixth century A.H.

In the following century Sufism appeared in Spain, but there it arrived as transmitted through an orthodox medium, and hence differs from Asiatic mysticism. The first Spanish Sufi seems to have been Muhyi d-Din ibn 'Arabi (d. 638), who travelled in Asia and died at Damascus. He was a follower of Ibn Ham, who, as we shall see later, represents a system of jurisprudence of a type more reactionary even than that of Ibn Hanbal. In Spain itself the leading Sufi was  ' Abdu l-Haqq ibn Sab'in (d. 667), who shows the more characteristic Spanish attitude of a Sufi who was also a philosopher, for Spanish Sufism was essentially speculative. Like many other philosophers of the Muwahhid period he adhered outwardly to the Zahirites, the most reactionary party of the narrowest orthodoxy.

In the 7th century, also, we have Jalalu d-Din Rumi (d. 672), who practically completes the golden age of Sufism. Although a Persian he was an orthodox Sunni. He was a native of Balkh, but his father was compelled to leave that city and migrate westward, and finally settled at Qonya (Iconium),