Abstract

Islamic Mysticism and Sufism is the heritage of Islamic Civilization Which from the beginning till now, faced with many evolutions and due to inner factors, had different branches. in different definitions of Sufism by Sufis. In this article we try to investigate these definitions by content analysis approach. By studying the valid sufi texts from beginning to 13th century AH, and by extracting and classifying the definitions, we will survey the evolution of this definitions in the different centuries. In this article we show that passing of time effected on the definitions of mysticism and Sufism, and also we survey the origins of this differences in the definitions. Categorizing and the diachronic study of these definitions reveal that Sufis always pay attention to six important factors: austerity, internal purification, theoretical issues, the difficulties of defining, comparing to other schools and the result of conduct. But these factors have not the same results in all these centuries. That is, for instance, the result of conduct was more important in 4th, 8th and 9thcenturies, whereas, this factor was not so important in other centuries, that is the result of chronological factor.

Keywords

• Sufism
• Sufi prose texts
• Islamic Mysticism
• Sufi Conduct