Before Sufism : early Islamic renunciant piety /
Christopher Melchert
- Berlin : De Gruyter, 2020
- (239 p.)
- Islam-Thought, Culture, and Society ; Volume 4 .
Melchert identifies three stages in the development of early Islamic piety. As the conquest period wound down in the early eighth century, renunciants spent nights weeping, reciting the Quran, and performing supererogatory ritual prayers. Later in the century, as Muslims became the majority population, outward austerity came under attack. Finally, in the later ninth century, a form of Sufism emerged that would accommodate all the believers.