Islamic mystical tradition — emerging in the 8th century CE as an interiorizing movement within Islam — emphasizing direct experiential knowledge of God (gnosis — ma'rifa), love of the divine (mahabbah), purification of the self (nafs), and ultimately the annihilation (fana) of the individual self in God — the most poetically rich mystical tradition in the Abrahamic faiths.
Creates the most poetically articulate mystical tradition in the Abrahamic world — Sufism's major figures (Rumi, Hafiz, Ibn Arabi, Al-Ghazali, Rabia al-Adawiyya) produced the greatest body of mystical love poetry in any tradition; Ibn Arabi's metaphysics (wahdat al-wujud — unity of being) is the most sophisticated Islamic philosophical mysticism; Rumi's Masnavi is among the most read literary-spiritual texts ever written.
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