22 min
Talk · Sachiko Murata
Sufism in Chinese Islam
Sachiko Murata and William Chittick on what Muslim scholars in China made of Sufism, and what Confucian language did to it.
Overview
What does sufism point to?
Sufism is the mystical current within Islam, oriented toward the purification and remembrance of the heart. It is expressed through poetry, music, ethical formation and companionship within a lineage, or tariqa.
Practices such as dhikr (remembrance) and sama (sacred listening) are shared across many orders, though language, ritual and emphasis vary considerably between them.
The beloved is not found by searching, but by the heart that has stopped looking elsewhere.A central teaching within Sufism
Teachers
Voices within this path.
Compare background, approach and format before choosing a teacher to follow.
Interfaith scholarship
Pir Zia Inayat Khan
Spiritual head of the Inayatiyya Sufi order and founder of the Suluk Academy, combining scholarly training with universal Sufi teaching.
View profile →EA
Open Path
Elias Amidon
Pir of the Sufi Way and founder of the Open Path, teaching nondual awareness within the Inayati Sufi lineage.
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Zikr
Shabda Kahn
Pir of Sufi Ruhaniat International, teaching Sufi zikr and the Dances of Universal Peace in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan.
View profile →CS
Rifa'i Order
Cemalnur Sargut
Leader of the Rifa'i Sufi order in Turkey and scholar of Ken'an Rifa'i, teaching classical Islamic philosophy and Sufi thought.
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Ba'Alawi Tradition
Habib Umar bin Hafiz
Yemeni Islamic scholar and Sufi teacher in the Ba'Alawi tradition, founder of the Dar al-Mustafa seminary in Tarim.
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Shadhili Order
Muhammad al-Yaqoubi
Damascus-born traditional Islamic scholar and Shadhili Sufi master, founder of Sacred Knowledge.
View profile →Artists
Musicians and singers.
Devotional music and chant from within this path, alongside its teachers.
Opening the Voice
Paulina Magus
Vocalist and teacher trained in Indian classical music, living in Bali, who uses the voice as a way into self-knowledge rather than only as an instrument. She also sings devotional qawwali in the traditional style, and makes her own ambient work with voice and harmonium.
View profile →SY
Egyptian Sufi Inshad
Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami
Egyptian munshid, born in 1948 in the village of al-Hawatka in the Asyut governorate of Upper Egypt. He grew up in a religious household and studied at the Azhar institutes until 1970. He sings inshad, the Sufi chant of Egypt: classical mystical poetry carried by a small ensemble, heard above all at mawlids, the saint's day gatherings that run through the night.
View profile →MH
Moroccan Samaa and Madih
Marouane Hajji
Moroccan munshid who sings samaa and madih, the sung Sufi praise of Morocco: poems in honour of the Prophet, set in the Andalusian modes and carried by a group of voices with light percussion. He is heard at the sacred music festivals of Fes.
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Bağlama · Alevi Song
Erdal Erzincan
Turkish bağlama player, singer and composer, born in Erzurum in 1971. He studied from 1985 at the music school of Arif Sağ and from 1989 at Istanbul Technical University, and helped develop the şelpe technique, which plays the bağlama with the fingers rather than a plectrum. He sings from the Alevi repertoire, in which that instrument is held to be sacred.
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Kabir in the Sufi Kafi
Mooralala Marwada
Folk singer from the village of Janana in Kutch, Gujarat, born in 1955, and the eleventh generation of singers in his village. He sings the poetry of Kabir, Mirabai and Ravidas in the kafi, the form carried in the Sindhi Sufi tradition of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. He began singing at satsangs at eight years old, going along with his father and his grandfather, and now travels through India with a group of his nephews and his grandson.
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Gnawa · Guembri
Hamid El Kasri
Moroccan maâlem, a master musician of the Gnawa tradition, born in 1961 in Ksar El Kebir and living in Rabat. Gnawa is a Moroccan spiritual and ritual tradition with West African roots south of the Sahara, carried within an Islamic frame; its ritual heart is the lila, the night-long ceremony of trance and healing. He sings and plays the guembri, the three-stringed bass lute, and brings together the Gnawa rhythms of northern and southern Morocco.
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Turkish Sufi Music · Ilahi
Ahmet Özhan
Turkish singer, born on 26 August 1950 in Şanlıurfa, who performs tasavvuf, the Sufi music of Turkey, and the ilahi hymns. He trained at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory and at the Üsküdar Music Society, and from the 1980s turned towards the Sufi repertoire alongside the classical Turkish music in which he first made his name. He is the twenty-second postnişin of the Cerrahi branch of the Halveti order.
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Qawwali
Faiz Ali Faiz
Pakistani qawwal born in 1962 in Sharaqpur, into a family that has sung qawwali for seven or eight generations. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan chose him personally to take his place at a mehfil, and he is widely regarded as one of the great living voices of the tradition. He performs with his sons Ali Shahbaz and Nazar Abbas.
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Qawwali · Sama
Dhruv Sangari
Indian Sufi qawwal and music scholar, born in Delhi in 1981, who took the name Bilal Chishty after initiation in the Chishti Sufi line. He learned qawwali from Ustad Meraj Ahmed Nizami of the Qawwal Bachhe gharana at the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, the oldest qawwali lineage, which traces itself to Amir Khusrau, and also studied with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
View profile →RQ
Qawwali, Carried Forward
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali
Qawwali group led by Rizwan and Muazzam Mujahid Ali Khan, nephews of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who were teenagers when he died in 1997 and stepped into the space he left.
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Qawwali from Hyderabad
Warsi Brothers
Indian qawwali group from Hyderabad, the brothers Nazeer and Naseer Ahmed Khan Warsi, who sing with a party of eight accompanists.
View profile →In memoriamNF
Shahenshah-e-Qawwali
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Pakistani qawwali singer (1948–1997), called Shahenshah-e-Qawwali, the king of kings of qawwali, and credited with carrying this Sufi devotional music to listeners around the world.
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Oud, Voice and Sufi Jazz
Dhafer Youssef
Tunisian oud player, singer and composer who carries the vocal world of the muezzin's call into jazz, improvising wordlessly across a register that reaches far above the instrument.
View profile →IA
Flute and Ambient Soundscapes
Iftekharul Anam
Flutist, composer and producer working between Sufi, folk, classical, ambient and electronic music, on themes of spiritual consciousness.
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Sindhi Sufi Kalam
Sanam Marvi
Pakistani folk and Sufi singer from Sindh who sings the kalams of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Bulleh Shah and Sachal Sarmast in Sindhi, Punjabi and Balochi.
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Ney Master of the Mevlevi Tradition
Kudsi Erguner
Turkish ney master who plays the Mevlevi sema music that accompanies the ceremony of the whirling dervishes.
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Qawwali in the Nusrat Lineage
Fanna-Fi-Allah
Traditional qawwali ensemble in the lineage of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who perform at Sufi shrines as well as on concert stages.
View profile →IS
The First All-Women Qawwali Group
Ilahi Sufi Qawwali
The world's first all-women traditional qawwali group, singing in the same lineage as Fanna-Fi-Allah.
View profile →KT
The Sema Ceremony of Konya
Konya Turkish Sufi Music Ensemble
Official Mevlevi ensemble from Konya, founded in 1991, which performs the music of the sema ceremony in the city where Rumi is buried.
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Persian Classical Song
Mahsa Vahdat
Iranian singer of Persian classical music, born in 1973, who sets the mystical poets to voice: Rumi, Hafiz and the living poets of her own country. Her singing is rooted in the classical and folk traditions of Iran, and she has performed openly against the ban on solo women singers imposed there after 1979. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and tours internationally.
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Arabic Mystical Song
Waed Bouhassoun
Syrian singer and oud player, born in 1979 in a Druze village in the south of Syria and living in Paris. She sings classical and mystical Arabic poetry with a low alto voice and her own oud, in arrangements stripped back far enough to leave the words standing.
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Yarsan Tanbur
Ali Akbar Moradi
Kurdish-Iranian master of the tanbur, the sacred long-necked lute of the Yarsan, born in 1957 near Kermanshah. The Yarsan, also called Ahl-e Haqq, are a Kurdish religious tradition of their own going back to the eleventh century, with their own cosmology and scriptures: close to Sufism in spirit, but not the same thing and not a branch of Islam.
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The Queen of Sufi Music
Abida Parveen
Pakistani singer and composer of Sufi music, widely called the Queen of Sufi music, who has carried the poetry of the Sufi saints from the shrines of Sindh to concert halls worldwide.
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Qawwali of the Delhi Gharana
Fareed Ayaz & Abu Muhammad Qawwal
Pakistani qawwal brothers of the Qawwal Bacchon ka Gharana of Delhi, a lineage of devotional singers reaching back centuries, widely heard through Coke Studio.
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Sufi Songs from the Shrines
Sain Zahoor
Punjabi Sufi singer from Pakistan who spent most of his life singing at Sufi shrines, accompanying himself on the ektara, and made his first recording only in 2006.
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Shashmaqam
Munojat Yulchieva
Uzbek singer born in the Ferghana Valley in 1960, and the foremost living interpreter of the shashmaqam and the Uzbek classical tradition. Her repertoire is the Sufi poetry of divine love carried in the maqam art of Bukhara and Samarkand. Her own name means the intimate prayer addressed to God. She was named People's Artist of Uzbekistan in 1994 and Heroine of Uzbekistan in 2021.
View profile →HB
Gnawa · Guembri
Hassan Boussou
Moroccan Gnawa maâlem, son of Maâlem Hmida Boussou, who leads the traditional group Boussou Ganga. Gnawa is a Moroccan spiritual and ritual tradition with West African roots south of the Sahara, carried within an Islamic frame; its ritual heart is the lila, the night-long ceremony of trance and healing.
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Kurdish Tanbur
Seyed Ali Jaberi
Kurdish Iranian tanbur player, born on 21 September 1974 in Kermanshah and living in England. The tanbur is the sacred long-necked lute of the Kurdish Sufi tradition, and he learned it from Kurdish masters including Golnazar Azizi, Amrollah Shah Ebrahimi and Dervish Amir Hayati.
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Dargah Qawwali
Nizami Bandhu
Qawwals of the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, the brothers Shadab and Sohrab Faridi Nizami. They sing in the shrine tradition that has been kept at that dargah for centuries, with the qawwalis of Amir Khusrau at its heart, and the Thursday evening singing at the shrine is where that tradition lives.
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Mugham
Alim Qasimov
Azerbaijani mugham singer, born in Shamakhi in 1957. Mugham is the classical modal art of Azerbaijan, sung largely to Sufi love poetry and directed at the ecstatic state its texts describe.
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Mugham
Fargana Qasimova
Azerbaijani mugham singer, born in 1979, and one of the few women to hold the rank of mugham master. She is the daughter of Alim Qasimov and has sung with him since she was sixteen, in a duo that turned the traditionally solo mugham into a form for two voices. She has recorded several mugham albums with her father.
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Shahram Nazeri
Shahram Nazeri is a Kurdish-Iranian singer from Kermanshah who joined Sufi ensembles as a child and is known for setting the poetry of Rumi within Persian classical and Kurdish music.
View profile →SM
Sheikh Mahmoud El Tohamy
Son of the Sufi singer Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami, Mahmoud El Tohamy is an Egyptian munshid who heads the Syndicate of Egyptian Chanters. He performs Sufi inshad in praise of the Prophet, and alongside it also works on crossover projects.
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Sheikh Ehab Younis
Ehab Younis is an Egyptian munshid and graduate of Al-Azhar University who sang for years in the ensemble of Sheikh Mamdouh Abdel Galil before founding his own group in 2007. He performs religious inshad and madih.
View profile →EI
Ensemble Ibn Arabi
Founded in Tangier in 1988, Ensemble Ibn Arabi performs Sufi chant and instrumental music on poems by Ibn Arabi, Ibn al-Farid, Rabi'a al-Adawiyya and others.
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Al Firdaus Ensemble
Founded in Granada in 2012 by violinist and singer Ali Keeler, Al Firdaus Ensemble sings Sufi poetry from Andalusian, Arab and Turkish sources, including texts by Ibn Arabi and al-Shushtari.
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Habib Syech bin Abdul Qadir Assegaf
Habib Syech, born in 1961 in Solo, Indonesia, is a singer of sholawat, devotional songs in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. He was taught first by his father, Habib Abdul Qadir Assegaf, and later by Habib Anis al-Habsyi. With the group Ahbabul Musthofa he leads large gatherings based on the classical mawlid text Simtud Durar.
View profile →SM
Sher Miandad Khan
Sher Miandad Khan was born in Pakpattan in 1968 and has fronted his own qawwali party since 1996. The music runs in his family: Dina Qawwal was his grandfather, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan his cousin. He sings regularly at the shrine of Baba Farid, the Sufi saint buried in his home town, and Pakistan conferred the Pride of Performance on him in 2023.
View profile →SG
Said Guissi's Aissawa Ensemble
Led by Said Guissi, this ensemble from Fez comes from the Aissawa, a Moroccan Sufi brotherhood founded in the 16th century. Its ritual music uses long trumpets, reed pipes and layered drumming to accompany dhikr and trance ceremonies.
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Davood Azad
Davood Azad, born in 1963 in Urmia, Iran, is a singer and multi-instrumentalist (tar, setar, tanbour, daf) in Persian classical, Azerbaijani and Persian Sufi music. He is known for his settings of Rumi's poetry and has performed at Sufi gatherings internationally.
View profile →AE
Ali El Helbawy
Ali El Helbawy is an Egyptian munshid and the son of the religious chanter Sheikh Mohammed El Helbawy. He performs Sufi and devotional chants with his ensemble.
View profile →AN
Abdullah Niazi Qawwals
Abdullah Manzoor Niazi was born in Karachi in 1960, the eldest of Manzoor Niazi Qawwal's sons, and sings in the line of the Qawwal Bachchon Ka Gharana of Delhi. His father and his uncle Bahauddin Qawwal taught him the form, and in 2015 he formed a party of his own in which his sons sing behind him. The poetry of Amir Khusrau is at the heart of what they perform.
View profile →HA
Hamza Akram Qawwal & Brothers
Hamza Akram Qawwal & Brothers are a qawwali ensemble from Karachi who sing in the tradition of the Qawwal Bachon ka Gharana of Delhi.
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Baye Fall Song
Cheikh Lô
Senegalese musician born in 1955 and a member of the Baye Fall, the movement within the Mouride Sufi order whose followers wear dreadlocks as part of their observance. His work is devoted to the Baye Fall way and honours its founders. He carries that devotion in a music built from mbalax, Afro-Cuban rhythm, reggae and soul, a mix that has often had listeners mistake him for a Rastafarian.
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Sufi Poetry in Song
Ghalia Benali
Tunisian-Belgian singer, born in Brussels in 1968 and raised partly in Zarzis on the Tunisian coast. She sings centuries-old Sufi poetry, among it the verses of the eighth-century mystic Rabia al-Adawiyya, alongside contemporary Arabic writing.
View profile →AA
Asif Ali Khan
Asif Ali Khan is a Pakistani qawwal and a disciple of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. With his ensemble he sings qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufi shrines of South Asia, built on call-and-response singing, harmonium, tabla and hand-clapping. He has performed widely in Europe and also in North America and New Zealand.
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Hassan Hakmoun
Hassan Hakmoun, born in 1963 in Marrakech, is a Gnawa musician who was already performing at all-night healing and trance ceremonies (lila) in his teens. He plays the sintir, the three-stringed bass lute that carries the Gnawa songs to the saints and spirits, accompanied by voices and iron castanets (qraqeb). Based in New York since 1987, he performs and teaches Gnawa music internationally.
View profile →SB
Sufi Retreats
Shaykh Burhanuddin Herrmann
German Sufi shaykh trained for over three decades under Naqshbandi Grand Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani ar-Rabbani, now leading Sufi Way and teaching the Uwaysi self-realization method through retreats and online sessions worldwide.
View profile →Upcoming events
Upcoming events in sufism.
Retreats, dialogues and online gatherings connected to this path.
∞
Sunday Meditation
Online · Monthly online meditation
See event pageMonthly online meditation
∞
Sunday Meditation
Online · Monthly online meditation
See event pageMonthly online meditation
∞
Chai, Love and Prayer
Online · Monthly online gathering
See event pageMonthly online gathering
∞
Alchemical Transformation - The Six Yogas of Naropa
Online · Weekly online class
See event pageWeekly online class
Talks & videos
Selected talks.
Talks and conversations from teachers within this path.
38 min
Interview · Mohammed Rustom
Philosophical Sufism
Peter Adamson asks him where Sufism and philosophy stop being two things.
69 min
Interview · Mohammed Rustom
What Is Sufi Metaphysics?
An hour on what the word metaphysics means inside the tradition rather than in a philosophy department.
115 min
Interview · Mohammed Rustom
The Sufi Philosophy of Ayn al-Qudat
Two hours on the Persian mystic executed at thirty-three, and on what he understood about love and knowledge.
Listen
Recordings from sufism.
Voices from this path and the schools within it, playing from the platforms the teachers publish on.
Neil Douglas-KlotzSufism
Y YouTube
Neil Douglas-Klotz on Buddha at the Gas Pump
Rick Archer's long conversation with Neil Douglas-Klotz on the Aramaic words behind the Gospels and what native Middle Eastern spirituality does to the sayings of Jesus.
Abida ParveenSufism
Y YouTube
Abida Parveen | What is True Love and Longing | Rewind at Home with Samina Peerzada
A long, unhurried conversation in which she talks about where her singing comes from, what longing means to her, and her relationship to the Sufi poets she sings.
Kabir HelminskiSufism
SC SoundCloud
The Spiritual Psychology of Sufism Part I
A talk by Kabir Helminski, published on the channel of the World Community for Christian Meditation rather than his own.
Davood AzadSufism
Y YouTube
Bayat-e Shiraz
A studio recording of the dastgah Bayat-e Shiraz from Azad's album Ay Ishighi, voice and strings without a break.
From the podcast Ay Ishighi (Noor-e-Mah)
Reading Room
Source texts
The source texts beneath this path, free to read.
The Masnavi
Translated by E. H. Whinfield · 1898
“The Qur’an in Persian” — Whinfield's readable free abridgement of Rumi's great Sufi poem.
Selected Poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz
Translated by Reynold A. Nicholson · 1898
Rumi's ecstatic verses to his teacher Shams, rendered by the great scholar of Sufi poetry.
Discernment
Clarity should include the human context.
Devotional language of surrender and love is central to this tradition, but should never be used to justify the abuse of spiritual authority.
Ask about contextIs a statement philosophical, meditative, relational or practical?
Notice powerHow are authority, money, intimacy and complaints handled?
Include embodimentDoes the teaching make room for emotion, the body and nervous-system limits?
Keep agencyA useful teacher supports clear choice rather than demanding surrender of judgement.