Interest in esoteric and mystical aspects of Islam in present-day Russia and its Soviet and tsarist predecessors is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The article starts with a critical discussion Interest in esoteric and mystical aspects of Islam in present-day Russia and its Soviet and tsarist predecessors is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The article starts with a critical discussion of Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) interpretations of Sufism in his ambitious intellectual project Noomachia: Wars of the Intellect [and] Civilizations of Borderlands. The author then compares Dugin’s conceptualizations of Sufism with those of several Russian writers who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose portrayal of Sufism and its followers is similar to Dugin’s in some important respects. These ideologically driven constructions of Sufism stand in sharp contrast to the self-consciously objective scholarly ones (to the extent that was possible) that emerged in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century within the Russian academic and teaching institutions specializing in Eastern religions, languages, and cultures. The author argues that Russian academic conceptualizations of Sufism mirrored those of the fin-de-siècle German Islamology (Islamforschung) and then proceeds to examine the profound changes in Russian attitudes to Sufism, and Islam generally, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet state that based its legitimacy on the Marxist-Leninist concept of history with its pervasive atheism, materialism, and emphasis on class struggle. It shaped Soviet-era academic and nonacademic approaches to Sufism until the mid-1980s, when Soviet scholars began to question the Marxist-Leninist certainties of the previous six decades.

The ascetic and mystical element that was implicit in Islam since its very inception grew steadily during the first Islamic centuries (the seventh–ninth centuries CE), which witnessed the appearance o The ascetic and mystical element that was implicit in Islam since its very inception grew steadily during the first Islamic centuries (the seventh–ninth centuries CE), which witnessed the appearance of the first Muslim ‘devotees’ (ʿubbād; nussāk) in Mesopotamia, Syria and Iran. By the sixth/twelfth century they had formed the first ascetic communities, which spread across the Muslim world and gradually transformed into the institution called ṭarῑqa – the mystical ‘brotherhood’ or ‘order’. Each ṭarῑqa had a distinct spiritual pedigree stretching back to the Prophet Muḥammad, its own devotional practices, educational philosophy, headquarters and dormitories as well as its semi-independent economic basis in the form of a pious endowment (either real estate or tracts of land). Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries CE Islamic mysticism (Sufism) became an important part of the Muslim devotional life and social order. Its literature and authorities, its networks of ṭarῑqa institutions and its distinctive lifestyles and practices became a spiritual and intellectual glue that held together the culturally and ethnically diverse societies of Islamdom. Unlike Christian mysticism, which was marginalised by the secularising and rationalistic tendencies in western European societies, Sufism retained its pervasive influence on the spiritual and intellectual life of Muslims until the beginning of the twentieth century. At that point Sufi rituals, values and doctrines came under sharp criticism from such dissimilar religio-political factions as Islamic reformers and modernists, liberal nationalists and, somewhat later, Muslim socialists.

Sufism in post-Soviet Russia is a complex phenomenon that resists common methodological assumptions current in the sociology of religion and cultural studies, especially the oft-cited notions of disen Sufism in post-Soviet Russia is a complex phenomenon that resists common methodological assumptions current in the sociology of religion and cultural studies, especially the oft-cited notions of disenchantment or re-enchantment and cognitive paradigm shift. This article demonstrates that discontinuities and shifts in cultural and intellectual spheres do matter, but so do continuities and remembrances of the past. In other words, “nothing is ever lost”. The author examines several instances of the reimagining of Sufism in the Caucasus and the Volga-Ural region of Russia, including recent interpretations of its history and principles by a popular Sufi teacher and two high-ranking members of the Russian-Muslim officialdom. Provisionally classified as “traditionalist”, “interiorized-privatized”, and “perennialist”, these interpretations reflect not only the varying social positions and intellectual convictions of the interpreters but also their conscious efforts to adapt Sufism to their respective environments and audiences. In conclusion the author evaluates the epistemological utility of the aforementioned sociological concepts in explaining these [re-]interpretations of Sufism with special emphasis on the role of imagination and creative remembrance of the past.

The Sufi term “tasting” (dhawq) and its semantic cognates “drinking” (shirb / shurb) and “quenching of thirst” (riyy) appear frequently in the Sufi writings of the ninth — eleventh centuries AD to den The Sufi term “tasting” (dhawq) and its semantic cognates “drinking” (shirb / shurb) and “quenching of thirst” (riyy) appear frequently in the Sufi writings of the ninth — eleventh centuries AD to denote a mystical experience of the true reality of God and the divine creation. Originally referring primarily to the mystic's psychological or somatic state (hal), in later Sufi literature and oral teachings, especially in the writings of Ibn al‑‘Arabi (560—638 / 1165—1240), these concepts acquire metaphysical and cosmological connotations and are construed as being shared by both God and his elect servants, that is, Sufi “gnostics” (‘arifun bi‑Allah). Consequently, they become an important part of not just the Sufi cosmology, but also of Sufi gnoseology conceived by later Sufis as the only true knowledge about the Divine Absolute and its manifestation in the entities and phenomena of the material universe. This semantic shift reflects the wider process of Sufism's transformation from a mystical psychology to a mystical philosophy with its distinctive psychology, epistemology, cosmology and soteriology.