Sufi is the Arabic word for "wool", in the sense of "cloak", referring to the simple cloaks the original Sufis wore, but the Sufi use the composing letters of the words to express hidden meanings, and so the word could also be understood as "enlightenment".
Sufis teach in personal groups, believing that the intervention of the master is necessary for the growth of the pupil. They make extensive use of parables and metaphors, in such a way that the meaning is only reachable through a process of seeking for the utmost truth and knowledge of oneself.
A large part of Muslim literature[?] comes from the Sufis, who created great books of poetry, which include for example 1001 Arabian Nights, all of which contain the profound, and hardly graspable, teachings of the Sufis.
Offshoots of Sufism in Africa include, for example, the Muslim brotherhoods of Senegal.
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Sufism is usually seen as an offshoot of Islam. Still there is a major line of sufi-thought that sees sufism as predating Islam and being in fact universal and therefore not dependent on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed. This view of sufism has understandably been popular in the West. Major exponents of this view were Hazrat Inayat Khan and Idries Shah.
(Add links & info to other order: such as Bektashi, Nimatalahi, Quaddiri, Rufi, Noori,...)
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump