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The texts published in this volume represent a contribution to the debates on the origin of mysticism in the land of Islam, in particular Sufism, and on its evolution during the first centuries of the Hegirian era. The difficulty of the approach is twofold: that of understanding origins which are by nature remote and imprecise, and that of approaching a personal and elusive phenomenon such as mysticism. This question of origins requires a rereading of the oldest texts and a distance from received ideas both in the Muslim tradition and in academic circles. It is a question of knowing how, over the centuries, men and women considered as Masters have appeared and how the relationship between them and those who sought their teaching and their company was established and formalized.The choice of this theme - the relationship between Masters and disciples - makes it possible to address the questions of teaching, training and the transmission of the mystical experience. It is precisely around the exercise and the nature of this relationship that all the Muslim mystical groups, Sufi or not, will be built. But it takes us to the heart of a paradox: is not the mystical experience indeed, by definition, personal, not identically reproducible and, therefore, non-transferable?

Sufi literature --- Sufis --- Sufism --- Religion --- Philosophy & Religion --- Islam --- History and criticism --- Study and teaching --- Arabic literature --- Islamic literature --- Persian literature --- Turkish literature --- Urdu literature --- Sofism --- Mysticism --- Malāmatiyya --- Fārābī --- Abū Nuʿaym --- Šiblī --- futuwwa --- zuhd --- suhba --- Abū al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī --- Ṭirmiḏī --- Abū ʿUṯmān al-Ḥīrī --- mystique musulmane --- Ibrāhīm b. Adham --- Abū Saʿīd b. Abī l-Ḫayr --- Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī --- Karamiyya