A Teacher
Muhammad
Tawhid - oneness of God and submission of the self
The transmission
Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 CE and died in Medina in 632 CE. Orphaned young and raised within his clan, he worked as a merchant and married the widow Khadija. Tradition holds that around 610 CE, in a cave on Mount Hira, he experienced the first of a series of revelations - understood in Islam as the word of God conveyed through the angel Gabriel - which were gathered into the Qur’an.
Facing opposition in Mecca, he and his followers migrated to Medina in 622 CE (the Hijra, which anchors the Islamic calendar), where he became the leader of a growing community before returning to Mecca near the end of his life.
His foundational teaching is tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, and islam, the willing submission of the self to that one reality. This atlas tags Muhammad as “sufism” because Islam itself has no exact tag among the available traditions; the fit is approximate, and is chosen because the Sufi mystical stream - the dimension of Islam most concerned with inner purification, remembrance, and direct experience of the divine - flows directly from his example and words.
The Prophet’s practices of night vigil, remembrance (dhikr), and trust in God (tawakkul), together with his reported night journey and ascent (the Mi’raj), became the seedbed from which later mystics drew their science of the heart.
What they gave
Submission as inner reordering: Islam (submission) reframes the spiritual task as the alignment of the entire self with one ultimate reality, a discipline of inner orientation rather than outward conformity alone.
- Remembrance and present attention: The practice of dhikr - continual remembrance of God - cultivates a sustained, present-centered quality of consciousness later refined into elaborate Sufi methods of attention.
- Trust and the surrendered will: Tawakkul, reliance on God paired with right action, parallels later teachings that release of anxious control opens the way to outcome.
- The heart as organ of knowing: The Qur’anic emphasis on the heart (qalb) as the seat of understanding seeds the Sufi science of purifying inner perception.
In their words
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: The Abrahamic monotheistic heritage, the hanif monotheists of Arabia, and the Jewish and Christian communities of his milieu.
- Influenced: The whole Sufi tradition - Rabia al-Adawiyya, Al-Ghazali, Rumi, and Ibn Arabi among them - which took his inner practices of remembrance, trust, and surrender as the root of its mysticism of the heart.
Revelations they taught
Their Practices 3
Essential Works
- The Qur'anc.610-632 CE