Jami, one of the greatest Persian authorities on Sufism, tells us that the name “Sufi” was first applied to Abu Hashim (d. 162), an Arab of Kufa who spent the greater part of his life in Syria, and is typical of the early Islamic devotee who followed the simplicity of the Prophet’s life and was deeply influenced by the Qur´anic teaching about sin, judgment, and the brief passage of earthly life. Similar devotees, claimed as Sufis by later Sufi writers, but more properly devotees who were their precursors, appear in the course of the 2nd century, such as Ibrahim b. Adham (d. 162), Da´ud of Tayy (d. 165), Fadayl of `Iyad (d. 188), Ma´ruf of Karkh (d. 200), and others, both men and women. Amongst these there was gradually evolved the beginnings of an ascetic theology in traditional sayings and narratives of their lives and conduct, a hagiology which lays great emphasis upon their penances and self mortification. Of this material the most important is the recorded teaching of Ma´ruf of Karkh, from which we may quote the definition of Sufism as “the apprehension of divine realities,” which, in a slightly altered sense perhaps, becomes the keynote of later Sufism. Can we trace the origin of these early recluses? Von Kremer (_Herrsch_, p. 67) considers this type as a native Arab growth developed from pre-Islamic Christian influences. Christian monasticism we know was familiar to the Arabs in the country fringing the Syrian desert and in the desert of Sinai: of this we have evidence both in Christian writers like Nilus and in the pre-Islamic poets, as in the words of Imru l-Qays:-- “Friend, see the lightning--it flashed and is gone, like the flashing of two hands on a crowned pillar: Did its blaze flash forth? or was it the lamp of a monk who poured oil on the twisted wick?” The hermit’s life was known even in Arabia itself, and tradition relates that Muhammad received his first call when he had retired to the cave of Hira and was living as a recluse there, returning periodically to his home and taking back food with him to the cave (cf. Bukhari: _Sahih_, i.). It seems likely, indeed, that the early recluses of Islam were inspired by the example of Christian monasticism, either directly or through the medium of Muhammad’s traditional retirement. But these recluses were not numerous, and admittedly neglect the Qur´anic command to marry (Qur. 24, 32). Thus the earlier asceticism shows the character of devout quietism, of a puritanical abstinence from display of wealth and from self-indulgence, of a strict simplicity of life rather than of a voluntary poverty and mortification, of occasional retirement from the world, and only in rare instances of the permanent adoption of the hermit life. An instance of this type occurs in Abu l-`Abbas as-Sabti (d. 184), son of the Khalif Harunu r-Rashid, who renounced rank and fortune for a life of meditation and retirement.