Perhaps the greatest contribution that Sufis made to Islamic culture was through their poetry and song. They became the masters of love poetry that expressed the soul’s longing for union with God, the beloved. In their poetic forms, divine beauty was symbolized by female beauty, and the longing of the soul was expressed as the longing of a man for a woman, who was of higher rank and beyond his reach. In other forms, the soul is described as a loving wife and her husband as God. Sufi poetry so thoroughly infiltrated Islamic culture that all Middle Eastern love songs were influenced by it, and in these songs the distinction between profane and spiritual love was blurred. In the 12th and 13th centuries, these mystic singers inflamed the Christians of Spain and southern France with their passion and the troubadour tradition was born.

Rober M. Place