It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of mankind and God and to facilitate the experience of divine love and wisdom in the world. Sufism arose as an organized movement after the death of Muhammad (632 ce), among different groups who found orthodox Islam to be spiritually stifling.

This mystic tradition within Islam developed in several stages of growth, emerging first in the form of early asceticism, based on the teachings of Hasan al-Basri, before entering the second stage of more classical mysticism of divine love, as promoted by al-Ghazali and Attar of Nishapur, and finally emerging in the institutionalized form of today's network of fraternal Sufi orders, based on Sufis such as Rumi and Yunus Emre.

As situated within the Islamic tradition, Sufism (taṣawwuf) refers to the active process of discovering, developing, and actualizing certain spiritual verities within one's own person, normally in hopes of achieving an intimate, unmediated, or unitive encounter with God, who alone is the true ground of existence and the “really real” (al-ḥaqq).