Sufism

What we call Sufism today was the product of a broad mystical synthesis that emerged in Khurāsān during the tenth and eleventh centuries ce. The study and dissemination of hadith science developed in parallel to this mystical trend and played a critical role in its formative development. Many early Sufis were hadith scholars who emphasized the need to act upon the hadith they were narrating. In the modern era, Salafis tend to criticize Sufis for the use of weak or forged hadith. Sufis, however, are not alone in their use of weak hadiths, and thus the Salafi challenge can be seen as a challenge to the authority structures and traditional religious establishments that were inherited by Muslims from the pre-modern era when Sufi institutions were of primary importance.