The Moroccan Sufi Experience and the Making of Islamic Civilization

Moroccan Sufism is often described as a regional expression of an Eastern Islamic model. This study argues otherwise. It proposes that Morocco represents a civilizational exception, shaped from its origins by sharīfian authority rooted in the Idrīsid foundation. Long before the formalization of Sufi orders or the Ghazālian synthesis, prophetic descent structured religious legitimacy, social authority, and political imagination in the Maghrib. The encounter between this Idrīsid inheritance, imported Sunni Sufism, and the Andalusian metaphysical current produced a uniquely Moroccan configuration in which sanctity functioned as public authority and the zāwiya became a central institution of civilization.