Sufi studies is a particular branch of comparative studies that uses the technical lexicon of the Islamic mystics, the Sufis, to exemplify the nature of its ideas; hence the frequent reference to Sufi Orders. It may be divided into two main branches, the orientalist/academic and the spiritual.
Early Sufi studies in France
The earliest Europeans to study Sufism were French, associated (rightly or wrongly) with the Quietist movement. They were Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville (1625–1695), a professor at the Collège de France who worked from texts available in Europe, François Bernier (1625–1688), the physician of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who spent 1655-69 in the Islamic world (mostly with Aurangzeb), and François Pétis de la Croix (1653–1713), a diplomat who spent 1674-1676 in Isfahan, where he studied Rumi's Masnavi-ye Manavi and visited the Bektashi order.
D'Herbelot's great work, the Bibliothèque orientale (published posthumously in 1697), included an entry on Sufism (as tasawwuf) and detailed entries on Al-Hallaj, Najmeddin Kubra, and Abd-al-karim Jili. There were a number of references to the Masnavi and to Rumi (as Gellaledin Mohammed al Balkhi), and there may also have been entries on them.
Bernier published an article on Sufism entitled "Mémoire sur le quïetisme des Indes" in the periodical Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans in September 1688. Following this article, there is said to have developed in France a view that the French expression of the creed of Pure Love (Pur Amour/Quietism) was in fact a disguised form of Islam. The debate over Quietism between the bishops Fénelon and Bossuet was remembered as the "Querelle du Pur Amour". Many Quietists (including Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon) were imprisoned. Others exercised caution and self-censorship.
Pétis de la Croix did not publish himself, but his son (writing later under a pseudonym) gave reasons why he thought "the Mevlevi are perfect Quïetists" (Ahmed Frangui, Lettres critiques de Hadgi Effendi à la Marquise de G... au sujet des mémoires de M. le Chevalier d'Arvieux, Paris, 1735).
D'Herbelot de Molainville's Bibliothèque orientale went through several editions, one of the last of which was the 1777 edition printed in the Hague. It has been suggested that some entries on Sufi topics that were present in the 1697 edition were absent from the 1777 edition. The word "Sufi" appears (vol 3, p. 329).
Early translations
In 1671, Edward Pococke (1648–1727), the son of Oxford professor Edward Pococke (1604–1691), published a Latin translation of the Hayy Ibn Yakhthan of Ibn Tufayl. This led to a number of other translations, including the English translations of 1674 (by George Keith) and 1686 (by George Ashwell), and a Dutch translation of 1701. The anonymous Dutch translator, "S.D.B.", gave a concise biographical review of the philosophers related to the text: Al Farabi, Avicenna, Al Ghazali, Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Rushd, Junayd, and Mansur Al-Hallaj (with a description of his death and a reference to his famous "Ana al-Haqq"). Hayy Ibn Yakhthan may have partly inspired Robinson Crusoe.
In 1812, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall published a translation of the divan of Hafiz, which was received with delight by Goethe, who was inspired by it to publish in 1819 his Westöstlicher Diwan. A Sufi appears in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play Nathan der Weise, first produced in 1779, though it is not clear from where Lessing learned of Sufism, perhaps through his association with Johann Jakob Reiske.
In 1821, F.A.G. Thölluck published Ssufismus sive Theosophia persarum pantheistica in Berlin (in Latin).
Early sociological studies
One of the earliest sociological treatments of Sufism is to be found in Sir John Malcolm's 1825 work, The History of Persia, From the Most Early Period to the Present Time, Containing an Account of the Religion, Government, Usages and Character of the Inhabitants of that Kingdom. Malcolm's treatment, though interesting, is not well informed.