I am interested to understand the historical of Sufism so here is my summary
The close contact between the Muslim and the Christian communities during the formative years of Islam had its influence on the development of the Sufism – the mystic traditions of Islam. Sufism established itself within the traditions of the Islam. The Sufis believe that communion with God is possible through Muhammad, who was the recipient of the knowledge of the heart (Ilm-e-Sina) besides the outer knowledge (Ilm-e-safina). Ali, one of the Muhammad's companions and son-in-law, is considered to be the first Sufi to whom the Ilm-e-Sina was revealed by Muhammad to be taught to those capable of understanding it. The concept of God, the possibility of esoteric knowledge and the ways to access God through purification of self by means of prayer, fasting and repentance that form the foundations of Sufism find their source in the Quran and the teachings of the prophet known as Hadith.
Sufism in the beginning was primarily an individual endeavor. The Sufis would usually live in isolation practicing self-mortification and were distinguished by a cloak of wool (Suf), a tradition of Muhammad, which is believed to be the origin of the word Sufi.
But even though Sufis wore suf, wool, from the very beginning of Islam, the word “Sufism”, according to Arab grammar, is not a derivative of the word suf, and not whoever wears suf is a Sufi. Or as Sheikh Saadi, a great Persian poet and sage said: The goal of the people of the inner path is not their outer garments. Serve the King yet remain a Sufi.
Other scholars believe that the word “Sufi” derives from the word “sufateh”, the name of a thin plant. Sufis were usually thin because of extreme mortification and fasting. Thus they were likened to sufateh as symbol for their emaciation. But, as in the preceding theory, this assumption is not linguistically or grammatically correct.
Another group of scholars claim that the word “Sufism” is a derivative from the Greek word “Soph”, meaning wisdom or knowledge. But this assumption does not seem right either. Aside from the different spellings, Sufis, and especially the Sufis of the first few centuries, denied that philosophy could be a fitting tool for understanding reality, since through its reliance on verbal descriptions and limited reasoning philosophy would actually obscure rather than reveal the truth or reality.
There is also yet another idea regarding the word Sufism. It seems that before the time of the Prophet Mohammed there was a group of very pious people who worked as the servants of the Kaaba. These people were called “Sufe”. Their practices included mortification and the avoidance of any physical pleasures. Some assume that the word “Sufism” is a derivative from the word “Sufe”, but this assumption does not bear close examination, as the rules of Arabic grammar as well as the different styles of the practice make its fallacy evident. Etymologically, “Sufi” is not a derivative of the word Sufe; historically Sufis were a group of Moslem intellectuals forming a School of an inner path based on the instructions of the Prophet Mohammed and the teachings of the Koran. Necessarily, this school had to be established after the advent of Islam and not before.
A group of such devouts lived a life of poverty and incessant prayer and fasting on a stone bench in front of Muhammad's mosque. These people of the bench (Ashab-e-suffa), 45 to over 300 in number, were given to much weeping and repentance and are believed to be the origin of the Sufism. However, the name Sufi was given to such ascetics only around the second century of death of Muhammad. The Sufis in the early period were primarily ascetics and Sufism had not yet evolved into a fully developed system of theosophical doctrines, which became the core feature of the later Sufism.
The companions of Muhammad like Bilal, Salman Farsi, Ammar bin Yasir were the early mystics. Later with the spread of Islam Sufism flourished in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Persia and Central Asia and gave birth to the renown Sufis like Rabia Basri, Hasan Basri, Junayd Baghdadi, Dhun Nun Misri, etc., around the 9th and 10th century.
As the early Sufi masters started teaching those in search of divine, a distinct tradition in the form of closely-knit communities centered around these masters flourished. The transformation of such communities into those, which shared a spiritual lineage, took place around the 11th century and led to the formation of Sufi orders (silsilas), chains through which they would eventually link their disciples to Muhammad.
The Sufi orders practiced presently run in hundreds but most of these represent the off shoots of the earlier ones. The 13th century considered the golden age of Sufism was marked by the development of comprehensive mystical and theosophical doctrines of Sufism by the Sufi scholars like ibn ul Arabi of Spain, ibn ul Farid of Egypt and the popular Persian Sufi poet Jalal ud Din Rumi After the golden era the Arab-Muslim world produced only few notable Sufi scholars though the influence of Sufi orders continued to grow.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705685/
https://ias.org/sufism/origin-of-word-tasawouf/
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