The mystical and hierarchically organized brotherhoods, the sufi, were first formed in the twelfth century in Iraq, Iran, central Asia, and North Africa. These brotherhoods drew their members from all kinship groups and all classes and professions. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the African orders were faced, as was the Muslim world in general, with the steady growth of European imperialism in the Near East, dramatically symbolized by the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. The sufi's fear that their world was endangered combined at this point with the evident political and military...