Adab
Perfect propriety: the science of the soul's manners towards God, the guide and creatures, the very essence of the path.
Adab means propriety, good manners, the education of conduct. Sufism made it one of its master words: ‘Sufism is all adab’, runs a saying attributed to several masters, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, in a reported hadith: ‘My Lord taught me adab and made it beautiful in me.’
Adab is not surface politeness: it is the exact outward form of an inward state. Towards God, the reverence of one who knows whom he is addressing; towards the guide, the courtesy of one who knows what he has received; towards companions on the path, the regard that recognises in the other a guest of the same Source. The manuals even describe the adab of the dhikr session: how to sit, how to sing, how to listen.
The Qadiriya Boutchichiya path, which calls itself the ‘path of beauty’, puts this ethics of the beautiful gesture first: adab is beauty become conduct. See the path of beauty and the state of the disciple.