Baraka
Blessing: the divine abundance that settles on a place, a man, an act, and makes it bear fruit beyond the visible.
Baraka comes from the root b-r-k, which carries the idea of abundance flowing and good settling: blessing, the divine effusion by which a little suffices for much, a place keeps its peace, a man transmits by his mere presence. The Qur’an applies it to holy things (the night of destiny, the land of al-Sham) and tradition applies it to the masters.
In the path, baraka has a concrete meaning: the shaykh transmits not only a teaching but an effusion. One asks for the guide’s baraka, one visits a place for its baraka, one keeps a blessed object for it. It is also the name of what the so-called ‘paths of blessing’ (tabarruk) offer to those not seeking full direction: an affiliation, a protection, an opening. The paths of the sirr, by contrast, convey something other than baraka: the charge.
The zawiya is the place where baraka gathers, the dhikr the means of receiving it.