Faqir
Literally 'the poor one': the Sufi disciple, poor in spirit, who acknowledges his want before God.
Faqir means ‘poor’, ‘needy’. In Sufi vocabulary the word denotes the disciple: not necessarily one who lacks goods, but one who has recognised his indigence before God, his absolute need of Him. The plural fuqara’ is the usual name for the members of a tariqa; the feminine is faqira.
This poverty is no material misery sought for its own sake. The Qur’an gives the term its scope: ‘O men, you are the poor who have need of God, and God is the Rich, the Praiseworthy’ (XXXV, 15). The faqir takes that truth seriously: he has nothing, he is nothing, everything comes to him. Faqr, spiritual poverty, is thus a station of the path, not a social condition.
The same intuition appears in the ‘poor in spirit’ of the Beatitudes. In the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path, the disciples call one another fuqara’, or else habba’iba, those whom Sidi Hamza called his ‘beloved’. On the commitment this name implies, see murid and the state of the disciple.