Ma'rifa
The knowledge of God through the heart: distinct from learnt knowledge ('ilm), it is the fruit of the path, not of study.
Ma’rifa shares a root with the verb ‘to recognise’: it is knowledge as recognition, not information. Sufism methodically opposes it to ‘ilm, the scholars’ knowledge: one is acquired through study and memory, the other descends into the purified heart. The distinction runs through the whole vocabulary: the scholar is ’alim, the knower is ’arif.
The nuance is no disparagement of study: the greatest knowers were scholars. But knowledge tells what God commands; ma’rifa tastes Who commands. Al-Jurjani, in the Book of Definitions, makes it the science of the hal: not that of arguments, but of the state in which God makes Himself known to His servant.
Ma’rifa is the fruit of the whole path: the work on the nafs, the habit of dhikr, the crossing of the stations. It is not transmitted like a course; it happens. On the path that leads to it, see tariqa and the relation between Sufism and Islam.