Murshid
The educator-guide: the one who has received authorisation to take disciples in charge and lead them along the way.
Murshid comes from the root r-sh-d, which carries the idea of rightness and discernment: the murshid is ‘the one who directs towards the right way’. The term specifies the educative function of the shaykh: not only to possess the light, but to know how to transmit it.
Tradition carefully distinguishes two qualities that do not always go together: the wali, the man of God who has reached nearness, and the murshid, who has in addition received the charge of guiding. The degrees of that authorisation vary: some are authorised to transmit only the evocation of the Name, others the pact and the disciple’s complete education.
Suhrawardi, in the ʿAwarif al-maʿarif, the reference manual of 13th-century Sufism, defines the qualities required of the murshid: knowledge of the soul’s diseases, uprightness in the Law, and discretion about his disciples’ states. See also muqaddem, his representative with a group.