Sufism
the pantheistic mysticism of the Mohammedan East, which strives for the highest illumination of the mind, the most perfect calmness of the soul, and the union of it with God by an ascetic life and the subjugation of the appetites.
This pantheism, clothed in a mysticoreligious garb, has been professed since the 9th and 10th centuries by a sect which is gaining adherents continually among the more cultivated Mohammedans, particularly in Persia and India. The name is from sufi, a religious ascetic, an eastern term applied to all members of religious monastic bodies leading an ascetic life. The Sufis were originally devout persons who, perplexed by the discord prevailing among the various systems of Mohammedan philosophy in the 2d century of the Hejira, found consolation in pious mysticism. Their teachings, though at first consonant with orthodox Mohammedanism, gradually led to a mode of thought totally irreconcilable with the Koran. About the beginning of the 10th century the Sufis divided into two branches, one of which followed Bostanie, who openly embraced pantheism, and the other Juneid, who sought to reconcile Sufism with Mohammedanism.
Among eminent Persian poets belonging to the Sufis we may mention Hafiz, a distinguished Sufi; Ferîd-eddîn, and Jami. The celebrated philosopher and jurist, Alghazzâlî was also a Sufi.
SUGAR BEET or less resembling sugar in any of its properties; as sugar of lead; figuratively, sweet, honeyed, or soothing words or flattery, used to disguise or hide something distasteful. In chemistry, Cn (OH2)m, the generic name for a large number of bodies occurring naturally ally in the animal or vegetable kingdom, or produced from glucosides by the action of ferments or dilute acids.
They are all more or less soluble in water, and their solutions exert a rotatory action on polarized light. Some reduce alkaline solutions of copper while others either do not, or do so only to a limited extent. They may all be classed under two heads, viz., unfermentable sugars, as mannite, dulcite, sorbite, etc., and fermentable sugars, as cane sugar, glucose, maltose, etc. Cane sugar, C12H22O11, called also saccharose, sucrose, and canose, is found in the juice of many grasses, in the sap of several trees, and in beet and several other roots. It is extracted most easily from sugar cane but on the Continent of Europe and also in the United States it is manufactured on a large scale from beet root. The expressed juice is heated nearly to the boiling point, and a small quantity of slaked lime added. The clear liquid which separates from the coagulum is evaporated as rapidly as possible, and transferred into shallow vessels to crystallize Drained from the syrup or molasses, it yields the raw sugar of commerce. When further refined by treatment with animal charcoal, poured into molds, and then dried in a stove, the product is loaf sugar.
When the crystallization is allowed to proceed very slowly, sugar candy results.
Moderately heated it melts, and solidifies on cooling to an amorphous mass, familiar as barley sugar. Pure sugar separates from its solution in transparent colorless crystals, having the figure of a modified monoclinic prism. Its crystals have a sp. gr. of 1.6. Heated above 210°, water is given off and a brown substance known as caramel remains. Cane sugar is transformed into invert sugar by boiling in presence of dilute acids, mineral acting more rapidly than organic acids. Strong sulphuric acid completely decomposes cane sugar, and nitric acid converts it into saccharic acid. It turns a ray of polarized light to the right, Aj = 73.8.