Were the great Islamic scholars actually Sufis?

Many of the Islamic scholars to whom Allah gave success in their work were Sufis. To discard the works of those trained by Sufis would mean discarding “75 percent or more of the books of Islam.”

Some ask whether the Islamic scholars followed the path of Tasawwuf. In fact, many of the great scholars of Qur'an and Hadith did.

These men included such scholars as Imam al-Ghazali rahimahullah, Imam al-Nawawi rahimahullah, al-Suyuti rahimahullah, Ibn Abidin rahimahullah, and many of the great hadith masters. Even Ibn Taymiyya rahimahullah devoted two volumes of his Majmu al-Fatawa to Tasawwuf, and his student Ibn Qayyim rahimahullah wrote a detailed, three-volume commentary on Abdullah al-Ansari's Manazil al-sairin, a guide to the spiritual stations of the Sufi path.

Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahullah, the great jurist, was an authority on the principles of Tasawwuf and the teacher of noted Sufi masters. And when Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal rahimahullah was asked about the Sufis who sat in the mosques, he answered: “Knowledge is with those who sit with them the most.” [A.H. Makki al-Hijazi, Mawqif A'immat al-Harakat al-Salafiyyah min al-Tasawwuf wa al-Sufiyyah]