The murid is the disciple in a Sufi order, one who has given the pledge to a guide and undertaken the discipline of the order, and the word itself, meaning one who wills, names the aspiration at the heart of the office.
The pledge and the path
The murid gives his allegiance to a master, the murshid, in a formal pledge of initiation, and thereby undertakes the litany, the practices of remembrance and the moral discipline of the order under the master direction, committing himself to the inward journey the order teaches. The word means one who wills or desires, naming the seeker aspiration toward God, and the relationship the murid enters is understood as one of obedience and trust in the guide, likened in the tradition to the surrender of a patient to a physician or a body to the one who washes it.
Formation under a guide
The murid progresses under the correction and instruction of the master through the stages of the path, and the whole structure of the order is built on this relationship of disciple to guide, so that the murid is the counterpart without which the office of the murshid would have no content. The intensity of the bond, and the obedience it asks, has been both the strength of the Sufi orders, allowing a demanding inner training, and a point of criticism, where the surrender to a guide could be abused. The murid represents the ordinary member of a Sufi order, the seeker under formation, and the tradition holds that it is only under such guidance, and not alone, that the path can safely be travelled.