The universal Islamic formulas of remembrance (dhikr), the glorification, the praise, the profession of oneness, are public, and several are described elsewhere in this collection. What is not public in Sufism is the wird: the particular sequence, count and manner of dhikr that a master (shaykh) assigns to a disciple within an order (tariqa), together with the litanies proper to that order and, in some traditions, teaching about the Greatest Name of God. These are transmitted through the initiatic chain and are not, by the orders' own practice, matter for open publication.
This entry accordingly describes the institution rather than reproducing any assigned litany. The Sufi orders built an elaborate pedagogy around graded transmission, in which the disciple's practice is prescribed and supervised, and the reserve around a personal wird is of a piece with that structure: the practice is a relationship, not a text. Historians of Sufism describe the tariqa system and its transmission at length. A neutral account can therefore record that such assigned devotions exist and are held privately, and can point to the public formulas that anyone may use, without presenting as open what the tradition transmits as personal.