Meanest Of God's Creatures

The methods of humiliating future Sufis were numerous. If they were ordered to beg so that they would be rebuked by the people, the intent was not the material profit derived from begging, but the discipline.
Shibli, once a high government official, eventually reached the point of saying: "I deem myself the meanest of God's creatures" (H 359), and only then was he accepted by Junayd.
A story that illustrates this attitude very well is told about Majduddm Baghdadî
in the twelfth century: When he entered the service of a sheikh, he was made to serve "at the place of ablution," i.e., to clean the latrines. His mother, a well-to-do lady physician, asked the master to exempt the tender boy from this work, and sent him twelve Turkish slaves to do the cleaning. But he replied: "You are a physician—if your son had an inflammation of the gall bladder, should I give the medicine to a Turkish slave instead of giving it to him?" (N 424)

 Mystical Dimensions of Islam - Annemarie Schimmel