Islam

The Sufis are as diverse as the countries in which they've flourished—from Morocco to India to China—and as varied as their distinctive forms of art, music, poetry, and dance. They are said to represent the mystical heart of Islam, yet the term Sufism is notoriously difficult to define, as it means different things to different people both within and outside the tradition. With that fact in mind, Carl Ernst explores the broadest range of Sufi philosophies and practices to provide one of the most complete and comprehensive introductions to Sufism available in English. He traces the history of the movement from the earliest days of Islam to the present day, along the way examining its relationship to the larger world of Islam and its encounters with both fundamentalism and secularism in the modern world.

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned with the search for truth through God - it describes the consequences of the conference of the birds of the world when they meet to begin the search for their ideal king, the Simorgh bird. On hearing that to find him they must undertake an arduous journey, the birds soon express their reservations to their leader, the hoopoe. With eloquence and insight, however, the hoopoe calms their fears, using a series of riddling parables to provide guidance in the search for spiritual truth. By turns witty and profound, The Conference of the Birds transforms deep belief into magnificent poetry.

This 1935 English translation of a classic Arabic text in Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islam, by A. J. Arberry preserves the beauty and simplicity of the original without departing from a literal translation. Little is known of the author of this treatise Abu Bakr al-Kalabadhi, except that he was a lawyer and died in Bukhara in about AD 990. This book is the work on which his fame rests, and is important because it is the earliest extant text to reconcile the position of Sufism and orthodox Islam. The book consists of five parts: a general introduction to the term Sufi and an enumeration of the names of the great Sufis; a statements of the tenets of Islam, as accepted by the Sufis; a discussion of the various 'stations' of the Sufis; and a discussion of the various phenomena of Sufism. This is a superb English introduction to Sufism."