My exploration of Sufism began in the unlikely environment of the Soviet Union where Sufism was considered a relic of the past to be replaced by the atheist, world-asserting ideology. The fact that my Muslim academic advisor assigned this topic to me, an active customs officer, was nothing short of a miracle. It was the beginning of a chain of miracles that punctuated my teaching and research career in the USSR, UK, US, EU, and the post-Soviet republics of Eurasia, especially Tatarstan and Kazakhstan. Having observed Sufism in various shapes and forms for over thirty years, my knowledge of its precepts and rituals is of great help to me in everyday life.
After centuries of flourishing as the principal ascetic-mystical stream of Islam practiced by millions of Muslims worldwide, Sufism saw a sharp decline in the twentieth century, only to experience explosive growth and revival in the twenty-first. I try to explain this surprising comeback of an age-old tradition pronounced dead or moribund just fifty years ago by such strange bedfellows as Muslim fundamentalists (Salafis and Wahhabis), modernists, and westernizers. While writing my book, I could not help admiring the richness, depth, and adaptability of Sufism—the features that have allowed it to survive and thrive against seemingly insurmountable odds. I was equally thrilled to find out how differently Sufism has been perceived by insiders, outsiders, advocates, and detractors since its inception until today.
Written by the renowned Sunni scholar and Sufi teacher Abu ’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (986–1074) of Khorasan in Eastern Iran, this is probably the most popular Sufi training manual ever. It is still widely used by Sufis today, so you can begin your Sufi journey by reading it. It also serves as a window onto the life of “Sufi friends of God” or “saints,” whom the author depicts as uncrowned kings of this world. We see them in a variety of contexts: suffering from hunger and thirst in the desert during a pilgrimage to Mecca, participating ecstatically or quietly in spiritual concerts, reciting and interpreting the Qur’an, waging war against outward enemies (“infidels”) and their own demonic desires, earning livelihood, meditating in a retreat, praying, working miracles, interacting with the commoners, their family members and peers, dreaming, and dying.
The author of the "Epistle on Sufism, Abu 'l-Qasim al-Qushayri" (376/986-465/1074), was a famous Sunni scholar and mystic (Sufi) from Khurasan in Iran. His Epistle is probably the most popular Sufi manual ever. Written in 437/1045, it has served as a primary textbook for many generations of Sufi novices down to the present. Al-Qushayri has given us an illuminating insight into the everyday lives of Sufi devotees of the eighth-eleventh centuries C.E. and the moral and ethical dilemmas they were facing in trying to strike a delicate balance between their ascetic and mystical convictions and the exigencies of life in…
This book offers a poignant personal view of Sufism by a Scottish-born actor and writer who became disillusioned with a world “where people teach but know nothing, where the sentences flow on endlessly but lead nowhere.” He seeks and finds wisdom and solace in the deserts of Sahara under the guidance of a Sufi master to whom he dedicates his short but powerful book. When I picked it up as a reading for my class on Sufism, I thought I would find a usual mushy account of Sufism by a starry-eyed neophyte. The book was anything but: it was eloquent, deeply personal, and felicitously free from platitudes. I was pleasantly surprised and so were my students. I recommend it to everyone interested in spiritual quests regardless of his or her background.
While the author of my second recommended book sought Sufi wisdom in the “Muslim Orient,” this wisdom has become an integral part of intellectual, cultural, and spiritual life in “Occidental” societies. A peculiar mixture of Neoplatonic emanationism, Sufi poetry, music and rituals, perennialism, pantheism, esotericism, and New Age religiosity, it has captivated the minds and souls of Western academics, anarchists, artists, architects, faith healers, physicians, and psychiatrists, who rearranged these diverse elements to create their own distinctive versions of Sufi spirituality and lifestyle. Lively and witty, the author’s narrative guides us through several “cultural transfers”—premodern, modern, and New Age—from the Muslim world to the West, culminating in the emergence of “Western Sufism” represented by the major public figures, celebrities, and charismatic teachers.
Western Sufism is sometimes dismissed as a relatively recent "new age" phenomenon, but in this book, Mark Sedgwick argues that it actually has very deep roots, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In fact, although the first significant Western Sufi organization was not established until 1915, the first Western discussion of Sufism was printed in 1480, and Western interest in some of the ideas that are central to Sufi thought goes back to the thirteenth century. Sedgwick starts with the earliest origins of Western Sufism in late antique Neoplatonism and early Arab philosophy, and traces later origins…
Now that you know what Sufism is all about, it is time to find out what lies behind the romantic façade of Sufi love poetry, ecstatic outbursts, and exotic rituals. For this purpose, I cannot recommend a better guide than this collective monograph. Its authors explain the nuts and bolts of Sufi life past and present: how Sufis interact with the world that they are supposed to despise and reject, how they feed themselves and their families, how they create and sustain their fellowships and associations, how their shrines serve as centers of charity, education, and arbitration as well as objects of pilgrimages, both collective and individual. My greatest takeaway from this informative and richly illustrated volume is Sufism’s remarkable adaptability. It thrives in the countryside, urban spaces, and cyber environment, often against great odds.
This volume describes the social and practical aspects of Islamic mysticism (Sufism) across centuries and geographical regions. Its authors seek to transcend ethereal, essentialist and "spiritualizing" approaches to Sufism, on the one hand, and purely pragmatic and materialistic explanations of its origins and history, on the other. Covering five topics (Sufism's economy, social role of Sufis, Sufi spaces, politics, and organization), the volume shows that mystics have been active socio-religious agents who could skillfully adjust to the conditions of their time and place, while also managing to forge an alternative way of living, worshiping and thinking.
This book was a revelation for me when it came out, and I continue to use it as both reference and a source of new ideas and inspiration. The author felicitously combines a deeply personal perspective on Sufism’s greatest thinker Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240) with academic rigor and precision in translation. His comments on Ibn ‘Arabi’s teachings are unobtrusive and helpful in navigating the Sufi master’s breathtaking exploration of the universe that he presents, paradoxically, as a giant reflection of the [self-]image and imagination of the Divine Absolute. The subtle interaction of mundane and divine imaginations determines how we ourselves imagine the world. After reading this book, you will understand why Ibn ‘Arabi looms so large in Eastern and Western imaginings of Sufism and why he is compared to Plato in the Western intellectual tradition.
"For the first time in the history of Orientalism, a thorough study of Ibn al-'Arabi's thought is now available. William Chittick has given us a translation of numerous passages from the work of the Magister Magnus and placed them in their theological context, thus removing many misunderstandings that have prevailed both among Muslims and in the West when interpreting Ibn al-'Arabi's mystical worldview. Chittick has done this with admirable clarity, and his book will always remain a most important milestone in the study of Islamic mystical theology." -- Annemarie Schimmel, Harvard University
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…
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