A Sufi Saint in the XXth Century
By Martin Lings
Pub Date: 1993
Publisher: Islamic Texts Society (first published by Allen and Unwin, 1961)
Binding: Paper, 242pp.
ISBN: 0946621500
Our Price $24.95

Related Books: Prophets, Saints, Sages, Teachers
Related Audio/Video: Lings, Frithjof Schuon and Rene Guenon

"Almost a prerequisite for any serious study of Sufism in European languages": this was the verdict of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his review of the first edition of this book. According to the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, it is "one of the most thorough and intimately engaging books on Sufism to be produced by a Western scholar." Certainly there is nothing second-hand about it. The author lets the Sufis speak for themselves and, in a series of unusual and absorbing texts mainly translated from Arabic, he gives a vivid picture of life in a North African Sufi order. Against his background stands the unforgettable figure of the Algerian Shaikh who was head of the order from the death of his Master in 1909 until his own death in 1934. The last few chapters are mainly devoted to his writing, which included some penetrating aphorisms, and which end with a small anthology of his remarkable mystic poems which, as one reviewer has remarked, "remain beautiful poetry even in their English translation."